Your mileage obviously may vary but, personally, I could watch an absolutely infinite amount of TV comedy set in grubby, New York-adjacent streets and shot in moody, muddy, blue-brown tones (with maybe a drone shot of some cars going over a bridge? I would like this); the kind where people are always, for some reason, in a cab being driven slowly past a large pile of bin bags late at night.
You know the type: the lead is a comedian playing more-or-less themselves (their character always shares the same name), and they bumble around the city being in their 20s and making telegraphed-from-afar mid-20s interpersonal mistakes, and not making jokes exactly but not not making jokes, and then they go to a party and dance next to a gold fringe foil curtain while a Robyn song (album tracks only) plays in the background. I could watch a for ever amount of this. Turn my body off and just let my brain watch premium cable comedy made in the last eight years. I won’t even notice that I’m dead.
Good, then, that Channel 4 has picked up season one of Ramy (Friday, 11.05pm; available in full on All 4) over from the US. Two series deep on its native Hulu, it’s another instance of a happy trend in domestic television (going back to the archives, finding an underwatched gem and importing it to British screens); one that Channel 4 seems particularly adroit at. There was, before “The Disaster”, arguably too much TV to realistically watch. Now, though – while real TV keeps trying to connect Zoom calls live on air and every advert starts “in these uncertain times … ” – is the perfect opportunity to catch up.
So to Ramy, which follows the US comedian Ramy Youssef as he more-or-less plays himself, bumping around New York-adjacent, nondescript New Jersey, balancing his desire to be a better Muslim with that sort of clueless slacker “I-don’t-know-why-I-took-this-weed-edible”, always-wearing-a-cap-for-some-reason energy. Ramy shit-talks with his friends, looks baffled at the dinner table discussions with his family, and starts and abruptly ends a series of flirtations with various women before gravitating back to the mosque to pray. It’s a masterful blend of soul-searching and “talking about Tinder in a diner with the boys”, and you can see clearly how it won a Golden Globe and got nominated for an Emmy before you (well, me) even really heard about it.
One thing I should mention is: Ramy does follow the modern trend of what I’m calling “ambient comedy”, where the main character rarely creates the laughs, much of the humour coming from them playing a quasi-straight man to a host of weird and wonderful characters – a boorish uncle, an intensely kinky first date, a friend’s mum whom he offends while stoned – and it moves slowly and surely and sometimes not at all, episodes occasionally ending with nothing having really happened (see also Atlanta, or Girls).
If this is not for you then we can both shake hands and pretend the preceding 500+ words never happened. But if it sounds ideal then please join me in plugging your brain directly into the All 4 player and not logging off until every episode has been greedily consumed.
