This series does begin as a parody of Band of Brothers and its descendants, with similar visual style, as the eponymous U.S. Army company – actually closer to a squad – bumble their way through the invasion of Normandy and liberation of France, grappling with dumb but polite German troopers, treading on creatively placed mines and often snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
However, very soon any pretence of a straight parody of a "realistic" war narrative gets swept away into a broader and more anarchistic mash-up of B-movie scenarios, as we come across a Nazi dominatrix with a bomb in her womb, a Japanese kamikaze pilot slightly off his course to Pearl Harbor, Hitler's sister's black lover brainwashed into an SS killing machine, a grumpy Albert Einstein reluctantly building a nuke called "Big Baby" in a mad German doctor's cellar and even the classic comic book Hitler complete with a driver called Schumi. Anachronisms abound, as various film and popular culture tropes are parodied or alluded to. The obviously modest budget restricts most of the action to a few sets and some explosions and fights in open fields. While all this is well executed, the series makes most of its resources by concentrating on characters who are played over the top but with a suitable sense of the fourth wall. They are caricatures but mostly likable, the most clichéd red-faced, I'll-have-your-ass-for-breakfast general not withstanding.
Humour itself tends to towards loud, broad, painful, even infantile. When you have Hitler dressed as a nun shouting "Your girlfriend is ugly" to an enraged G.I. chasing him, one starts getting flashbacks of schoolboys mucking about with camcorders. On the other hand, it's not often you see a female G.I. gunning down German soldiers like ninepins while giving birth and then coolly cutting the cord with a bullet. There is a lot of hit and miss, especially during the early episodes, but when they get a suitably absurd barrage going, the series can pack quite a wallop.
The best thing about the series is its imaginative flexibility. Individual half-hour episodes contribute to larger story arcs, but allow episode-long genre leaps into musical (with characters breaking into bad chanson and silly rock songs without warning), prison break film or black-and-white zombie horror. Towards the end of the second season the story actually seems to become more and more a grade C Nazi horror story cross-bred with a raunchier version of 'Allo 'Allo, the classic British parody of their own war-time France narratives. The same silliness, cross-dressing and the egalitarian parody of all war-going nationalities are evident here as well. The home front is not spared, as the Resistance is represented by feisty, two-fisted peasant broads and even a wooden General De Gaulle wanders in to be kidnapped, dopily stuttering his famous lines. Still, as 'Allo's French are clearly the British idea of the French, so do Lazy Company's Americans act quite French (especially around women) despite their uniforms.
A fascinating concoction, Lazy Company really does work better as a two-season package, as it takes some time to really start firing for effect. I would say that campaign is worth fighting through.
However, very soon any pretence of a straight parody of a "realistic" war narrative gets swept away into a broader and more anarchistic mash-up of B-movie scenarios, as we come across a Nazi dominatrix with a bomb in her womb, a Japanese kamikaze pilot slightly off his course to Pearl Harbor, Hitler's sister's black lover brainwashed into an SS killing machine, a grumpy Albert Einstein reluctantly building a nuke called "Big Baby" in a mad German doctor's cellar and even the classic comic book Hitler complete with a driver called Schumi. Anachronisms abound, as various film and popular culture tropes are parodied or alluded to. The obviously modest budget restricts most of the action to a few sets and some explosions and fights in open fields. While all this is well executed, the series makes most of its resources by concentrating on characters who are played over the top but with a suitable sense of the fourth wall. They are caricatures but mostly likable, the most clichéd red-faced, I'll-have-your-ass-for-breakfast general not withstanding.
Humour itself tends to towards loud, broad, painful, even infantile. When you have Hitler dressed as a nun shouting "Your girlfriend is ugly" to an enraged G.I. chasing him, one starts getting flashbacks of schoolboys mucking about with camcorders. On the other hand, it's not often you see a female G.I. gunning down German soldiers like ninepins while giving birth and then coolly cutting the cord with a bullet. There is a lot of hit and miss, especially during the early episodes, but when they get a suitably absurd barrage going, the series can pack quite a wallop.
The best thing about the series is its imaginative flexibility. Individual half-hour episodes contribute to larger story arcs, but allow episode-long genre leaps into musical (with characters breaking into bad chanson and silly rock songs without warning), prison break film or black-and-white zombie horror. Towards the end of the second season the story actually seems to become more and more a grade C Nazi horror story cross-bred with a raunchier version of 'Allo 'Allo, the classic British parody of their own war-time France narratives. The same silliness, cross-dressing and the egalitarian parody of all war-going nationalities are evident here as well. The home front is not spared, as the Resistance is represented by feisty, two-fisted peasant broads and even a wooden General De Gaulle wanders in to be kidnapped, dopily stuttering his famous lines. Still, as 'Allo's French are clearly the British idea of the French, so do Lazy Company's Americans act quite French (especially around women) despite their uniforms.
A fascinating concoction, Lazy Company really does work better as a two-season package, as it takes some time to really start firing for effect. I would say that campaign is worth fighting through.
