New Series on IFC

A new weekly series premiered on the Independent Film Channel yesterday. And even though there’s only one episode online so far, I’m stamping my approval on it and calling it one of my favorites.

Airing new epiosdes each Monday, “Getting Away with Murder” is produced by IFC, their in-house Media Lab, video-sharing player VMIX, and created by tiny California production co. Test Pattern Media. The show stars a gaggle of both professional actors and total newcomers to the acting experience. And let me just say this: it’s funnier than most things you’re going to find on most viral sites, original comedy sites, and high-budget comedy sites that are now specializing in hiring new talent to replicate the success of low-budget comedy viral and original.

Gilbert John plays Seth Silver, a man who lives at home with Mom, who believes her little

boy to be a doctor who picks up groceries for her when she’s busy on the elliptical. In reality, Seth is a contract killer who ends his diary entries with bursts of self-deprecating depression like: “I’m going to masturbate and play solitaire in that order. I hate girls.” The five-minute episode opens with a Quentin Tarantino montage of Gilbert’s daily grind: killing and indifferently jiggling the breasts of dead prostitutes he’s killed because they were associated with the politicians and mafia dons he’s sent to slaughter. Well-directed, well-written, and well-acted, it’s kind of like a condensed combination of “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” and “Arrested Development” with a little bit of Larry David in the in-character show blog.

Check out “Getting Away with Murder” Mondays on IFC.