The Life & Times of Tim

HBO have been in an interesting predicament of late. Their flagship shows The Sopranos and Sex & The City have wound down and very few of the marquee shows launched since have achieved the same level of recognition or acclaim. Instead, viewers seem to be latching onto new shows launched by other cable stations emulating HBO’s success. This year, HBO have tried to shake things up by launching all manner of diverse content, such as the animated series The Life & Times of Tim. The show marks HBO’s first foray into animation since the Spawn animated series.

What’s It About
Tim is your everyman character. A twenty-something New Yorker, Tim works in a non-descript job and lives with his equally non-descript girlfriend. The biggest problem for Tim is that while he is certainly not a malicious guy and is rather well-intentioned, he is just a tad ethically dubious. And this is what regularly kicks him in the pants.

Who’s in the darn thing?
Nobody. It’s a cartoon.

What happens in that crucial first episode?
Each episode is broken into two separate stories. In the first story, we find Tims girlfriends parents visiting for the first time.

Walking through the front door, Tims girlfriend is angry, and her parents startled, to find Tim on the couch with a prostitute named Debbie. Whether Tim is telling the truth that it was an accident stemming from an attempt to call a plumber is questionable. Almost as questionable is whether Debbie is telling the truth that Tim rang her up stating ‘Cock-a-doodle-do, send someone over for some back door action at Tims place’. What we do know is, for a moment, Tim believes that he is innocent.

In the second story, a poorly planned birthday party ends with a very small turnout. In order to save the reputation of the party host, the small group of attendees concoct a wild tale of their night. The next morning, however, Tim finds that the story created for his night featured him getting raped by a homeless man. So what happens when Tim goes to the police station to identify the bum in a line-up? Does it end in sexy results? Tune in…

Is it any good?
The comedic tone seems very closely linked to Comedy Centrals mid-90’s animated series Dr Katz: Professional Therapist. Unlike most animated comedy shows, the jokes are not frenetic. In fact, most of the stories feature very little movement, with characters just standing around. Animation is, at times, possibly not the right term for this show. In many ways the shows style echoes the slacker minimalist lifestyle of the shows protagonist.

Depending on your comedic sensibilities, this may be well worth a watch for you. I’ll certainly be back for some more.