Shoresy

Shoresy is a good comedy with a habit of repeating itself, and its growing affection for its characters makes the repetition easier to forgive. Jared Keeso, its creator, writer and lead, gives the crude hockey humour enough verbal precision to keep it from becoming mere noise. The language is abrasive, but the series has more patience with people than its insults initially suggest. That helps sustain our interest once the sheer quantity of abuse has ceased to be a novelty.

Keeso is particularly good at making an unpleasant manner entertaining without demanding that we approve of it. We laughed at the crude hockey insults; the elaborate phrasing makes the aggression ridiculous. The writing rewards attention to individual words, so the pleasure is not simply hearing somebody swear more inventively than the last person. As Shoresy acquires more depth, Keeso avoids making the earlier abrasiveness feel like a mistake the programme now wants to correct.

Tasya Teles, as Nat, and Harlan Blayne Kytwayhat, as Sanguinet, give Keeso useful company rather than simply another audience. Their presence helps the programme feel less trapped inside one man’s comic habits. Keeso remains the attraction, but the developing characters give the series somewhere to go beyond another insult. There is room to enjoy the ensemble without spending every exchange waiting for the lead to deliver the next punchline, and the comedy benefits from that breathing space.

Drew MacLeod and Kyle Martin’s editing has the right priorities: the rhythm of an exchange matters more here than a conspicuous flourish. The sharper passages let the verbal detail register; the weaker ones run beyond the point where a familiar joke has much left to offer. Billy Buttery’s cinematography and Matthew Ellis’s production design make less of an impression than the performances, which is no great handicap in this sort of comedy. The dialogue is what holds our attention.

The repetitiveness remains a real limitation. An abrasive exchange may be carefully written and still resemble the previous abrasive exchange, and the programme sometimes treats familiarity as sufficient reason to laugh. Keeso’s writing is more engaging when it develops a relationship than when it supplies another variation on the same hostility. These weaker stretches are not disastrous, but they make the series easier to enjoy in separate sittings than in one prolonged encounter with its vocabulary.

The romantic writing provides some welcome relief, giving Shoresy something to do beyond keeping the insults coming. The romance works because he remains recognisably the same person within it, rather than becoming agreeable for the convenience of a warmer storyline. That helps distinguish the series among sports comedies whose difficult men become suspiciously easy company once affection enters the picture. Here, the developing tenderness gives the character more to express without requiring the programme to abandon the humour that made him worth watching.

We recommend it for the wordplay and the gradually deepening attachment to its people, with a firm caveat about the repetition. Anyone who finds the crudity exhausting will not necessarily be persuaded by the affection underneath it. Try a little before committing to a long evening in this company.