The other night I watched the first episode of "Stuff My Dad Says," based on a blog (the title of which was ruder than "Stuff") and book. It has been running in the States for a while but has popped up now here in Britain. The premise is that a 30ish guy loses his job and has to move in with his father, who says funny rude things. And the father is played by William Shatner.
As with most sitcoms, the premise is not as important as the characters and the dialogue. The latter is OK, the father's outrageous and often politically incorrect statements are sometimes quite funny. The first episode labored, as most do, under the strain of having to explain who these people are and their relationships--exposition is tough to make funny.
If the series fails, some people may conclude that it was too rude. Apparently it lost sponsors toward the end of the first season because of that.
However, if the shows does fail (it's not clear at this point whether or not it will be renewed), I think the problem lies elsewhere: the characterization of the father. The producers were so scared that the audience wouldn't like the father that they spent too much time establishing that he's really a nice guy underneath, lonely and wanting to fix his relationship with his son. It renders the character too harmless.
I like William Shatner but yearned for a producer and network willing to allow the character to be closer to the edge. Probably what made them nervous is that series with a harsher character (like the great "Buffalo Bill") sank fast. My hunch is that audiences today are much more open to enjoying seeing a funny character with a mean streak. It also doesn't help that the other characters seemed to have been pulled in from the sitcom storeroom of stock characters.
The writer of the original blog, Justin Halpren, said in an interview, "There is not much of my Dad that is allowed on basic television. We were able to work some of Dad's stuff in later in the season as Ed became more blunt." Ah yes, that takes me back to my days of writing for American TV and film. The pattern often runs like this:
1. It's a great idea!
2. Let's change it.
3. It doesn't work.
4. It was a terrible idea.
(My book, "Successful Sitcom Writing," from St. Martin's Press is still around on Amazon; it's a bit long in the tooth now and I'm thinking of writing an updated version, but the core concepts are still totally valid and the methods work.)