The commercials for Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town (CBC: premiered January 10, 2010, 9:00 PM ET/PT) are uninspiring.  This is Kids in the Hall‘s grand return to television, which calls for the blandest commercials ever.

What the hell are you thinking, CBC?  You have mainstream North American interest at your fingertips, and you get your bland announcer to blithely promote Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town in the same tone as Being Erica and The Rick Mercer Report?  It’s times like this that I miss Bob Boving.  That man knows how to sell shit.

Death Comes to Town, at least in its first episode, is passable.  Even granting that the Kids in the Hall castmembers are in their forties and fifties, they seem at half-ass with Death Comes to Town.  Even Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, KitH‘s oft-maligned 1996 film, is more memorable.

John Doyle’s drive-by shooting of a review condemns Death Comes to Town as “inept.”  It isn’t, but there’s something off about the show.  Bad segments outweigh the good.

This isn’t unexpected, as it’s been twenty-two years since Kids in the Hall first debuted on CBC Television.  The fact Death Comes to Town has a linear plot isn’t the reason why it sucks, at least so far.  The comedy material just isn’t that strong.  A retarded kid (Rampop, and he’s hilarious) should not be attracting 90% of the funny material.

To be fair, the original Kids in the Hall series had its fair share of shit (those “Steps” sketches, uggh), but Death Comes to Town doesn’t have a killer comedy segment.  There’s nothing comparable to “Crushing Your Head” yet.  Maybe Death Comes to Town will get the bug out of its ass by the middle of the series, as the first episode is all groundwork.

It’s nice to see Kids in the Hall back in some form.  While Death Comes to Town‘s debut episode is disappointing, it’s foolish to expect the comedy troupe to come back as strong as in KitH‘s heyday.  If at least three episodes of Death Comes to Town share the same level of suck, then there’s something wrong.