The new Acorn TV import comedy 800 Words is betting that a familiar goofy sitcom premise can gracefully evolve into an engaging drama about finding a way to endure terrible loss.
800 Words, an eight-episode Australian import that arrives on Acorn Monday sets us up with the Turner family, including father George (Erik Thomson, top), teenage daughter Shay (Melina Vidler, top) and slightly younger teenage son Arlo (Benson Jack Anthony, top).
It’s been a year since wife/mother Laura died, and the Turners apparently remain paralyzed by grief, though we mostly have to take the script’s word for that.
George, a beloved newspaper columnist, is unable to write anymore, that is, produce his popular 800-word essays. Shay is resentful that Mom died, and takes it out on George, presumably among others. Arlo, a likable geek, seems unsure what to do.
It doesn’t sound like a setup for a sitcom, to be honest, and soon enough we will see that 800 Words has higher ambitions.
First, however, George gets the bright idea to sell their house in Australia and move them all to a small coastal town in New Zealand. Fresh start and all that.
He makes a series of tactical errors, however, like not telling the kids until the sell-and-buy deals are signed and irrevocable. They’re leaving family, friends and furniture for Weld, N.Z., a quaint little seaside village where George went on holiday when he was a child.
Having taken this inconsiderate path, which makes Shay sharply resentful and Arlo even more puzzled, George then proceeds to step on every banana peel between Sydney and Weld.
As they drive to their new place, their car is wrecked by a large rolling rock. George is forced to rent the worst car in New Zealand, a clunker with no muffler and an insatiable appetite for oil.
They arrive at the house and discover that George bought, yup, the wrong place. This isn’t where he went on holiday. This is six houses away, a derelict shell with no view, no furniture, no power and no Internet signal.
That’s about the time they get word that the freight boat that was hauling their furniture just sank. And wait, did George forget to buy insurance?
You could be excused for calling this cartoon-level setup a little forced, an impression that isn’t tempered when George admits the real reason he wanted to move here was to be near the beach and finally learn to surf.
Fortunately, the producers of the show have a plan. George will slowly become less of a cartoon. Shay will become less of a sullen, exasperated teenager. They will slowly meet a whole village full of quirky people who will seem curiously endearing even when we want to shoot them.
That crew prominently includes Woody (Rick Donald, above) as the slacker dude handyman who is supposed to start making their house habitable.
If this all comes together, 800 Words can slowly morph into a show about putting lives back together just when it seems they couldn’t be more shattered.
There’s no guarantee it can get there, but Thomson and Vidler, in particular, make it a shot worth taking.