Finding FAMILY TREE for Your Guest/McKean/Brit Fix

I'm always involved with Heartland Theatre Company's 10-minute play festival -- I sort of chair the committee and shepherd the judging process -- and this year more than usual because I'm (ahem) acting again. I can't quite believe it myself, but there you have it. If all goes well (and probably even if it doesn't) I will appear in two of the eight winning "Package Plays" that open on June 6.

Because the theme for this year's festival involves packages, parcels and presents, and because I traditionally tote up a list of what was written about, or for this year, what was inside all the packages conjured up by playwrights, I have been dealing with a whole lot of boxes, bags, bundles and whatever else somebody wrote about under that Package umbrella.

So imagine my surprise when I fell over a new HBO series, a series with my name written all over it, whose first episode is called "The Box."

The series itself is Family Tree and it started way back on May 12. Somehow I missed the news of its arrival, which is fairly shocking considering it comes from Christopher Guest, one of my favorite filmmakers. Guest created Family Tree with Jim Piddock, an English actor, writer and producer who appeared in Guest's For Your Consideration, the one about a modest movie about Purim that attracts Oscar buzz, A Mighty Wind, about a reunion of leftover folk singers, and Best in Show, the dog show mockumentary.

So Family Tree is about a guy named Tom Chadwick, played by Chris O'Dowd, who is probably best known for Bridesmaids, but was the fairly normal guy in cult sitcom The IT Crowd, as well. The premise of the first episode is that Tom's great-aunt dies, leaving behind... A box! Ta da! Piddock is there, too, as the "Bits and Bobs" man who gives him info on the age and usefulness of some of the objects in the box. His advice -- he says something like "I wouldn't put that in my mouth, Tommy. That's not a musical instrument, it's a Victorian dildo" -- is deadpan, amusing and very familiar in that improvised Guestian style.

The box episode of Family Tree also introduced us to Michael McKean, someone I absolutely love, as Tom's English dad, Nina Conti as his older sister, always seen with a monkey puppet on her hand because of a childhood trauma, and Tom Bennett as his best friend Pete. Ed Begley, Jr., Fred Willard and Don Lake are due to show up later. The second episode of Family Tree ("Treading the Boards") aired  May 19 on HBO, while "The Austerity Games" shows up June 2. You can watch the first two On Demand or with HBO Go right now, which is what I did, or look for them on the HBO schedule.

I love the tone, the idea of a search based on genealogical and identity issues, and the terrific cast. The Internet Movie Database tells us that the June 16 episode is "Coming to America," which I'm going to assume shows Tom Chadwick finding American relatives, the opposite of Christopher Guest finding his English roots (and title).

The tag line on the promo poster at the top tells us that Tom is Finding himself one relative at a time... And isn't that intriguing?

A New Find: "The IT Crowd"

We were recently introduced to a Britcom that's been around for awhile, long enough to get nominated for a bunch of BAFTAs, British Comedy Awards and International Emmys, and to spawn Americanized and Germanicized versions.

New to us, not new at all to discerning viewers, "The IT Crowd," which can apparently be pronounced either as the "it" or the "I.T.," as in Information Technology, crowd, involves the three odd members of the tech department at a company called Reynholm Industries. From left on the front of the Season 2 DVD, shown here, you'll see the three main members of the team. There's Roy, played by Chris O'Dowd, who seems to know something about computers but not about dealing with people; Jen, played by Katherine Parkinson, who knows nothing about computers but talked herself into a job, anyway; and Moss, the one with the intriguing side part in his hair, played by Richard Ayoade. We learn at some point in the series that Moss lives at home with his mother, and she's the one who chooses his lovely wardrobe of flood pants and little plaid shirts and ties. That certainly makes sense. They're all fairly clueless in their own ways, with some awkward and unfortunate interactions with normal people.

Parkinson is the one with a trophy on her shelf -- she won the award for Best Comedy Actress at the 2009 British Comedy Awards for her role as Jen -- but Ayoade is probably the break-out star. When the American version was being proposed, Ayoade and his character of Moss were included, and he is now starring in "The Watch," just released yesterday, with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill. Ayoade even made the poster.

"The IT Crowd" is especially hilarious to people who work with computers and recognize the stereotypes and jokes, but it seems to have worked with the non-techies in the crowd, as well. And if those American and German versions didn't work, well, it's certainly not the fault of creator Graham Linehan, since his original British show is absolutely hilarious, on-target and distinctive. Lineham is also the creative mind behind "Father Ted" and "Black Books," both of which show up on PBS in the U.S. fairly often.

Of the episodes I've seen so far, the Season 2 opener, "The Work Outing," stood out for all the right reasons. In that one, Jen has a date with a man named Phil, who she thinks is a good dating prospect. But then he takes her (with Moss and Roy in tow) to the theater to see "Gay! The Gay Musical," which makes Jen think her date might possibly be, oh, I don't know, maybe gay? Meanwhile, neither Roy nor Moss is comfortable with the theater bathroom and its unpleasant attendant, so Roy tries to use the handicapped bathroom but gets caught, with increasingly complicated repercussions, and Moss goes for the staff bathroom, getting himself swept up in a different kind of drama.

All 24 episodes of "The IT Crowd" are available on Netflix or Amazon. And they're definitely worth your while.