Christopher Guest is finally (and delightfully) back behind the camera with Family Tree, a new half-hour single-camera comedy on HBO co-created with Jim Piddock. The production is a bit of a departure for Guest, who’s made his name in film (A Mighty Wind, This is Spinal Tap, Best In Show) rather than in television, but if the first episode, ‘The Box,’ was any indicator, this will indeed be Guest at his best, showcasing his ability to move seamlessly across a variety of media and to work well with a variety of actors, even those who aren’t part of his usual ensemble.
Tom Chadwick (Chris O’Dowd) is a rather sad sack sucked into looking into his past by a mysterious photograph he founds in a trunk left to him by a deceased great-aunt, finding the hunt a great way to distract himself from his rather pathetic life.
Relatively newly divorced and flailing about for a job, he’s surrounded by a best friend (Tom Bennett) who cleans zoo cages for a living, a sister (Nina Conti) who travels everywhere with a hand puppet named Monkey, and kooky antiquarians who seem to hinder as much as they help with this quest. When he finds a photograph of a rather imposing and martial-looking man and his father tells him it was probably his great-grandfather Harry Chadwick, he thinks this might be the explanation to so many questions that have been plaguing him.
At the very least, it’s evidence of an illustrious ancestor who might give his live some kind of redeeming value, and assembling a family tree might uncover other delightful surprises if he can stick with the tedious work it requires. Chadwick sets off to find out who his family was, not expecting some of the surprises he will encounter.
In Guestian tradition, the comedy is deliciously wry and dry, without the obvious pratfalls and big laugh moments one might come to expect from US television. Guest’s characters are all complete and utter oddballs, and this is what makes the show so understatedly hilarious; they view their lives as utterly normal and mundane, while embodying a set of truly peculiar lives.
Even the moments of the show that cause discomfort, like some of the casual racism, add to the bizarreness of the setting and underscore the peculiarity of the characters; it is the racism itself that we are supposed to be laughing at. Whether we’re watching scenes between the characters or candid ‘interviews’ (the show, in a technique echoing to Guest’s other work, is presented in a documentary format), a wry liveliness crackles through the characters and the setting. The single-camera style gives it a very intimate feel, turning the project itself into a bit of a meta-commentary.
With the big budgets available in filmmaking, including for documentaries these days, single-camera projects have a certain amount of beloved pet project appeal, making them seem like the lesser siblings of their more storied counterparts; these are stories that people are passionate and desperate to tell, even though they have virtually no funding. The style thus gives Family Tree a ‘little engine that could’ feel that makes it feel like a diamond in the rough, and that’s well brought-out through the cinematography, sets, costumes, and other design elements of the show.
The artistic team have kept the show creatively very true to its roots, rather than creating an artistic mismatch with the aesthetics of Guests style. Naturally, Family Tree is not a real documentary, but it is a fascinating examination of a subculture, and an exploration of modern British life through a deeply satirical but still somehow loving lens. These characters seem to realise on some level precisely how ridiculous they are and they freely admit it, denying viewers the opportunity to simply laugh at them, because any laughs ultimately turn back on the one doing the laughing, rather than the object of the laughter.
Family Tree catches Tom at an important point of his life, as a thirty-year-old looking back over his life and wondering what he’s made of it thus far, and what he’ll make of it in the future. The desire to suddenly probe into the past isn’t unique at this age, and like many people who start investigating their heritage, Tom’s likely to uncover all sorts of peculiar, sad, amazing, and unexpected stories about his family and his past. Along the way, he might learn more about who he is, but those findings will come from the journey of exploration itself, not from the people he finds on the branches of his family tree.
This is a show well worth making part of your summer viewing schedule; if you’re a Christopher Guest fan, you’ll love this fresh entry, and if you have a certain fondness for journeys of family heritage, quietly compelling documentary-style comedies, and Brit-coms, you’ll definitely want to make this one a must-watch. Family Tree is a testament to the flexibility HBO is going for in its programming, illustrating that HBO isn’t all bloody dramas and sex (though ‘The Box’ did feature an antique dildo), but also highly witty, sharp comedies. With programming like that, it’s no wonder cable is beating out the networks in terms of buzz, even though it has yet to conquer the ratings reach.