Sitting down to watch the much hyped Cougar Town I was surprised by its 22 minute run time, I had been expecting something more akin to Desperate Housewives, but since Eastwick seems to have gone that route, the single camera sitcom format is perfect. Created by Bill Lawrence the man behind Spin City and Scrubs, it stars Courtney Cox (Friends and Dirt) the show is certainly packing some veteran talent, even relative new comer Dan Byrd (Aliens in America) delivers a confident performance.

Newly divorced realtor Jules (Courtney Cox) is suddenly aware of her age, her sagging  body and prospect that she is doomed to spend the rest of her life a single mum. Although she thinks she has a close and kooky relationship with her son Travis (Dan Byrd), she is unaware of how she embarrasses him. Her younger friend Laurie (Busy Phillips) wants to get her out of the house and so she ends up in bar and later back her place to enjoy the benefits of sex with younger guy. A new world has opened up and for the first time in a long time she feels alive and unfortunately for her 17 year old son this is something he is going to have to get use to.

This is one busy pilot, almost as if it was written for an hour slot and boiled down, scenes struggle to last longer than the annoying guitar music that segways over each cut. At such break neck speed it is hard to keep track with all the characters, and rather than well formed B and C stories we get one big over complicated A story. What makes this frustrating is there is a lot of really good moments, characters and ideas here, we just are not given the time to enjoy them.  Hopefully as the series continues the pace will slow down so we catch our breath and enjoy the show.

We have become very use to seeing older guys with younger girls, but the Cougar movement is certainly challenging those expectations.  We have seen it in Desperate Housewives, joked about it on SNL, sighed at Accidentally on Purpose, but Cougar Town despite its title, might be the first to really examine the plight of the single middle aged woman.  The term Cougar is almost a misnomer here, Jules is just woman who has opened her eyes to the possibilities before her, she might even have the power to re-brand the Cougar as something exciting rather than scary. However, there is one bug, Courtney Cox still looks kinda hot, she still has a great body and all those other shallow things we look for, the idea that she is over the hill just is not realistic so it is hard to make an emotional connection to her dilemma when many women that age (and younger) would kill to look that good.

This is a fairly solid first outing for Bill Lawrence’s new show, scrubs had run its course (however, it is being rebooted later this year as Scrubs: Interns), so it must be good to for him to sink his teeth into something new.  The characters are all interesting to watch, although Courtney Cox’s new character doesn’t feel like she has too many differences to her most famous role as Monica, while Christa Miller is playing nearly exactly the same character as she did on scrubs. This isn’t bad thing, the actors are very comfortable in these shoes and revel in the performance. The comedy is more mature than we have seen from Bill in the past due to the sexual nature of the story.  This doesn’t feel like Scrubs or Spin City dumped in Florida, it stands confident in its own shoes.

The first episode performed very well and I expect in the coming weeks the initial order of 13 episodes to extended for a full 22.

Created and Written by: Bill Lawrence, Kevin Biegel
Directed by: Bill Lawrence
Starring: Courteney Cox, Dan Byrd, Ian Gomez, Brian Van Holt, Josh Hopkins, Christa Miller, Busy Philipps
Date premièred: 23rd September 2009
UK Details: Living 2010