Alyson Hannigan

Never-ending Stories

A lacklustre new comedy could do with some parental guidance.

The first scene of How I Met Your Mother takes place in the year 2030 with 52-year-old Ted Mosby telling his bored and totally disinterested teenage kids the story of how he met their mother. We then flash back to 2006 as the 27-year-old version of Ted (Josh Radnor) decides he hates being single and wants a wife. He soon meets a television reporter named Robin who he thinks is his perfect mate, but at the end of the first episode Old Ted reveals that he didn’t marry this woman. You know, in real life teenagers would never normally sit still and listen to a dull story like this. I suspect they’ve been drugged.

Every episode continues in much the same fashion, with the kids seemingly super-glued to the couch and unable to escape Old Ted (not to be confused with Big Ted from Play School), as he tells them about all of the women he went through before he got to their mother. I didn’t actually realise it while I was watching the show, but it’s quite clear to me now that Old Ted is a filthy pervert. After all, what kind of man is so desperate to sit his kids down and tell them about all of his old roots?

Luckily, the younger Ted of 2006 is still relatively normal, because it’s his story that is at the centre of How I Met Your Mother. Helping him in his quest to find his perfect wife is his best friend and roommate Marshall, a goofy law student in his second year of college. Marshall’s fiancée Lily is played Alyson Hannigan, who is probably the best-known actor in the series. Hannigan was Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer for six years but is also remembered as the girl in American Pie that liked to stick flutes up her hoo-ha.

But it’s Doogie Howser himself (Neil Patrick Harris) who steals the show as Ted’s second best friend Barney Stinson. Harris is a hoot as the vile and arrogant yuppie obsessed with tailored suits, playing laser tag and having casual sex with Lebanese women. Barney is easily the most cartoonish and over-the-top character in this sitcom but he also gets most of the biggest laughs. Like Ted, he is also quite keen on shagging the lovely Robin who I forgot to mention is played by a woman called Cobie Smulders... which sounds rather like the name of a nasty sore you might get on the end of your knob!

To be quite honest, I didn’t laugh at How I Met Your Mother once until halfway through the third episode. From then on the series really starts to hit its straps and begins to improve markedly in the humour department. With such a smart and funny set of actors and a basic premise that holds some promise, it will be interesting to see if this new sitcom can develop into something more consistently funny over the next few months. Anyway, I hope you all have a good week... now I’m off to the chemist to get some ointment for my Cobie Smulders.

How I Met Your Mother premieres Thursday June 29 on Channel Seven at 7.30pm.