UNARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Despite its awards, its cult following and its widely acknowledged place in comedy history, Arrested Development is sorely underrated. 

Cancelled after two and a half seasons in the US due to low ratings, it was never, while on air at least, adored by the masses in the way that many critics believed it should’ve been. Admittedly, and to the frustration of my fanboy side still protective over the show, Arrested Development has since become rather more popular through word of mouth. Nobody has ever expressed anything other than confusion when I’ve mentioned it on this side of the Atlantic though, and I’ll continue to greedily cling on to that small consolation. (Arrested Development is not mainstream, mmkay?)

The show is a sitcom/mockumentary about, as the narrator puts it in the opening credits, “a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together”. The acting is formidable, the on-set chemistry vibrant; you desperately want to believe that the sadly-fictional Bluth family exist in the real world. Seeing the mild-mannered and awkward George-Michael Bluth (Michael Cera of Superbad and Juno) mature into a young man with stronger convictions and self-assurance is not only brilliantly funny but also – am I allowed to say this? – life-affirming. There’s so much likeability ingrained in each and every character that you find yourself caring a little too much about what happens to them, whilst simultaneously trusting them to get through their respective ordeals with sufficient hilarity. 

The biggest draw of all is how grippingly intelligent the humour is. There’s no canned laughter; there’s intertextuality; there’s self-referencing; there’s topical jokes; and there’s an abundance of witty remarks and comebacks to die for. In other words, Arrested Development is the real deal. Debatable, yes, but I’m convinced that the only modern comedy that comes anywhere near to competing on the same level is the far-more-successful British sitcom, The Office.

The cast announced in an Arrested Development reunion that the shooting of a film is planned to start next summer so that means it’ll be… at least more than one year until the film hits the screens. Until then, buy the box set and marvel at the sheer genius of it - the development throughout the three series is anything but arrested.