. . . Before She Died and I Had to Raise You with Your Uncle and his Dorky Friend

I kid Bob Saget, above, but his narration for CBS' How I Met Your Mother is actually well-done. I had read good things about this new sitcom, and was not disappointed--this has the potential to be a very good sitcom, in the Friends mode of quippy twenty-somethings making their way in the big city. The cast is uniformly good and, more importantly, even in just the 22 minutes of this pilot, evidence a good team chemistry. Former Willow Alyson Hanigan and former Nick Jason Segel make an inspired pair, and they work well together in the pilot, completely selling their believability as the "cute" couple, while former Doogie Neil Patrick Harris is hilarious as the ladies-man Barney. Newcomer (to me, anyway) Josh Radnor is appealingly charming and awkward as Ted, our lead, and also-new Cobie (Cobie?) Smulders is very pretty and charming as love interest Robin.

The pilot does an excellent job of setting up the premise (an unseen Bob Saget, as a 2030-era Ted, tells his two teenaged children the story of how he met their mother) and then playing with our expectations in the final scene, promisingly setting up the show as something of a more long-term mystery than the first 21 minutes may have suggested. The writing so far is sharp and funny, if not groundbreaking, and, given that this is just a pilot, this is a very good sign. Funny, charming, at least a little moving, and with a great hook for giving the series as a whole forward momentum--a great pilot, at least. I have hopes for the series as it progresses.

Until Whenever