Happyish

this is one of those shows, which i could see being easily misunderstood to the general public. to me the show is a satire of the ill-conceived notion of happiness we have advertised to us on a daily basis. and the writers do a wonderful job at portraying, and realistically making fun of, these little idiocies that are implanted within society today. the show shines a dimwitted light over the senseless actions and activities people take part of everyday, while also highlighting how advertising companies do whatever is necessary to direct you attention to the product. the actors do great at playing their rules, each character has their own set of emotions towards each problem, and you truly feel Thom Payne's (Steve Coogan) anger and dislike towards everything. the show was written great, and every actor in it is great, i just hope we get too see more it.

Caught this last night and was pleasantly surprised - hadn't read about it beforehand, didn't realize Coogan and John Cameron Mitchell were involved, so I was doubly pleased.

Coogan's character sets the tone perfectly from the get-go, with his 'f-you' voice-over regarding Mount Rushmore: we know we're in for a no-holds-barred look at these peoples' lives, and that is indeed what we get in the half-hour pilot, which could have gone on longer, as far as I'm concerned.

This subject - trying to find the balance between what you get in Life and what you think you wanted - perfectly illustrated by the show's title - has been covered before, many times. But Happyish surprisingly manages to conjure a fresh take on it, because of the individuality of the characters. Good writing, excellent acting, huge watchability factor, with plenty of room to grow, and I am most definitely in.

It seems that me and my wife are not alone in our thoughts and judgments about life these days :) I've been a director of advertising and PR for many years and when I became full of it I chose to be a videographer.

When I watching "Happyish" it is like meeting a good old friend. Together you can joke on any topic without any tolerance. You can be honest to each other and you feel mutual understanding. Every episode asking what is our life, what makes us happy or much more often unhappy? What is more important job or family? And why so many morons around? :)

I think the second name of "Happyish" should be "Wit works woe" or "The Mischief of Being Clever".

Great job done in scenario, acting, casting, shooting, lighting, props etc... I hope to see many seasons of this splendid story!

I love the sense of humor of this show. The humor is dry and sometimes corky. For those of us entering our 40's it's really a questioning time of life. You look at things so differently, well much like the show. In season 1 E2 she refers to life as living in her bubble. Seriously life has pushed many of us into that bubble because of the negatively out there. The show does a great job capturing that underlying drama of being in your 40's and working for and with twenty year olds. Finally a show that's not all about living the "Partridge" family life. I feel as though this sector gets left out of TV because it's not a popular sense of humor or a totally positive way to look at others. The show defiantly doesn't hate on people for no reason but it surely points it out when people are wrong. Funny stuff.

As a 50 something advertising copywriter I laughed and squirmed at the ad agency scenes, all so very true sadly.We've all seen 20 something creatives talking crap and getting away with it because the elder bosses are running scared in a digital world.

However aside from that the whole thing was a bit of a mish mash with the writer often putting speeches in the characters' mouths when they didn't gel with the character. A strong show runner would have deleted much of the script and tightened up the rest.No one seems to have dared confront the writer on anything.

I watched it all, to see how Thom would get on, but it was an uphill struggle against show off scriptwriting, ideas that should have been left on the cutting room floor and characters that were all universally unlikeable.