“You Me and The Apocalypse” is the end of the world of unique characters. With stereotypes like the doting mom and the lawful banker, this show finds itself covering up the awkward dialogue with quirky British humor and a sassy priest.
Clumsy dialogue makes clumsy characters, and this show is no exception. Everyone knows the exposition tends to be awkward and the conversation clunky, but this show doesn’t even try to mask it. With lines like “I’m a librarian. I can’t survive here!”, the show seems like a badly written, prepubescent fanfic.
To add to the hormone raged “I’m dating (insert boyband)!” tone of the show, there is the stereotypical Ariel (Mathew Baynton) who is the nitpicking office worker everyone knows. He’s the type of person to time twice how long his egg takes to boil. No person could stay sane with that attitude on life, and from the consistent messages to his missing wife, it’s obvious he hasn’t.
The doting mother played by the Pam we all know and love, Jenna Fischer is a mom who takes the blame for her son’s shennagians of hacking the government’s computers is in prison for the crime. The slammer she’s at obviously doesn’t abide by normal human interactions. Most prisoners are there to serve their time without too much trouble. Yet our loving librarian Rhonda is in the middle of a race war between the Latinas and the white supremists of the prison within her first day. It’s obvious the writers have never opened “Orange is the New Black,” a book about a woman’s actual experience in prison.
The light at the end of the tunnel is Rob Lowe’s Father Jude, the sassy, smoking Devil’s Advocate of Vatican City. With witty lines and a confident smirk, he brings some sort of life and realistic personality to the premise. He has a normal reaction of hopelessness to the end of the world. He cocks a drink and sits back to watch the chaos erupt around him.
As the show came on, from the American news program with no dubbing in the middle of Italy to the blaring transitions, this show does not do anything. It’s British wit can’t make up for the stereotypes and uncomfortable dialogue. When the next episode comes on, I’ll switch off.
