Those Couch Potato devotees who have been following my column it started – way back when Doctor Who was still being played a Scotsman, but not David Tennant (explanation for non-geeks: Sylvester McCoy!)- will probably be aware of the deep and passionate love I shared with X-FILES actor David Duchovny. Oh sure, our relationship was sorely tested – mostly by the fact that he was straight, married to actress Tea Leoni and had never met me or even had the slightest idea who I was – but it was love. Well, he’s baaa-aaack! Six years after THE X-FILES limped to a close with a broken anal probe and a cast who had stopped giving a damn two years before, David Duchovny returns, looking pretty damn hot, getting naked and shagging anything that moves. But enough about his weekend at my place, let’s talk about his new series CALIFORNICATION (Ten, Sundays, 9:30pm).
CALIFORNICATION is a comedy/drama (I’d use the word ‘Dramadey’ but then I’d have to a] get a job promoting Disney movies and b] vomit) that sees the ex-X-Phile playing one Hank Moody, a moderately successful, Hollywood-connected writer with only three things standing in the way of true best-selling status and movie contracts… and all three of them reside in his underpants. Turns out that Hank is battling with satyriasis (the male equivalent of nymphomania) and by ‘battling’ I mean something more along the lines of ‘giving into it completely’ – Hank is a sex addict. He’s more of a *One*-Eye Moody than a Mad-Eye Moody (you might want to borrow a Harry Potter book off the nearest kid if you didn’t get that reference).
Hank has trouble with anger management and a fondness for certain illegal chemical concoctions, but this is the USA – if you’re wealthy and successful and don’t have a short temper and a drug problem, then they only let you become Vice-President. Hollywood’s attitude to sex is more prudish and Victorian than their attitude to violence it the place where you can blow a guy away on screen, you just can’t blow a guy. So Hank’s problem with wanting to get naked with anything wearing a skirt (heterosexual Scotsmen are advised to dress formally around him at all times) causes serious trouble for both his professional life and his love-life.
British actress Natassha McEnrone – last seen sharing the star-billing of Soderbergh’s under-rated, excellent remake of SOLARIS with George Clooney’s bare butt – plays Moody’s ex-wife Karen. Their daughter, the ultra-cynical Becca (Madeleine Martin) is coldly resigned to her dad’s exhaustive libido (‘You are going to explain why there’s a naked woman in my bed, dad, right?’). Madeline Zhima plays Mia, Hank’s on-again/off-again (and really, that’s the only position they seem familiar with… for a sex addict, he doesn’t have much imagination) bonk-buddy. Mia, however, doesn’t dampen Hank’s enthusiasm for jumping back into bed with Karen, nor does it stop him from sleeping with Karen’s new-boyfriend’s 18-year old daughter. Sheesh, with a love-life this complex, all the show needs is a cosmetics firm and a few less one liners and it could be THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.
It’s quite funny (though relentlessly straight – at least so far) and quite bold for television, which is good. Plus David Duchovny walks around completely naked for 90% of his air time, which is veeery good. I haven’t been this excited since I almost got onto the X-FILES set in an ET outfit (my glowing finger actually being a vibrator gave the game away to security, dang-nabbit). The Truth is Down There!
