By Dean Robbins
‘Happy Town’ is sweet on the surface, scary underneath
“Happy Town” (Wednesday, 9 p.m., ABC) is the latest attempt to recapture “Twin Peaks” magic. A young woman moves to a small town with sinister secrets under its quaint surface. A serial killer named the Magic Man had committed a string of annual murders that stopped five years ago, but suddenly a new corpse appears. An amiable father-son police team (Geoff Stults and M.C. Gainey) investigates the crime, though the father’s mad rambling about some woman named Chloe becomes harder to ignore. Meanwhile, an almost psychotically proper Englishman (Sam Neill) runs the town’s memorabilia shop, bathed in blue and green light as minor chords simmer on the soundtrack. “There’s dread everywhere,” he whispers ominously, “even the sunniest places.”
It’s easy to see through “Happy Town’s” heavy-handed attempts to scare us — which is why I hated myself for sleeping with the lights on the night after I watched it.
‘Romantically Challenged’
Monday, 8:30 p.m. (ABC)
Here’s another network sitcom desperate to be naughty. It takes the same approach as other recent failures: Have a set of on-the-make characters constantly talk about sex, followed by laugh-track guffaws at the witless references to multiple orgasms, one-night stands and prison rape.
This on-the-make crew includes a hot-to-trot divorcee (Alyssa Milano), her tot-to-trot sister (Kelly Stables) and assorted hot-to-trot guys. When they’re not indulging in standard sitcom sex talk, they’re indulging in standard sitcom insult banter. “I’m sorry, Sean, I don’t have time to make a fake vomiting sound now.”
I do. CV
