IF you need more proof the ’90s are back with a vengeance, just look at your local gig listings. One-hit wonders Aqua sold out two nights at the Palace, Backstreet Boys are set for Rod Laver Arena (with boy band predecessors New Kids on the Block in tow) and later this year, the brothers Hanson will be met by screams not heard since … erm … One Direction was here.
For me, and plenty of others my age, the decade was all about Beverly Hills 90210. Each week we’d tune in to the teen drama imagining what life would be like if we lived in California and not the northern suburbs, and daydreaming what the decor would be at our wedding to permanently furrow-browed Luke Perry.
More than 20 years after the show’s debut, most of its one-time A list cast have seemingly vanished. Brian Austin Green is better known as the other half of Megan Fox; Shannon Doherty hasn’t been seen since Charmed finished a decade ago and Ian Ziering made a string of direct-to-DVD films. Tellingly, each of their Wikipedia profiles states they are ‘‘best known for Beverly Hills 90210’’.
That leaves us with Jason Priestley, who played the show’s James Dean lookalike and moral compass, Brandon. The actor laid low – guest appearances on Medium and My Name is Earl excepted – until he picked up the lead in rude and crude Canadian comedy Call Me Fitz, the second series of which is on Foxtel’s FX.
Priestley would have shocked his young female fans in the early 1990s if he used the profanity-laden fratboy gags he is given licence to do here as shonky used car salesman Richard Fitzpatrick. Fitz is morally reprehensible: a liar, cheat and womaniser – basically, a fictional version of Charlie Sheen.
In the first episode, Fitz is in a car crash that invites his ‘‘conscious’’, strangely known as Larry (Ernie Grunwald), into his life. There are a few laughs but by and large it’s a predictable, formulaic comedy with an MA rating slapped on it. Priestley seems to enjoy the swagger and sleaze, but doesn’t have the charisma that another 1990s graduate, David Duchovny, brought to Californication in making a despicable character likeable.
FX, Friday, 10.30pm.
