A funny, cleverly constructed romantic sitcom whose cast makes its uneven jokes worth forgiving. Neil Patrick Harris is the strongest reason to stay, though the writing’s self-satisfaction can make Ted Mosby’s search for love feel longer than necessary.
How I Met Your Mother is a good romantic sitcom with a habit of admiring its own cleverness. Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas give Ted Mosby’s search for love enough narrative playfulness to make a familiar setup worth returning to. The title has already announced that there is a story to tell, so the interest lies in how the telling complicates the courtship. That is an effective invitation, though the programme sometimes behaves as if having an ingenious premise excuses an ordinary joke.
Josh Radnor has the difficult job of making Ted Mosby’s romantic preoccupations matter without asking us to treat every disappointment as a national emergency. He is an agreeable centre, though the writing can make agreement feel compulsory. Jason Segel as Marshall Eriksen and Alyson Hannigan as Lily Aldrin give the comedy a more relaxed warmth. We find their company easier to enjoy when the series stops insisting on the significance of its central search.
Neil Patrick Harris supplies the sharper comic pleasure as Barney Stinson. We laughed at the assurance of his delivery, including moments when the material itself seemed thinner than the performance. He makes a character’s certainty funny without requiring us to share it, which helps with a programme so prone to congratulating itself. Cobie Smulders, as Robin Scherbatsky, offers a useful contrast: her restraint is welcome alongside the more demonstrative performances.
The construction is more interesting than a simple run of romantic mishaps. Carter Bays and Craig Thomas make the telling part of the comedy, so anticipation can produce a laugh before the story has supplied an answer. At its strongest, the programme invites us to reconsider what a familiar romantic situation might mean to the person recounting it. At its weakest, we can feel the writers waiting for us to notice how neatly they have arranged things. There are stretches when a straightforward conversation would be a relief.
Directors Pamela Fryman and Rob Greenberg help keep the complicated storytelling clear, without making every conversation feel like preparation for a trick. John Swihart’s music does not compete with the cast for attention, a sensible judgement in a comedy so dependent on delivery. The presentation is brisk and legible, but it cannot disguise when a line has little behind it. The weaker jokes are particularly exposed beside Neil Patrick Harris’s timing.
The comparison with Friends is hard to avoid, and it does this programme no favours if taken as a promise of equal consistency. The interest in how adults choose partners gives How I Met Your Mother enough of its own concerns to justify the resemblance. The sexual humour is less reliably useful: too often, being frank seems to be treated as sufficient reason to laugh. A little less smugness would also make the romantic earnestness easier to accept.
Across nine seasons, the invitation to spend time with these people is a substantial one. We would not take the title as a contractual obligation to stay until every question has been answered. The cast and the sharper writing are sufficient reasons to begin, particularly for anyone who enjoys romantic comedy that plays with how a story gets told. Come for Neil Patrick Harris; patience with Ted Mosby is a separate requirement.
