B.O.O.B.S: The Mockumentary

Cousins Mark (Kohlman Thompson) and Katrine (Courtney Sanello) are starting a restaurant marketing company, called BOOBS, in his apartment. However, their arguments seem to be tearing their company apart even before it starts operating. Like the US version of The Office, which Mark references in Episode 3 with a cheerful meta-sideways glance, it’s “shot” by a small camera crew, generally using a single-camera setup in five short episodes. The characters occasionally talk to the camera or glance at it during strained situations, as they do on The Office.

In the first episode of B.O.O.B.S - The Mockumentary, Mark introduces himself as he lets the film crew in, as he points around his apartment with an enthusiastic: “Welcome to my house! This is where the meetings take place!” and raps on the kitchen table. The camera crew, who are apparently Mark’s college buddies and headed by a director called Freddie, film the disaster that home offices can involve, as the character run out of toilet paper and Katrine hits the bottle early in the day (“Mark, we need some more wine!”)

Mark’s paramour, the lovably kooky Annabelle (Jazmine Cornielle, also the series writer and producer) joins from Hooters as their assistant, to Katrine’s horror.

As the trio attempts to make their first sale, we find out that Katrine was barred from being a lawyer after a work-related disaster, which she refuses to talk about it, since it’s online. Mark is revealed to be the eternal 30-something teenager, mainly interested in junk food, playing video games and lolling around on his sofa, and given to weeping with fury in his dressing gown when things go wrong. Annabelle is the over-exuberant party animal, but she attempts to win Katrine around and makes their first sale, to Katrine’s annoyance. Mark and Annabelle become a couple and decide to have a baby, to Katrine’s fury, and the business disintegrates.

There are some good one-liners, as when Katrine demands of Mark, who hasn’t turned up to the kitchen table on time: “How can you be late for a meeting…. in your own house?” Thompson has a nice line in physical comedy, and Sanello is convincing as a shrieking lush.

However, there are slightly too many pratfalls and yelling fits, and Annabelle has a point when she snaps and shouts at the other two: “You’re both just mean…and bad people…” There’s also quite a lot of toilet humour and an ongoing injoke about the subject of death by suicide, the latter of which is pretty tasteless. It’s funny, if overblown, and unlike the understated Spinal Tap, the jokes are too signposted.

It’s hard not to find it amusing, though, and when the film crew get the final shot of the mismatched trio, cheerfully reunited and cuddled up watching TV on the sofa, you can’t help finding them loveably entertaining.