DAVID BIANCULLI

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ONE DAY AT A TIME
January 6, 2017  | By David Bianculli

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

 

SERIES PREMIERE: As television history goes, this is fascinating. Norman Lear, the TV producer whose politically volatile, topic-heavy sitcoms such as All in the Family dominated and altered TV in the 1970s, is still at it at age 94, and has worked with other TV writers and producers to update one of his Seventies comedy hits, One Day At a Time, for a 21st-century audience. It’s still an old-fashioned, Lear-like sitcom, with the same central theme: a divorced mom raising kids and having an occasionally tough time, both economically and emotionally. Back then, the mom was played by Bonnie Franklin – who, in the prior TV decade, was one of the teen girls on Gidget – and her teen TV daughters by Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli. The new Netflix series reshapes the show by presenting it as a Cuban family living in Los Angeles, with a mom raising two kids (this time one girl, one boy) and getting both help and grief from her own live-in mom (played by Rita Moreno, the show’s scene-stealer). Jusina Machado, as the mom, and Isabella Gomez, as her daughter, also enliven this show – but I was more drawn in watching these episodes as a TV historian than as a regular viewer looking for basic entertainment. Sample it once, definitely, to compare and contrast the sitcom differences from 1975 to 2017 – but then, you’re on your own. For full reviews, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower and Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes.

 
 
 
 
 
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