Manhattan Love Story (ABC Tuesdays 8:30pm)

Let’s talk about voice overs for a moment. Much like everything in the world, they work if use them right.

Manhattan Love Story does not use them right. They use them as a lazy way of conveying the story and characterization. As a writer, you should know that voice overs need to progress the story, not distract from it – which is what happens here repeatedly.

A quick about the show for those that didn’t catch it – MLS (I’m not even that bothered to write out it’s full name anymore) is about two romantics in Manhattan who are starting their relationship off. The show is your typical rom-com but instead of having witty anecdotes and lines, we are subjected to the ‘inner monologue’ of the main characters as they go about their daily lives. Fun, huh?

No. It’s not. It’s increasingly annoying, and brings me back to my starting point. Using voice overs in the correct way.

Many shows over the years have used voice overs – and off the cuff ones too – Scrubs comes to mind, but unlike MLS, Scrubs managed to convey another part of the story through their character’s inner monologues. It was quirky yes, and still very much a gimmick that could get old fast but the writers used that element in small doses. They didn’t base an entire series around it.

Gimmicky voice overs aside, the jokes… wait I mean ‘jokes’ meant to be carried through said story telling device are crap. In the pilot we are greeted with jokes about posting a potential date’s name in the Facebook status line, instead of just searching for them, and Harry Potter jokes. Yes, I’m pretty sure this show takes place in 2007.

As a whole, I didn’t care for this show at all. There was nothing special about it that set it apart from the hundreds of other rommy-commy shows that premiere en masse every year – and was just a rather boring watch.

My Prediction: My outer monologue is telling me this is gone by November sweeps.

So.. am I wrong? What did you all think?