You Wish
Friday, 27. June 2008, 18:46:24
You Wish was a sit-com premiering almost exactly one year after Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and on the same channel. Unlike Sabrina, from which it was graced with a crossover-episode, it got a very short original run of seven episodes aired out of a total thirteen produced. This despite having a somewhat - in my eyes - less outrageous premise.
Stress on the "somewhat".
You Wish is the story of how a genie who had been rolled up in a carpet for a couple of thousand years finds its way into the home and life of single mom Gillian Apple and her two children. The genie - conveniently named Genie - is a very pleasant and happy fellow, if somewhat meddlesome. Gillian, however, is a very levelheaded woman, and decided right away that she does not want to wish for things, as that'd deprive them of their value through the work acquisition of them would usually require. Her teaching the Genie - and her children - the morals and ethics of a good, proper modern life is a red string in the show which always ends in Seventh Heaven-style moralisms.
This premise, however, makes a relatively believable use of the magic in the show. The Genie wishes to apply it frequently - especially on behalf of the children or on his declared Master, Gillian, despite her wanting the opposite - and is kept in check by Gillian's stern, relatively intelligent but mostly boring attitudes. Thus you don't get that many "why don't they just zap it so?"-plotholes as you'd think such a show would entail. There are some, but, still.
Other than the Apples and the Genie, there is a fifth regular character on the show - Genie's grandfather Max who is adopted into the family when he's burned out as a Genie and would normally have been sent out into space by his peers in Geniedom. Max is the classical elderly lovable oddball of your average sitcom, but gets an interesting dynamic because of the show's central character Genie, who is also very much out of the normal way of things and a playful troublemaker in his own right.
The only recurring character on the show is - astonishingly - played by John Rhys-Davies. He is the carpet-salesman in whose shop Genie used to be imprisoned, and seems quite the enigma, knowing more about genies than the genies themselves often do, and in one or two lines implying being thousands of years old himself. He never displays any magical abilities of his own, though. Max refers to him as "Madman Mustapha", which I find to be funny as he's far more gathered and controlled than either Max or Genie.
All in all the show was a lot like your average sitcom, with the usual problems and issues, but a surprisingly big tendency towards genuinely funny gags and jokes, often in the form of witty dialogue or well-done scenes of the Genie discovering things about modern human life from the outside that we who live it take for granted.
It's not particularly astonishing, but it's worth the thirteen episodes of watching that it has. Not that it's at all relevant, I doubt you'll be able to find it anywhere. Yup, that's right. I've just had you read a review of a show you're likely never to get to see even if you'd like to.
Sorry?
Stress on the "somewhat".
You Wish is the story of how a genie who had been rolled up in a carpet for a couple of thousand years finds its way into the home and life of single mom Gillian Apple and her two children. The genie - conveniently named Genie - is a very pleasant and happy fellow, if somewhat meddlesome. Gillian, however, is a very levelheaded woman, and decided right away that she does not want to wish for things, as that'd deprive them of their value through the work acquisition of them would usually require. Her teaching the Genie - and her children - the morals and ethics of a good, proper modern life is a red string in the show which always ends in Seventh Heaven-style moralisms.
This premise, however, makes a relatively believable use of the magic in the show. The Genie wishes to apply it frequently - especially on behalf of the children or on his declared Master, Gillian, despite her wanting the opposite - and is kept in check by Gillian's stern, relatively intelligent but mostly boring attitudes. Thus you don't get that many "why don't they just zap it so?"-plotholes as you'd think such a show would entail. There are some, but, still.
Other than the Apples and the Genie, there is a fifth regular character on the show - Genie's grandfather Max who is adopted into the family when he's burned out as a Genie and would normally have been sent out into space by his peers in Geniedom. Max is the classical elderly lovable oddball of your average sitcom, but gets an interesting dynamic because of the show's central character Genie, who is also very much out of the normal way of things and a playful troublemaker in his own right.
The only recurring character on the show is - astonishingly - played by John Rhys-Davies. He is the carpet-salesman in whose shop Genie used to be imprisoned, and seems quite the enigma, knowing more about genies than the genies themselves often do, and in one or two lines implying being thousands of years old himself. He never displays any magical abilities of his own, though. Max refers to him as "Madman Mustapha", which I find to be funny as he's far more gathered and controlled than either Max or Genie.
All in all the show was a lot like your average sitcom, with the usual problems and issues, but a surprisingly big tendency towards genuinely funny gags and jokes, often in the form of witty dialogue or well-done scenes of the Genie discovering things about modern human life from the outside that we who live it take for granted.
It's not particularly astonishing, but it's worth the thirteen episodes of watching that it has. Not that it's at all relevant, I doubt you'll be able to find it anywhere. Yup, that's right. I've just had you read a review of a show you're likely never to get to see even if you'd like to.
Sorry?
