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When it comes to creating TV that viewers will want to return to each week, half the battle is matching the right role to the right actor. Even great shows take time to find their groove, and those early growing pains can be smoothed out considerably by a single captivating performance. In Netflix’s newest original series, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Ellie Kemper’s 1000-megawatt smile can very nearly carry the entire show all by itself. Fortunately, there’s plenty more to enjoy in this smart and very funny new comedy.
Kemper plays the titular Kimmy Schmidt, a 30-year-old woman who has spent the last decade and a half in an underground bunker as part of a doomsday cult with three other women and a deranged pastor. Having recently been freed, she’s relocated to New York with little more than a sunny disposition and a desire to make something of her life beyond being one of the “Indiana Mole Women.”
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt isn’t the first series to mine laughs from the idea of a cheerful naïf plunged into the big, bad city, but it’s so well executed that it seldom feels trite or derivative. A big part of that owes to Kemper’s perfectly calibrated performance. Her sheer enthusiasm is infectious, but she doesn’t allow it to completely overwhelm her character. There’s a dark undercurrent to Kimmy’s prior imprisonment and attempted brainwashing, and it bubbles up from time to time in ways that are affecting without derailing the light-hearted tone that carries the series along.
It helps that the cast is populated with talented comedic actors. Tituss Burgess matches Kemper’s near-manic energy as her flamboyant would-be actor roommate, while Carol Kane brings her own brand of kookiness as their scatterbrained landlord. Among the main cast, the only real disappointment is Jane Krakowski—not because she isn’t talented or fun to watch, but just because her role as Kimmy’s shallow socialite employer is such a close echo of the shallow actress she played so recently and so effectively on 30 Rock.
That there are a number of similarities to 30 Rock shouldn’t surprise, considering that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt comes from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who worked together on the long-running NBC sitcom. After the network passed on this project, Netflix stepped in and ordered two full seasons, allowing Fey and Carlock to bypass the corporate and ratings pressure that can kill new series launches. That freedom shows throughout the first season, as plotlines develop at a balanced pace and jokes that might have caused a little consternation with standards and practices glide through with ease. Best of all, the show comes with an insanely catchy opening theme song (something that’s becoming a rarity in commercial-heavy network sitcoms), composed with help from viral sensations The Gregory Brothers (the guys behind those brilliant Auto-Tune the News clips).
There have been some remarkable successes in the last few years with single-camera sitcoms and more than a few failed attempts. Netflix took a gamble picking up Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt after NBC passed on it, but it looks like their optimism paid off. Between Fey’s razor-sharp comedic sensibility and Kemper’s winning charm, this series already has everything it needs to make it in the big, bad city of modern TV.
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