Bored to Death premiered on HBO this past Sunday. Created by Jonathan Ames (author of I Love You More Than You Know and The Extra Man), the show stars Jason Schwartzman as Jonathan Ames who gets depressed and becomes a detective after placing a post on craigslist. It also features “that guy” from The Hangover and Ted Danson.

The pilot episode, I hate to say, wasn’t very good. There is no explanation given as to what caused Jonathan Ames (character) to impulsively become a detective. Apparently he is a struggling writing but you wouldn’t know that based on the first episode. You also don’t discover his name until midway through the episode. It would seem as if the show doesn’t care about the motivation of the characters and just wants to jump in to the crime solving.

The show tries to come of as being noir-inspired but I can’t tell if they are actually trying to mimic the noir genre or trying to lampoon it.

The trailer makes it look like this will be a fun series to watch, so I will end up stilling with it. It also helps that I like Jason Schwartzman.

Jonathan Ames (author) has a blog about the show which is interesting to read if you have seen the pilot episode. It explains a lot of the little details.

Did anybody else watch this show?