Friday night saw the TV debut of geek comedy the IT Crowd, the latest from the pen of Graham Linehan (Father Ted, Black Books). I stumbled in from the pub to catch the first two episodes being shown. Verdict? Not bad but lots of room for improvement. Complaints about the stereotypical nature of the characters a bit over-sensitive, as well as ignoring Linehan's previous form (Dylan Moran's performance in Black Books is fantastic - as a drunken Irish intellectual) but it needs a bit of room to grow before I could say whether it lived up to his earlier efforts.
But for anyone taking notice of the set, it was interesting to note the preponderance of authentic geek materials on display - including, on every surface, stickers promoting the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Why? BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow says it was his doing he was on hand: "I was lucky enough to do some small consulting on the show, and EFF was even invited to provide stickers to decorate the set with," says Cory (who also says he was "drooling" over the show, and calls the decision to put episodes online "visionary" before laying into them about only providing them in a Windows Media format).
Interestingly enough, somebody close to the EFF that I bumped into recently expressed concern about the overwhelming nature of the sticker-frenzy. But any publicity is good publicity, I suppose.
