‘No Activity’ Is CBS All Access’s Tepid First Step Into A Bigger, Badder Streaming Battleground — Comedy

Yesterday, CBS All Access debuted their very first comedy: an all-star comedy hangout called No Activity. Will Ferrell, Jason Mantzoukas, Amy Sedaris, Bob Odenkirk, Jesse Plemons, and more lead a what feels like a celeb-studded comedy experiment. The original No Activity was an Aussie show that celebrated the boring parts of an on-going stakeout. This new American version is much the same, which means that it feels like your average B- longform improv show, but caught on screen. The show pairs famous funny people with lesser known improv giants and we get…awkward, seemingly-improvised chats.

On paper, No Activity is CBS All Access’s smartly plotted first step into the comedy game. It’s a seemingly cheap show to produce and it’s got the heft of Adam McKay, Funny or Die, Will Ferrell, and all their famous funny friends behind it. However, unlike The Good Fight, which was a smart spin-off of another smart CBS property, or the long-awaited return of Star Trek, No Activity opens CBS up for direct competition from its streaming peers. And Hulu has already stepped up to smack CBS All Access down. (Or to gently slap them.)

Hulu, which has been happily scooping up every single sitcom they can in the last few years, dropped the original No Activity right before CBS All Access queued their new American version up. Hulu only announced they had nabbed the exclusive U.S. streaming rights to the series the day before the CBS version premiered. The timing of the deal seemed pointed: If CBS All Access wants to compete apples to apples with streaming giants like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, they need to play catch up. Or at the very least, have the foresight to secure the rights to the foreign version of their new original show.

The politics of streaming aside, No Activity is fine. I wasn’t as down on it as our Stream It Or Skip It reviewer, Joel Keller, but I do think that it could have used more kick. One character literally says in the pilot, “You are the master of the boring story…” I wrote this down, thinking it was an apt descriptor for the show as a whole.

Yet, as a comedy nerd, No Activity has promise. Like, if you’re going to do a show that feels like an improv show, insomuch that it’s made up of the bizarro two-person conversations that make up 86% of any given longform show, then it’s good that No Activity got the literal best improvisers in the world. Of course I want to see Jason Mantzoukas lecture Jesse Plemons on how to play crazy. And I didn’t mind watching Amy Sedaris badger G.L.O.W. stand out Sunita Mani.

No Activity is alright, but it’s not going to steal eyeballs from Netflix or Hulu’s comedy libraries.

Stream No Activity on CBS All Access

Stream No Activity (2015 - Australia) on Hulu