After HBO's import of "Da Ali G Show" became a cult hit in America and even managed to pick up three Emmy nominations, one might have expected the airwaves would be overrun with fake wannabe-rappers pestering government officials and celebrities alike with moronic questions.
Thankfully, this has not been the case, which probably owes to the fact that no other comedian would be able to match Sacha Baron Cohen's deadpan delivery. The one comedian who comes close, though, unsurprisingly hails from the U.K. as well. Daisy Donovan premiered on TBS Tuesday night with her new show, "Daisy Does America," and although she can't quite fill Cohen's shoes, she does pull off a somewhat entertaining half-hour segment nonetheless.
"Daisy Does America" is, as the name would imply, a series focused around Donovan as she travels through parts of America (more specifically the Midwest, at least so far) and takes on peculiar professions, gently mocking herself and her fellow employees all the while.
In one of the first episodes, Daisy's highlighted career path of choice is that of a bounty hunter (or "bail enforcer," as we find out they are officially known). After passing through a training course of sorts, Daisy attempts to get hired at several enforcement firms. Although failing to impress a stout man in a business suit at her first interview, she is later hired by a more laid-back, casually dressed, rounder family of purported bounty hunters. She then partakes in a grand total of two arrests before saying goodbye to her employer.
Although the pilot episode probably didn't have any viewers rolling in the proverbial aisles, it was good for a few laughs. When learning how to handcuff a suspect, Daisy incessantly asks her buff, serious instructor about the protocol for handling arrestees. "What if I just handcuff him to this fence and take a break for a few minutes?" she wonders aloud to harsh words of disapproval. While having trouble getting her mock-suspect, handcuffed, into the back of the car during the same training session, she asks, "Can I just put him in the trunk? There's more room anyway," and receives the same reply.
It is clear that the producers of "Daisy Does America" (who happen to be Courtney Cox and David Arquette) made a decision early on that the show would live or die based entirely on the quality of the jokes and banter that Donovan was able to produce. This is evident in that, aside from featuring a mildly famous British comedian, there is absolutely nothing extraordinary that happens in the show.
With a show like Ali G's, half the fun lies in the fact that the people Ali interviews are serious and well-respected newsmakers or members of American politics. When politicos Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan and later James Lipton of "Inside the Actor's Studio" were interviewed on the show, all were caught off guard by Sacha Cohen's stupidly hilarious form of questioning.
In contrast, "Daisy" has no comparable high-profile names to poke fun at. Although Daisy is able to pull off a host of good one-liners about bounty-hunting and the gruff individuals who pursue it, the effect of the joke is lessened when the other employees seem to take their career about as seriously as she does (which is to say, not very).
Further, this isn't the high-powered executive job of "The Apprentice" or even the auditions for "American Idol," which at least require some talent. At least so far, Daisy hasn't done anything that an individual with some free time and the desire to couldn't pull off in a weekend. This may change in next week's episode, in which Daisy tries to become a country music singer, but by the preview, it looks like the same 30 minutes of cracking jokes at the expense of regular lower/middle-class Americans. This shtick was moderately funny the first time around, but it remains to be seen how many more episodes can be aired before viewers tune out.
Fans of the type of humor Sacha Cohen effectively invented would do well to skip TBS's toned down, derivative attempt at his style and simply get to a video store: the second season DVD of "Ali G" was recently released.
