Wednesday, May 15, 2013

WTF? Marc Maron Now Has His Own TV Show


Maron
With Marc Maron
IFC Network
Thursdays 10 PM
Five Scoops of Bosco

Reviewed By Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco

I went in watching Marc Maron's sitcom, Maron, without reading anything or hearing anything about it except for the fact that it was on IFC on Thursday Nights.

For the uninitiated, let me bring you up to speed.

Marc Maron is a comic and author who has one of the most successful Podcasts going right now.  WTF with Marc Maron , which Maron records out of his garage gets more listens than a lot of things on conventional, terrestial radio.

Before that, Maron was a host on an Air America Radio show and was a fixture in the New York Comedy Scene and has written books.

So, since IFC last season was airing shows like Comedy Bang Bang which is basically a televised version of a long-running live Los Angeles Comedy Show at UCB, I  thought we were going to see the WTF podcast televised.

Was I pleasantly surprised.

In the tradition comedy shows like  Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld , Maron uses his Podcast and his standup comedy as a backdrop and as a basis for story lines.

The story line in the first episode of the first season was based on a true story where Maron is harassed in social media by a listener in the show and what he does about it.

In another  episode from the first season, Denis Leary (who is also the Producer of Maron), while recording the podcast in the garage, smells a dead possum underneath Maron's house and challenges his host's manhood for not retrieving the deceased rodent.  The way that Maron goes about retrieving the dead possum sets in motion one of the funniest sequence of events you are going to see on television this season.

That premise also gives him opportunities to have great comedy talent and actors on his show.  He runs in different circles than Larry David or Jerry Seinfeld.  In the first few episodes alone in the first season you saw the likes of Denis Leary, Dave Foley (Kids In the Hall), Sally Kellerman and recognizable faces from the LA Comedy scene.

In later episodes you saw Judd Hirsch (Taxi, Numbers) play Maron's dad and Gina Gershon in the show...to name a few.

If the first season was any indication, IFC and Marc Maron are going to have a hit on their hands.

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