About.com Rating

The Bottom Line

NTSF:SD:SUV is a goofy and intermittently amusing cop-show parody, but not quite up to the standards of fellow Adult Swim genre parody Childrens Hospital, from which it was spun off.

Pros

• Cast of talented comedians, plus top-notch guest stars
• Good sense of the ridiculous elements of cop dramas
• Anything-goes sensibility

Cons

• Tendency to repeat jokes that aren’t very funny to begin with
• Haphazard plotting

• Anything-goes sensibility can lead to incoherence

Description

• Premieres the night of July 21, 2011, at 12:15 a.m. EST on Adult Swim
• Stars Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Brandon Johnson, Kate Mulgrew, Rebecca Romijn, Martin Starr
• Created by Paul Scheer

Guide Review - 'NTSF:SD:SUV' Premiere Episodes

When NTSF:SD:SUV (that’s short for National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: Sport Utility Vehicle) debuted as a mock-trailer during an episode of Childrens Hospital, it fit right in with Hospital’s skewering of overheated genre dramas on network TV. It did not, however, seem to warrant expansion beyond a couple of minutes, but the folks at Adult Swim decided that NTSF deserved to be a series all its own, so now it’s premiering as a full-on companion to Hospital. It’s still only a 15-minute show, like Hospital and most Adult Swim programming, so it’s not like creator/star Paul Scheer and his collaborators have to go all that far beyond the initial brief concept. And Hospital has proved that a seemingly limited genre parody can have a lot of potential if taken in all sorts of strange directions.

NTSF might have that potential, too, since it shares with Hospital a cast of talented comedians as well as a parade of top-notch guest stars. But judging from the two early episodes available for review, NTSF is a little more limited in its ability to generate laughs from TV-drama conventions, and its characters aren’t yet as distinctive and strangely endearing as those on Hospital. Scheer delivers the show at a breakneck pace that’s appropriate for the material it’s making fun of (shows like the CSI and NCIS franchises, 24 and Criminal Minds), but can get a little exhausting when every joke is pitched at the same intensity.

The rotating cast includes some obvious comedy veterans like Scheer and June Diane Raphael, but also some more unexpected faces, including Kate Mulgrew, best known as Capt. Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager, as the unit’s eye-patched leader, and Rebecca Romijn, who is a very underrated comedic actress, as the nerd-sexy lab technician. Everyone is clearly having a lot of fun, and NTSF may find a better rhythm over time. At this point, it’s an uneven effort to expand on a concept that might have been better left at two minutes.

Disclosure: A review screener was provided by the network. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.