Netflix’s 'That ‘70s Show' spinoff and NBC’s revival do their damnedest to resuscitate the ‘90s multi-cam sitcom, but it may be too little, too late. Read our review ⬇️
, both of them single-cam. There just aren’t a lot of people, either as writers or as actors, who are still adept and well-practiced at slinging set-ups and punchlines on a stage in front of a live studio audience.
That said, it appears there’s still an appetite for the form from the audience. Tuesday night’s series premiere ofin 2017. At this rate, can aNIGHT COURT — “Pilot” Episode 101 — Pictured: Melissa Rauch as Abby Stone, John Larroquette as Dan Fieldingare themselves well-versed in the rhythms of multi-cam. Star and executive producer Melissa Rauch spent a decade as Bernadette on, and spent another four seasons fronting his own self-titled NBC sitcom.
Rauch, using her normal speaking voice rather than Bernadette’s high-pitched squeak, is Abby Stone, daughter of Anderson’s Harry. After growing up and working upstate, she’s moved to New York to preside over her dad’s old courtroom, and recruits Larroquette’s misanthropic ex-prosecutor Dan Fielding to come back to work, this time representing the defendants.
It’s a reasonable set-up. Dan has had to be significantly transformed from the misogynist user of women he was in the Eighties and Nineties, and if it feels largely like a new character, Larroquette remains incredibly well-suited to the specific demands and challenges of multi-cam. Rauch, meanwhile, is gregarious and enthusiastic enough to evoke Anderson. She’s unfortunately hampered by the fact that Dan is no longer the only character who doesn’t want to be there.
Half the fun of the old show was the sense that this was all a ridiculous party that the viewer got to visit once a week. Without, say, the presence of a gleeful hype man like the late Charles Robinson as Harry’s clerk Mac, that infectious spirit is absent. So when things do get more cartoonish — say, Neil dressing up like an extra fromin a misguided attempt to endear himself to Abby’s mom — it feels dumb in a way it wouldn’t have 30-plus years ago.
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