Fixers for all ages

COUCH GROUCH

SINGAPORE - Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber) is a professional "fixer" for the rich and famous in Hollywood.

When a sports star finds a dead woman in his bed and another celeb, an action-film star, is rumoured to be gay, he fixes it so that the movie dude gets linked to the overdosed girl and dispels the gay gossip, and the sports guy sneaks off. Just like that, both of his clients' problems are solved.

"You think you're the first person I've dealt with who woke up in bed with a dead body?" he assures his panicking client in the opening episode.

You know these fixers - they are the emergency handlers and damage-control experts (Kerry Washington in Scandal, Alan Cumming in The Good Wife), the anti-heroes who condone and contain misdeeds and wrongdoings without so much as a blip or drop of sweat on their foreheads.

Inwardly, though, they are more vulnerable. Ray, as portrayed by Schreiber with a quiet but hectic menacing air of thug-husband-parent, hates his dad Mickey (Jon Voight) enough to want to kill him.

Schreiber is terrific, but Voight, in a careerreviving role, is so good as the Prodigal Dad that his performance is reason enough to watch the show.

The 74-year-old plays Mickey as dangerous, vulgar and creepy (the man shoots a priest in the first episode), sniffing drugs and chasing tail.

He is also funny and rascally when he works himself into Ray's family like the cool teddy bear-grandpa everybody loves after a 20-year prison sentence he blames his son for.

To do this Sopranos Without Spaghetti, creator Ann Biderman milks every Irish stereotype, landscape and villain-scape imaginable, from boozers to boxers in a gym to old gangsters to corrupt cops to wayward priests.

Ray, transplanted from blue-collar Boston, perpetually blames his criminal dad for criminally neglecting the family (his sister committed suicide, one brother is an alcoholic, another suffers from Parkinson's disease), and this is the kicker - they are all permanently damaged after being abused in childhood by a paedophile priest.

Every character is so mightily flawed here, I actually enjoy sitting on my couch munching my Irish potato chips feeling holier than thou.

But Ray Donovan, the show, does not allow anybody to be pitied. In fact, it despises that basic human weakness too as it gets on with the grind of things.

Some of septuagenarian Voight's female peers star in Getting On, which is set in a geriatric ward in a hospital.

Some of those Jurassic gals are pretty frisky there, including one mysterious resident who, er, unloads a dump of stool which becomes the hilarious focal point of the first episode - Dr Jenna James (Laurie Metcalf from 1980s sitcom Roseanne) wants to bag and tag it for a conference on the many types of s**t.

Nobody is trying to be funny here since this is an HBO comedy series and the people in these zero- laughtrack docu-style shows tend to act serious and do not try to be funny and yet are very funny.

For instance: Nurse Dawn Forchette (Family Guy's Alex Borstein) laughs at a mobile-phone message as her elderly patient dies right next to her.

I know I should not laugh but there is something very inappropriately amusing about dotty old bats cursing and swearing.

"The idea is to focus more on our patients and hospitality like a Disneyland on cruise ships," explains Nurse Dawn with a serenity that suggests she is heading straight for the mental institution.

In Discovery Channel's new Adam-and-Eve survivalist series, Naked And Afraid (above), two strangers - a male and female survival expert - are plonked together without food, water or clothes to last 21 days in the great outdoors, namely, the African plains, Panamanian jungle, Borneo rainforest etc.

Let me repeat - they have no clothes, which means this is the most pixel-blocked show I have seen since Housewives In Osaka.

I have so many jokes to make, but I will hold them back with a fig leaf.

I have one burning question, though: When a naked man is in the wild with a naked woman, how is it possible that they do not do it like they do on the Discovery Channel?

Guys, I am sorry to report that the Garden Of Eden does not seem too conducive for hanky panky. I mean, when the chick is covered in red spots all over her body after an attack by bugs like in next week's Panama episode , you do not go "Hey, babe" with a lascivious grin.

The girl has a machete, you have no pants.

stlife@sph.com.sg

View it RAY DONOVAN Fox Movies Premium (StarHub Channel 622/SingTel mioTV Channel 414), Sundays, 10pm

GETTING ON HBO Signature (StarHub Channel 603), Sundays, 10pm

NAKED AND AFRAID Discovery Channel (StarHub Channel 422), Tuesdays, 10pm

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