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March 15, 2007

TV Review | 'Andy Barker, P.I.'

With a Couch Potato’s Style, Private Eye Works the Mall

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN, NY Times

Conan O’Brien’s loyalty to Andy Richter is impressive. It’s moving. Mr. Richter played sidekick to Mr. O’Brien on NBC’s “Late Night” from 1993 to 2000, beginning when Mr. O’Brien was nothing but a cub. But the awkward fact is that Mr. Richter didn’t stay for the duration, Ed McMahon-style, Tonto-style. In his sweet and beta way, Andy Richter deserted.

He went to peddle his lovability elsewhere: in supporting roles, as in “Talladega Nights,” and front and center, as in “Andy Richter Controls the Universe.” It seems he wanted to be in the big chair himself, and from afar Mr. O’Brien’s fondness never wavered.

Like Don Knotts, Mr. Richter is one of those rare performers whom other comics like to share a stage with, help out and forgive for almost anything. But audiences are different from performers: they have a martial idea of rank. You don’t go from sidekick to frontman easily. Mr. Richter is soft, friendly, affable. He’s supposed to listen and laugh as much as he talks and jokes.

Still, Mr. O’Brien and Jonathan Groff, a onetime head writer for “Late Night,” are positive that their honey deserves another shot in a title role. And they’re correct to take the chance. Some shows, the ones short on snickers and put-downs (those are for Jimmy Kimmel), actually require a good-natured, rosily complexioned and hefty lead. Witness Kevin James on “The King of Queens.”

Tonight Mr. Richter opens in “Andy Barker, P.I.,” a heavily plotted crime show that’s meant to evoke the 1970s — not just with its hat tips to TV of the period, but with its cocktail-culture drollery. Mr. Richter plays Andy Barker, an accountant in a Los Angeles exurb, who appears at first to be living a hollow existence in which high pleasure is afforded by “Judging Amy” on TiVo. On greater exposure the Barker life looks like fun.

Andy’s office, in a big-box mall called Fair Oaks Plaza, is spacious and icy-clean in the way of early-’90s stylized set design (think Hal Hartley). The plaza also allows for sociability with the downstairs neighbor, Simon (Tony Hale), a jivey video store owner whose obsolete livelihood means that he has time on his hands. Together they get drawn into a classic noir plot in tonight’s episode, and Andy turns out to have a knack for solving crimes.

Further supported by a codger detective, Lew Staziak (the movie veteran Harve Presnell), and a patriotic restaurateur, Wally (Marshall Manesh), Andy hangs a private-eye shingle, and a franchise is born. The second episode introduces a new crime, including the mystery of an obese man’s sex appeal.

Part of what’s satisfying about “Andy Barker” is that it answers a truly urgent historical question: What would Jake Gittes, Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade have done with Google? Often Andy turns to the old Internet when he wants to find a fact or a fugitive, and the camera is not shy with its shots of the computer screen.

The show is surprisingly beautiful — if you came across it while flipping channels, you’d think it was a movie — and that adds to its platinum-card sheen. NBC has lately become a network for the rich, which would be nauseating except that sometimes “upscale” also means “good.”

This peculiar series seals NBC’s new role as the skinflint’s HBO. The shows “30 Rock,” “Friday Night Lights” and now “Andy Barker, P.I.” are all so engrossing and so creatively untrammeled that it’s almost suspicious. Have the rules of network TV changed? Does no one need to make money anymore?

We may be in a golden age. Watch these shows while you still can, meaning now. This not being the 1970s, all six episodes of “Andy Barker, P.I.” are already available, all the time, on nbc.com.

ANDY BARKER, P.I.

NBC, tonight at 9:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 8:30, Central time.

Created by Conan O’Brien and Jonathan Groff, series executive producers with Jeff Ross and David Kissinger; Jason Ensler, director; Peter Schindler and Chuck Tatham, co-executive producers; Andy Richter, producer; Josh Bycel, Jane Espenson, Alex Herschlag, Gail Lerner, Gregg Mettler and Jon Pollack, consulting producers; Mr. O’Brien, Jonathan Groff and Jon Ross, writers; Daniel Hsia, staff writer. A NBC Universal Television Studio and Conaco production.

WITH: Andy Richter (Andy Barker), Clea Lewis (Jenny Barker), Tony Hale (Simon), Harve Presnell (Lew Staziak) and Marshall Manesh (Wally).

Richter's 'Barker' is a P.I. worth hiring
By Robert Bianco, USA Today

There's no accounting for taste.

In some quarters, the idea of Andy Richter returning to TV as a crime-solving accountant is likely to be met with a shrug. But for fans of sitcoms in general, and of Richter's work in particular — from his run on Late Night With Conan O'Brien to his late, lamented sitcom Andy Richter Controls the Universe— it's cause for celebration indeed.

Granted, this new Andy may not be as inventive or subversive as Universe, but it is just as funny and probably a bit more accessible. Created by O'Brien and former Late Night head writer Jonathan Groff, this gentle detective spoof provides an ideal role for Richter, as a soft-spoken accountant who moves into a strip mall office that once housed a private detective. Before you can say Chinatown, a beautiful blonde is in his office asking for his help in finding her missing husband.

Well, you can say Chinatown; Andy is more of a Judging Amy fan. That's one of the main sources of humor: the way Richter so innocently embodies, without smugness or irony, a Midwestern nice guy whose natural response to someone who shoots at him is to be shocked by the lack of courtesy: "That was pretty scary. And a little bit rude." Richter has a cherubic gift for investing lines that are not meant to be taken seriously with complete seriousness, coupled with a gift for funny expressions.

And happily, he's not in this alone. Andy solves crimes with a trio of assistants: an Afghan restaurateur (Marshall Manesh), a retired private eye (Harve Presnell) and a video store manager (Tony Hale, as bizarrely hilarious here as he was in Arrested Development). And while his wife, Jenny (Clea Lewis), initially objects to Andy's new mistaken identity, she eventually gets into the crime-solving spirit.

Silly sight gags abound — golf cart battles, low-speed car chases, sexual come-ons involving black-and-white cookies. But they're not forced to carry the show; they're in the service of mysteries that, while not exactly airtight, are at least serviceable.

There is a risk that Barker is spoofing shows that most members of its target audience won't remember. Still, if you're a comedy fan, you owe it to yourself, and Richter, to check it out.

You don't want to be a little bit rude, do you?