Missed the first episode on Monday night thanks to recorder foul up, but friends who watched it said it wasn't great.
Thanks to UK rights being held by Five, RTE really do have it exclusively over here (despite having access to just about every UK terrestrial and satellite channel under the sun here, you can't get Five - or ITV2 for that matter - for love nor money, unless you can pick it up terrestrially). So I guess I'm just going to have to wait for when (or if) RTE repeat it.
Theyre still reapeating Dallas when they see fit to so I think you be in Luck eventually.
I downloaded the leaked original pilot of 'Joey' back in July, and from watching that I found it a bit dull, the humour forced, and had no real wish to continue watching it.
Prompted partly by watching some really earlier Friends recently, and also by this thread, I decided to give it a second chance and have downloaded a couple of episodes.
I haven't yet seen the reworked pilot which aired, but have seen the 2nd and 3rd episodes - and they're not that bad.
Viewed objectively, early Friends wasn't that great. The pilot in particular suffered from the same forced humour, lack of direction, and indifferent characterisation as did the Joey pilot. Only the final minutes of the Friends pilot showed any glint towards the form which Friends would evolve into. And as Friends went on, it took almost until the end of the first season for it to become the series which went on to last for 10 years.
Joey I feel is merely undergoing the same 'warming up' phase which Friends needed.
Add that to the awkwardness that is always felt with seeing a very familiar character displaced into an entirely new setting, of course Joey seems a little odd, and even a little crap atm. It will also doubtless take a little time both for the writers and for Matt LeBlanc to get used to Joey changing from being part of an ensemble cast - a mere 1/6th of the action, over to being the central character around which everything revolves. But then, exactly the same things were said about Frasier in 1993, and that series went on to last as long as it's predecessor.
The only thing I'm concerned about in Joey (and admittedly I've only seen 3 episodes so far) is that in needs to develop the ability to constantly change between pure comedy and comedy-drama as seemlessly as Friends could, and at present that's not really there. That said, there's no reason to believe it can't develop, and I do genuinely believe that Joey has potential.
Hopefully it can survive it's first season and get renewed for a second, and then I firmly believe it will hit it's stride and go on to be just as sucessful as Friends was.
And please no wheeling in of the Friends cast for the time being - whilst I'm sure the day will inevitably come when Chandler and Monica will pop round, doing that too soon could be suicide. The biggest challenge Joey faces atm is to win over people who are trying to think of it as Friends season 11 rather than an entirely new series. It's got to be allowed to develop and become popular and succesful in it's own right before it starts looking to it's past.