You may not have been watching Living's Cougar Town. Perhaps you don't find Courtney Cox particularly funny. Perhaps – like the sitcom version of a vuvuzela drone – Living has overloaded its schedules with so many episodes that you've quickly stopped noticing it was even there. Or perhaps, just the title was enough to put you off for good.
Cougar Town is a truly, spectacularly, bad title – not least because the rise of "cougar" as a term to describe older women dating younger men is seen as pejorative by some (including, you'd imagine, a portion of the show's target audience). It doesn't matter if Cougar Town was intended to sound all witty and post-feminist – it's grim, and it's somewhat offputting.
So its perhaps no surprise that creator Bill Lawrence is toying with the idea of changing it completely for the second series because, he says, the show's premise has changed. It's a bold gamble. If it works, the new title will bring in a fresh wave of viewers. If it doesn't, the show will have lost its identity for nothing.
Personally, I welcome the change – it might not make Cougar Town itself any funnier, but at least the show won't be quite as embarrassing to say out loud. And what's more, there are arguably plenty of other shows that should follow Cougar Town's lead. BBC3's Lee Nelson's Well Good Show suffers from the fact that it's almost the exact scientific opposite of well good. Would more people watch it if it was called Lee Nelson's Borderline-Unwatchable Half Hour Of Despair? Probably not – but at least it'd be honest. And there's nothing particularly extreme about Extreme Fishing with Robson Green – nobody jumps out of any burning buildings and there are hardly any explosions. Relatively Mediocre Fishing with Robson Green would be a great deal closer to the truth.
Songs Of Praise? Songs That Remind You of School and the Four Most Boring Weddings You've Ever Been To. Cash in the Attic? Three Boxes of Largely Worthless Junk and a Dead Rat in the Attic. All-Star Family Fortunes? Family Fortunes Starring One Person You Mum Thinks She Might Recognise from the Telly. I watched Cowboy Trap earlier today. Not a single trapped cowboy in the entire show. Incredibly disappointing.
What do you think? What other TV shows could do with a name change? And your thoughts on a new name for Cougar Town – without causing massive offence – please.
