New US TV season: week 4
It is one of the most hotly debated shows of the new US TV season - but is Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, starring Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford and Amanda Peet, more talked about than watched?
The bad news for the show is that its ratings fell from a debut of 13.4m last month to 8.7 million for its fourth outing this week. The good news is that the decline appears to be levelling out - down from just over 9 million last time out - and its proportion of the all-important A18-49 audience (the US equivalent of ABC1) is holding firm.
But it probably won't stop fans of the series, a behind the scenes look at a late-night Saturday Night Live-style comedy show, worrying about its future. "Is Studio 60 in danger of cancellation?" asks one fan on imdb.com.
At least the show's devoted viewers can reassure themselves that the critics are on their side. Well, mostly.
"A potentially great series about comedy that's only intermittently funny," says Brendan Bernhard in the New York Sun. "Contradiction? Perhaps. As you'd expect from a program written by Aaron Sorkin, the famously wordy creator of "The West Wing," "Studio 60" is hyper-verbal, showily erudite, deeply politicized.
"Unfortunately, "Studio 60" can also be pompous, vainglorious, and madly in love with the crackle of its own rata-tat-tat dialogue. Worst of all, it pretends to be courageous about things that require little courage -- like railing against the Christian right at a time when Muslim fundamentalists make your average evangelical look as threatening as a jelly bean."
The Chicago Tribune also wants the show to succeed. But will it? "Let's face it - when it comes to comedy sketches, Aaron Sorkin is not a funny man," says the Chicago paper's blogger, Maureen Ryan. "And let's hope he realizes that sooner rather than later."
Studio 60, on NBC at 10pm on Monday nights, could also be given an unlikely lifeline by the show which precedes it on NBC, Heroes, which is doing very well at 9pm and giving Sorkin's show a healthy lead-in audience (much of which it loses).
And the way US television works - including heinous penalty clauses for shows which are cancelled early - Studio 60 will survive until episode 13 at least. Leaving it nine more episodes to prove itself.
