The Gritty Chimp's Guide To... Assy McGee

The Gritty Chiomp gets to grips with our bum-faced detective...

Two season wonder Assy McGee is a testament to every bad cop show you've ever seen or heard of. The use of every cop cliché in the book, elevated to a state of unbridled ridiculousness is what turns this from a bad parody to a Swim masterpiece. Let's dive in straight at the titles.

Queue the intro music, a saxophonic, Cagney and Lacey inspired affair set amongst grimy, urban cityscapes. Cop cars, subway trains, dark streets. That kind of thing. Next, get a hard nosed chief of police in there, he answers to the mayor and his ass is on the line every day and won't hesitate to strip a maverick cop of his badge if he steps out of line etc... well you can fill in the rest. Then there's the loyal put-upon sidekick partner trying to keep his friend and mentor in line. Poor Sanchez is a family man and the opposite of his tortured, lonely mentor and the only guy keeping him on track... kind of.

All seems pretty average so far and this is when you take a look at our protagonist, Assy. As the name would suggest he's an ass... literally an ass.. on legs. When growing up I was a massive fan of ITV's 'Round The Bend'. A grotesque puppet show from the makers of Spitting Image who specialised in perfect toilet humour for the 8-12 year old market. It was the rude, crudely drawn parodies of Thundercats and Teenage Mutant Ninja (or Hero as it it was on the BBC) Turtles, filled with puerile poo gags that had me rolling on the floor gasping for breath whilst my Mum looked on in utter disgust. Assy McGee is the grown-up version of this and pours cheeky toilet humour on top of gratuitous violence and classic one-liners.

Assy himself seems to function perfectly despite having no arms or any of those vital organs usually found above the waist. He speaks with a slurred drunken rasp that's one part Kojak and two parts Stallone. When he gets excited he parps with perfect comic timing, usually when he's getting his ass kicked by the bad guys (see what I did there?) or receiving a happy ending in the local massage parlour. “How does that even work?” you say? Well we're told he’s anatomically correct, it's just you don't ever get to see the back of his 'head'. He essentially struts backwards, cheeks first, marching proudly forward to the next case.

In terms of delivering justice, Assy has no time for protocol or red tape and prefers to enter a crime scene in a hail of his own bullets usually resulting in the deaths of countless innocent cops and bystanders. How does the chief take this? Not very well. Assy's badge is never off the chief's table for long but, by god, he gets results. In fact his no holds barred approach to policing means he usually stumbles upon the perp by complete accident after trailing the wrong lead for the entire time. If you're prepared to accept a show that stars a walking ass then get ready to suspend your disbelief in how much the said walking ass can get away with.

Assy is definitely on the Marmite shelf of Adult Swim shows with fans split right down the middle but I say if you can find the humour in a hard talking, hard drinking ass with legs getting a five o'clock shadow then this is the show for you.

Interesting Assy facts:

• Most of the shows characters are voiced by one man, Larry Murphy. For fans of Delocated he plays the fake moustache wearing doorman, Jay.
• The show was created by Swim legend Matt Harrigan, who as well as writing for David Letterman and Celebrity Deathmatch, had his hands in several Swim pies from Adult Swim's inception. He worked on some of the greatest shows Swim ever produced such as Space Ghost, 12 oz. Mouse, Harvey Birdman and Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job! He was also responsible for the short lived offshoot studio, William's Street West which he created so he didn't have to keep going to Atlanta to finish the last season of Space Ghost.