Kevin Can F**k Himself

Our Review

The structural experiment that mostly worked: a sitcom wife — Allison (Annie Murphy, post-Schitt’s Creek, magnificent) married to a man-child sitcom husband — steps out of the multi-cam set and into the single-cam real world, where the laugh track dies and being married to Kevin is not a joke but a cage. The show cuts between registers: Kevin’s world (bright, staged, everyone a sidekick to his bits) and Allison’s (drab Worcester, where she’s planning his murder).

The concept’s the draw but Murphy’s performance is the reason: watching Allison think — scheme the escape, her face aging ten years in a two-shot — is a masterclass. Season 1 is the stronger arc (the murder plot, the Patty alliance — the neighbor who becomes her true partner in crime); season 2 resolves the escape with a softer, more honest landing than you expect. The satire of sitcom masculinity is pointed throughout. No show has ever interrogated the genre’s gender politics with this much craft.

Verdict: Watch it. The rare high-concept experiment with the acting to back it up.