Starring – Josh Radnor, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Segal, Alyson Hannigan
Rating – 5/5
How I Met Your Mother’s latest series comes roaring on to DVD this week, but even after seven fruitless years of questing, are Ted’s endeavours to find his true love entertaining? The answer is emphatically yes.
While most show’s would be really starting to feel their age, or simply run out of steam entirely at this point, How I Met Your Mother keeps going strong. Simply abandoning the show’s central premise for a while does wonders for the show, freeing it up to become more free-spirited and far more daring than a lot of its contemporaries.
The show’s also grown up with its characters and evolved into a far more delicate show than it really has any right to be. The emotional highs and lows of the series are handled far better than it’s contemporaries.
While the constant back and forth between Barney and Robin might have simply gotten annoying on most other comedy shows, How I Met Your Mother still has two ace cards up its; Neil Patrick Harris and Cobie Smulders. While Neil Patrick Harris has been a revelation on the show, Smulders has grown into the role of Robin, and is now absolutely pitch perfect, excelling when the laughs stop and Robin’s stories get a little more dramatic.
The entire cast is still easily the best in TV comedy. What other show can have both Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan playing second fiddle in a show at any given time. With Josh Radnor still gamely leading the line, How I Met Your Mother is gifted with a brilliant cast on almost constant form.
Even this series’ guest stars are brilliantly picked. Kal Penn is a fantastic addition to the show’s core gang, as is Chris Elliot and Nazanin Boniadi, the latter a real source of pathos throughout.
This might all sound too good to be true, and that’s partly because it is. How I Met Your Mother isn’t flawless, it a few persistent issues keeping it from the very top of the pile where Community still stands tall.
The show rakes over the Barney and Robin situation for just a smidge too long, and every now and again plays it too safe and too broad to be constantly side splittingly funny. The show’s tendency to fall back on old jokes also proves somewhat of a detractor but these are small criticisms though of a show that continuously manages to be engaging on both an emotional and comedic level that 90% of comedies simply cannot hit.
When the shows is at its best though, be it Barney and Ted plans to open a bar, the ducky tie bet or Barney’s Canadian revelations, very little can even stay in touching distance of How I Met Your Mother.
How I Met Your Mother Season 7 is on DVD and Blu Ray now.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith.
Tagged in How I Met Your Mother TV