TV Land’s comedy Impastor premieres July 15 at 10:30 p.m. ET. The series stars Michael Rosenbaum as Buddy Dobbs, a slacker on the run for gambiling debts who finds himself taking on the identity of a gay pastor. Christopher Vane and Rosenbaum executive produce the series. The following are reviews from TV critics around the web, compiled by B&C.
“Ultimately, it feels like one joke stretched far too thin, with the added complication that its jokey approach to religion is likely to offend some people without compensating for that with thoughtful satire.”
—Brian Lowry, Variety
“Series creator Christopher Vane's producing credits reach back to HBO's '90s single-camera pioneer Dream On, and that tonal style is the trick here -- blending edgy adult content with comfy comic familiarity. Where Dream On interspersed old black-and-white TV clips as humor underscore, Impastor employs hammer-it-home background songs or that extra line of dialogue overplaying a joke. Plus (sigh) narration. Why fall back on formula when Rosenbaum's Buddy is so good at subverting expectations?”
—Diane Werts, Newsday
“Boasting an abysmal title (which sounds like something Troy McClure might have starred in one unfruitful pilot season) and a reliance on unnecessary narration and cozy, affordable classic rock songs, the show attempts a doomed (and bland) marriage of basic cable innocuousness and off-color humor.”
—Dennis Perkins, A.V. Club
“Impastor is another attempt by the nostalgia channel TV Land to program to a younger, hipper audience (Younger and The Jim Gaffigan Show are other recent examples of this for the network). But using four-letter words and the punchline ‘You’re blowing the pastor!’ seems like a pretty cheesy way to try to be cutting-edge.”
—Ken Tucker, Yahoo!
“Rosenbaum plays a two-bit con man who somehow — don’t ask — finds himself slipping into the identity of a dead gay minister. The plot contortions required to keep this going are straight out of a cartoon, and they threaten to take some otherwise nice characters with them.”
—David Hinckley, New York Daily News
“In keeping with the TV Land niche, this is a throwback series, but a throwback to a lot of things that should have been left, well, back.”
—Neil Genzlinger, New York Times
