Fans of standup comedian John Mulaney (“Saturday Night Live”) swear his act is funny. I wouldn’t know, having seen only the TV sitcom version of his act, which appears inside a new series about his life as a standup. That is, I’ve seen only one episode of “Mulaney,” premiering Sunday on Fox (8:30 p.m. on Channel 31), and won’t be back.
The problem isn’t that this is a “Seinfeld” rip-off. Nor is the trouble that it’s a multicamera show with lots of audience laughter. Who cares? It’s not supposed to be an intimate short-story single-camera mini-film like “Louie.”
When a show is funny, nobody counts the cameras. This one is excruciatingly unfunny.
The show feels thrown together, the story so choppy you’d think scenes were scrambled in the editing room. Mainly, viewers will feel pity for Martin Short who seems desperate to prove his chops (still?) as a wildly eccentric boss character, a great veteran improv player in search of an audience.
Mulaney could be genuinely entertaining someday, but not “Mulaney.”
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