Comedians’ quixotic quests to delve into childhood obsessions or achieve strange dreams well outside their areas of expertise are typically relegated to the podcast format, and the Canadian series “I Have Nothing” (on Peacock) has that same ramshackle, worlds-collide style. Luckily it’s a TV show, because its premise is a visual one: the creation and performance of a pairs figure-skating routine set to Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing.”
The comedian Carolyn Taylor (“Baroness von Sketch Show”) was a kid during the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, and those Games left a real impression, especially the figure skating. The Battle of the Brians, Katarina Witt, Gordeeva and Grinkov — the highest of highs. Decades later, with no connection to the sport whatsoever, Taylor hears Whitney Houston on the radio and is struck by a vision, one that she and perhaps only she can make real in the world. She wants to create a pairs program to Houston’s banger, and she can picture the whole thing: the jumps and the lifts, the footwork sequences, the open-armed glides and intense expressions.
So she decides to answer this calling, to choreograph a routine for Olympic-level skaters. She can barely skate and does not know any of the terminology, but she forges ahead. “Can’t this be a ‘buffoon makes good’ story?” she asks her pal, the comedian Mae Martin.
It can; it is; “buffoon makes good” is a perfect way to describe the six-part docu-comedy. Taylor goes right to the top and enlists the Canadian choreographer, broadcaster and skater Sandra Bezic as a mentor, and much of the show is built on Bezic’s expertise (and, seemingly, Rolodex). A few false starts feel like filler at the beginning. But by Episode 3, things are really happening, and somehow the Olympic champions Ekaterina Gordeeva and David Pelletier are on board to skate the program.
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