You could see how shows focusing on traditionally unloved American cities with their own specific senses of humor would be easy to green-light now. After the success of Atlanta, a show which took that premise and ran all the way to Golden Globes success with it, comes Detroiters, starring Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson.
They play a pair of inept advertisers who specialise in the kind of low-rent local promo spots that are reminiscent of Morrie’s Wigs’ 30 seconds of daftness from Goodfellas. Think Kars4Kids or Cellino and Barnes, and then aim a lot lower. The former Saturday Night Live cast member Robinson plays Tim Cramblin, the son of a former advert bigwig, Hank, who is now in a mental institution. His partner is Sam Duvet, played by Veep’s Sam Richardson, and who is just as poorly cut out for a life in the advertising game as Cramblin.
Their most recent client is Eddie Champagne, AKA the hot tub king of Detroit, whom they manage to scald with boiling hot water when their low-budget ad shoot (student camera people, improvised boon mics, filmed on location … in Eddie’s car park) goes horribly wrong. Their firm feels like what would happen if Steve-O from Jackass was given $20 to come up with an advertising campaign. They’re a joke.
But they don’t want to be selling glorified bath tubs or trying to convince people to trust Smith’s Baby and Teen Kid Furniture forever. They’ve got bigger fish to fry. Such as the real-life bona fide Don Draper of Detroit: the Chrysler ad exec Carter Grant (played by Jason Sudeikis), who they decide to pitch in a steak house. As you might expect, an uninvited interruption from a pair of cold-calling wannabe Peggy Olsons doesn’t go down very well. But their persistence pays off and they’re given an 8am meeting with Grant the next day.
But their Jackass tendencies get in the way again. One of the first episode’s most ridiculous scenes is when the pair try to break a glass window using incrementally larger office items (scissors, stapler, coffee pot). It’s brazenly stupid, and gets more daft from there. After they find the right item to shatter the glass (a candle holder), they find some old dieting pills in a mid-century desk, which have the same effect as speed. Cue a Mad Men-style drugged-up brainstorming session that results in a list of half-formed ideas which make less sense than Pete Campbell’s sartorial choices from the third season of Mad Men onwards.
The best one they come up with features a neo-Nazi biker, a mutilated nipple and the tag line “Chrysler – time to fly”. After drowning their sorrows in their local bar, and witnessing the result of the Eddie Champagne ad they allowed film student Leah to edit (the result is a meditation on Eddie’s attempts to woo the make-up artist on set), they have a cathartic moment when they realise it’s the city of Detroit they should be pitching. The motor city. Their home.
It’s the kind of hugging and learning moment that would fly in a 90s sitcom, but Detroiters is far too meta for that. Their attempt to pitch Grant ends up with him in a hospital bed and the moral of the story is that the missionary position may prematurely end your marriage. It shares those “out there” takes with Atlanta, but where that show has opted for the surreal, Detroiters goes for the most stupid option. It’s an approach that works for the most part, with the ridiculousness adding up to create a show that’s lovably chaotic.
Detroiters starts on Comedy Central 7 February at 10.30pm ET
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