I caught the first episode of Californication last night and I thought it was pretty funny. For a guy who made his name playing the straight laced Mulder in The X Files I think David Duchovny handles comedy well and he seems perfectly cast as the laconic Hank Moody:  a divorced middle aged writer who shares custody of his 13 year old daughter.

The pilot was the standard meet the characters and their world sort of deal.
But there were some great scenes, particularly one where Hank gives it to a guy for using a mobile phone in a cinema and another where Hank uses his powers of observation to deconstruct a cocky woman's life.    

I read a couple of reviews for this and some of them described Hank as a guy who is having a midlife crisis. I guess this is because he's a middle aged man who sleeps with attractive young women every five minutes. If this is the sign of a man in crisis then I can only hope to fall upon such hard times. The true indicators of Hank's unhappiness would be that he wants to get back with his ex wife, who at this stage isn't interested and he suffers from writer’s block. I also got the impression that he feels his daughter is growing up too fast and he feels responsible for it.
  
Like all shows this will take a couple of episodes to fully hit its stride, but there was enough on offer to make me feel optimistic about the rest of the first season.        

  

I caught the pilot as well, and I thought it was very funny and very well made. Duchovney was the perfect choice for Hank and the supporting cast was very strong also, I was particularly impressed by the actress who plays his daughter. You can't really review a show based on the strength of the first episode, but I'll keep watching because, as Chris said, it takes any series a few eps to really find its groove and, from what the pilot has told me, this is going to be a great series. I only hope Channel Ten doesn't banish it to the 11:30 timeslot as Channel Nine did with The Sopranos and other great shows like that. Anyway, a promising start to what will surely be a good show.


Matt.