The Kat’s Out of The Bag! Mayim Bialik Does It Her Way in CTV’s CALL ME KAT

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede According to Mayim Bialik, perhaps the best way to describe her new sitcom CALL ME KAT is to explain what it’s not. “What I love is that this is not a show about a woman trying to find someone,” Bialik said. “It’s a show about a woman trying to be happy finding herself, and seeing what happens along the way.” What happens along the way is the wacky world of CALL ME KAT, which debuts Sunday, Jan. 3 at 8 p.m. ET on CTV, before moving to its regular time slot, Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET, starting on Jan. 7. Written and executive produced by Darlene Hunt, and based on the British series MIRANDA, CALL ME KAT features the four-time EMMY®-nominated Bialik in the title role. Bialik also is an executive producer, as is Jim Parsons, who played Sheldon alongside Bialik’s Amy on THE BIG BANG THEORY. Kat cheerfully battles every day against the expectations of society, and her mother (played by Swoosie Kurtz), with the simple goal of living a happy and fulfilling life, despite – gasp! – being single at age 39. Much to her mother’s chagrin, Kat always charmingly charts her own course, including her recent eyebrow-raising move of quitting her job as a math professor and spending her entire life savings – including the money her parents had set aside for her wedding – to open a cat café in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. “This is a person who, it’s not so much that she’s uncomfortable with dating, but she’s uncomfortable with the expectations that have been laid out for her, and I think a lot of people will resonate with that,” Bialik said. “I also will say, we are showing a very non-conventional female, and I miss seeing women like this on television. I grew up really admiring quirky, multi-faceted women and comediennes who weren’t afraid to be silly and sloppy and do pratfalls and things like that. So I’m really grateful that we are showing a woman who is owning all of herself.” Structurally, one of the notable aspects of CALL ME KAT is that the Kat character often “breaks the fourth wall” and talks to the audience. The overall effect is that it almost feels as if the audience is a character in the show. “She’s not lonely, but she does spend a lot of her time in the way that we don’t see a lot of women spend their time on television, or really in life: she is alone,” Bialik said. “She’s alone sometimes with her thoughts, and with her fantasies. What we’ve created is a woman who includes everyone in her world, because that’s what makes her world interesting and colourful. Sometimes those are people who exist, and sometimes those are people who do not. And sometimes it’s people who exist in different ways than they actually exist, so that it fits better with her world view. But we are really including the audience. They are in on her jokes.” Also, at the end of every episode, the cast does sort of a theatre-style curtain call, with their names coming up on screen as they wave to viewers. “I’ll just say it’s a nod to MIRANDA – that’s how MIRANDA ends the show,” Hunt said. “For me, it has a very retro‑like, inclusive vibe, and it has really become just super fun to shoot.” Speaking of super fun, with both Bialik and Parsons working on the same series, it had to be asked: would Parsons ever be tempted to appear on-screen in CALL ME KAT, which also has Leslie Jordan, Kyla Pratt, Cheyenne Jackson, and Julian Gant in the cast? “I don’t know,” Parsons replied. “I say, ‘never say never’ about a cameo.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv