Striking it rich in the family comedy genre

BY LINDA BURGESS

OPINION: There's laugh-out-loud comedy, there's comedy that has you cringing in your chair, then there's comedy that causes a small joy bubble to form in your diaphragm because it just gets it so right.

This is the sort that I love the most, and also the rarest sort, because it depends on everything coming together: dialogue, character, casting and acting.

All the actors need to understand timing, to know when less is more and, indeed, the odd occasion when melodrama is called for.

Life, in all its complexities, is being mirrored and the comedy has to be the real thing. Only funnier.

The mockumentary style - when a fictional situation is presented as if it's real - has been popular for a decade or so.

Best in Show remains one of the best movies in the genre and, on the small screen, Ricky Gervais, with The Office and Extras, is the master of it.

Now TV3 has had the good sense, or good fortune, to pick up the small gem Modern Family (Sunday, 8pm).

It's only just shown in the United States and is already picking up bucket-loads of nominations and awards. A modern family is never going to be mum, dad and the two kids with granny and the dog in the backseat, and this comedy milks that for all its worth.

You have the patriarch, Jay Pritchett, played by Ed O'Neill, who will be forever for many of us that boozy bigot Al Bundy. He appears to be both prosperous and retired, spending his life in his pool, lounging beside it, or playing with his model aeroplane.

Even the houses in this programme are characters; he's living in California modern. He's just remarried to, of course, a much younger and very gorgeous woman. Gloria, played by Sofia Vergara, has a 10-year-old son and comes from Columbia ("I come from a very small village, which is famous in Columbia for ... for ... Jay, what is it famous for?" "For murders, Gloria. Most murders.")

Yes, every cliche about Columbia is extracted and somehow still manages to be hilarious. Her plump son, Manny, is there to be wiser than his mother and has already formed an alliance with Jay's daughter, who's of another generation, but also his stepsister.

Of course, the problem with writing about comedy is that the very act of doing it seems to drain it of all its funniness. Jay has a daughter, Claire, 40-ish, who seems to spend most of her time in the kitchen.

While her father lives in modern splendour, she has an older, two-storeyed wooden house in a leafy street and her kitchen is pure Martha Stewart (I'm ashamed to say I covet it). She is married to Phil, the cool-dude father who wants to be more buddy than boss, and they have three children.

Currently, it's their teenaged daughter and her boyfriend who offer the most comic potential, though it's their bespectacled 10-year-old daughter who has the most depth. And Phil's relationship with his father-in-law - Jay can't stand his bubbly son-in-law - is a rich mine for comedy.

There is comedy to be found in all the relationships, but my favourite characters, after just three episodes, are Jay's gay son, Mitchell, and his partner, Cameron. They've just adopted a baby from Vietnam and it is this that causes Mitchell to be taken by Cameron (they need to buy nappies) into one of those vast shops on which The Warehouse is modelled.

Mitchell is a snob and has never been into such a place in his life but, like all converts, once in he can't get enough. His initial sneering disbelief (They sell wine?) turns to hysterical excitement (They even sell coffins!). I loved it.

*****

While Modern Family is a take on us in a world sense, both Waitangi Day and Anzac Day focus on us - this tiny place at the end of the earth - in a most intimate way. Maori TV is always the place to be on Waitangi Day and at the end of a stellar day of programming it offers the documentary Canvassing the Treaty.

It's very hard for documentaries such as this not to present as just a little bit worthy and earnest and this one did tread a fine line. It paired up six artists, three Maori with three non-Maori, and got them collaborating on artwork.

They ranged from printmakers, painters and curators to hip-hop inspired graphic artists and you'd be hard-pressed to find a nicer, more talented bunch of people. As they worked, they talked and to me their talk was more important than their art.

As a documentary it worked on the most important level: anyone who watched it could not help but be reminded of why we had the Treaty in the first place. Eighteen-forty wasn't that long ago; there are still (albeit few) people alive today who knew people who were alive in 1840. Imagine it happening today - strangers from abroad arriving and taking over our country as if it were their right to.

Watching this documentary it was clear how very fresh this all is. And that the Maori of the time effectively said we accept that you've come and that you're here to stay; what we ask is that we have some say over what happens to our land.

Even from this distance it really doesn't seem that big a thing to ask.

* What did you think of Modern Family? Post your comments below.

- © Fairfax NZ News