This past Sunday, the highly buzzed show of the year Mr X Family Show premiered on DSTV’s Africa Magic Showcase. A television reunion between Nollywood luminaries Richard Mofe Damijo and Ego Boyo since they last starred together in the popular ’90s soap Checkmate, Mr X Family Show was billed to be a spectacular, absorbing dram-com.

What could go wrong? Well, almost everything. From the opening shots showing a potentially annoying teenage boy, who introduces himself as Kesiena (Philip Francis) via a shaky handling of a video camera. He’s in an expansive, immaculate living room, prancing about, and making random videos while speaking to the camera with an accented flourish. His younger sister, played by 2 Face’s daughter Isabella Idibia, hovers in the margins of the room. It’s her acting debut and her character makes acerbic remarks at her brother, and she’s quite the scene stealer. Their soft squabble goes on for a long time, and I frustratingly thought: am I watching the wrong show?

From the show’s ridiculous title Mr X Family Show, I shouldn’t be surprised. Mr X tries to be aspirationally different: cute, inflected English, the misty-eyed wink to African American sitcoms like Family Matters, and the slightly subversive nature of how the show engages viewers with direct camera glances. When the titular Mr X, Richard Mofe Damijo makes his first appearance, the father of Kesiena and his sisters, it feels rather anticlimactic.

So far…so boring. #TheMrXFamilyShow

— ??Nnabuike Chukwuezue?? (@callmenazy) May 6, 2018

Mr X makes a few lazy, half-hearted jokes with his children, and sometimes towards the camera. At this time, though, I’m wondering about the whereabouts of the supreme Ego Boyo. Quite disappointingly, her character isn’t Mr X’s wife. Damijo and Boyo aren’t replicating their dewy, ‘90s romance in Checkmate; the relationship of their characters in Mr X Family Show is semi-formal. Boyo as Deka is a neighbour and friend to the Mr X family, and she’s tame and tentative.

Mr X Family Show is shaped with characters that are forgettable. As Richard Mofe Damijo’s first experiment as a series creator, it doesn’t exactly hit the mark. There’s a cringey, hyperbolic silliness with the show, like watching a farce unfold. It’s no longer my cup of tea.

Bernard Dayo

When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.