So Help Me Todd
★★★★

So Help Me Todd is about as unfashionable a TV show as you’re likely to get in 2023. It is unlikely to be showered with awards. It will probably never generate a single viral meme from its screenshots. You will not read a whole lot of thinkpieces about what So Help Me Todd says about the faultlines in Western society in the 21st century, or how it taps into either modern audiences’ need for positive affirmation or the zeitgeist of capitalist decay. In short, it is not the kind of show that gets included in lists of great TV shows and will never be the critics’ darling. So allow this critic to speak up and say that, for all its failure to gain raves in the golden age of prestige television, So Help Me Todd is a show that does a better job than most of giving everyone a cracking good time.

First, the facts of the matter: as its self-destructively cheesy title suggests, the show follows the escapades of Todd, a brilliant detective who lost his licence to work as a private investigator a couple of years ago due to his willingness to go outside the law. His mother, Margaret, who managed to raise three kids and get a law degree as a single mother after her first husband’s death, helped Todd to escape criminal charges back then and has now wangled him a job at her law firm.

Todd is very, very good at his job, but he is frequently stymied in his attempts to do it to the best of his ability both by the restrictions placed on him as a result of his past misdeeds and the fact that his mother – a stickler for the book and with a strong desire not to ruin her own career – is keeping a close eye on him at all times. Nevertheless, through means both legitimate and somewhat devious, Todd manages to get to the bottom of the mysteries thrown up by Margaret’s cases – generally with his mother’s somewhat reluctant co-operation. In the process, mother and son take baby steps towards better mutual understanding and mending their difficult relationship, in classic TV family style. Weaving in and out of the adventures are Todd’s ER doctor sister – the golden child to Todd’s black sheep – as well as his ex-girlfriend – a lawyer at Margaret’s firm – and a priggish in-house investigator who resents Todd’s presence on his turf and takes great pleasure in obstructing him.

It is not, admittedly, a premise that inspires hope for stunning originality – at least if your frame of reference goes back three or four decades. But everything old is new again, and this is a show that in many ways provides a joyously breezy throwback to detective dramedies of yore, with zippy dialogue, enjoyably twisty-turny mysteries and sparky chemistry between the leads: Skylar Astin as Todd and Marcia Gay Harden as Margaret. It calls to mind hits of yore like Moonlighting and Remington Steele with a 21st century gloss, though perhaps the show whose philosophy it most follows is Monk. Whatever comparison you draw, So Help Me Todd’s determined refusal to try to tackle big themes or make major statements, or do anything but tell good stories with endearing characters, is its great strength.

Its other great strength is the cast, or at least the two main members of it. As Todd, Astin – formerly best known as the love interest from Pitch Perfect and bringing an energy reminiscent of TV star-turned-DC superhero Zach Levi – is a delight, flitting about the place in a constant whirl of hyperactive gumshoe enthusiasm and motor-mouthed self-justification: a scruffily handsome down-on-his-luck hero sleuth in the best tradition. As his partner in detection, voice of conscience and overbearing boss/mother, Marcia Gay Harden shows off the chops she’s honed over a sterling career, having the time of her life shining light on Margaret’s neuroses and insecurities, one moment haughty and domineering, the next brittle and panicked. With mother and son both facing crises – he attempting to get his life back on track with gainful employment, she fighting to advance her career while dealing with the sudden end of her second marriage – they need each other, and the purpose their cases bring them.

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So Help Me Todd is one of those shows that I’d say they don’t make any more, if it weren’t for the fact that they have: a good old series of capers and shenanigans that will reward any viewer who doesn’t require anything from TV but fun.

So Help Me Todd is on Ten, Wednesday, 8.40pm.

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