When we last left Living in Your Car’s Steve Unger (John Ralston), the shamed corporate executive had everything in his life taken away, save for one thing. As the title of The Movie Network/Movie Central sitcom suggests, he was left his Rolls Royce, which served as his office and living quarters.
Now, he’s moved on and moved up. Season 2 could be renamed Living in Your RV, as Steve has upgraded to a larger house on wheels. Not that it was his choice; Steve’s best friend and lawyer Neil Stiles (Colin Cunningham) sold the Rolls and replaced it with the RV. It may not be pretty, but it is more functional, offering both Steve and Ralston, the actor who plays him, more room to move around.
“(The Rolls) was a lovely vehicle,” the one-time Life with Derek star told TV Guide Canada late last week. “I get a lot of questions about what it was like to be in the car. It was an experience that everyone should try once in their lives.”
The rollicking and ribald Living in Your Car returns tonight, and finds Steve both getting used to his new home as well as starting to piece together exactly who it was that framed him for investing clients’ money into a scheme that left them — Steve included — penniless. In Episode 1, Steve learns his former partners set him up for a fall; now he’s determined to clear his name. Not that he’ll be all that successful. As Ralston explains, having his name cleared would ruin the premise of the Gemini-nominated laffer.
Ralston’s Steve is wonderfully hangdog, a guy who, every time he makes one step forward, he gets slapped back two more. Ralston has his comic timing tuned perfectly; his shocked looks (and there are a lot of them) in the over-the-top circumstances co-creators and writers George F. Walker, Dani Romain and Joseph Kay, and writer Courtney J. Walker, put him in are screamingly hilarious. Upcoming storylines feature Steve trying to make ends meet by selling knives door to door, becoming a private eye and working the kitchen of a new vegan restaurant.
“There is a verve and a snappiness to the writing,” he explains. “You don’t find any pauses in the dialogue here. When (executive producer-director) David Steinberg came on board, he said something that I’ve kept in the back of my mind. He wanted the dialogue to just move, and that’s the way that George just naturally writes, so it was a pair made in heaven.” Though written, the dialogue comes off like an improv troupe performing, which makes it realistic, even if some of the situations are totally ludicrous.
Season 2’s guest cast list is impressive, boasting Colin Mochrie and Debra McGrath as an irate couple who confront Steve for losing their investment, Red Green’s Patrick McKenna, Kristin Booth and King’s Rossif Sutherland, who faces off with Steve in the restaurant.
“The minds and imaginations of Walker, Dani and Joseph and Courtney just blow me away,” Ralston relates. “Every time I read a script I would just sit back because there is something in every one. There is a group who heads to Poland to sell houses made out of soap to Third World countries, I get messed up with some gangsters here, (Steve’s wife) Lori (Ingrid Kavelaars) gets some money together because she wants to be an Olympic equestrian. There’s a situation where they’re trying to figure out how to masturbate a multi-million dollar race horse.”
Outlandish, outrageous and over-the-top, just the way I love my sitcoms.
Living in Your Car returns Monday, Oct. 24, at 8:30 p.m. ET/MT on The Movie Network/Movie Central.
Check out the latest behind-the-scenes TV news in Nuts & Bolts.
Follow Greg on Twitter
Follow TV Guide Canada on Facebook!