Once upon a time Steve Martin was an A-list star and little Richie Cunningham was yet to win an Oscar, they teamed with Neo and a bunch of other faces you recognise from the 80s to make Parenthood
Jump forward 20 years and the Buckmans are now the Bravermans and the new head of the house is Six Feet Under
Parenthood is not so much a spin of off the film, but a re-imagining, both the show and film start off at the same point and at least for the pilot follow a very similar path. The premise is to show 4 siblings as they struggle at various stages of parenthood (the parents of teenagers, toddlers, tweens and the expecting all watched over by the veteran of child rearing), the scope is huge, so how does the show stack up? Well its a bit of mixed bag, the plot follows the film closely minus the huge baby closing. However, by crushing a 2 hour film down 40 minutes you end up with quite an unfocused story with way too many events that conveniently happen over the space of a week. Adam Braverman (Krause) and the problems with his nervous son which is so prominent in the film is quickly pushed into the background as we instead follow newly divorced mother of two, Sarah (Lauren Graham) as she relocates closer to her family and starts dating again. All the time the patriarch of the family pushes everyone to stand up to conflict while his second son suddenly finds himself engaged to stop his girlfriend impregnating herself with a turkey baster only to find out he fathered another son some years before with a different woman. The final couple have to deal with the effects of the a working mum and child who prefers her dad to do things for her.
So basically there is a shit load going that is only made easy to follow if you have seen the film and know what to expect. They would have been better served to drop some of these subpolts from the pilot and extending them into the series as a whole. Often pilots try to take what will happen in the first series and crush down into the first episode to give people a taste of what they are going to see, but with so many subplots and characters you can struggle to figure out whose story you are suppose to be following. Overall you have great actors and interesting dynamics, but there was nothing here in the plot or characters to get me excited to see the rest of the series. With other new shows like The Middle and Modern Family covering similar ground this season, Parenthood stands out as being a comic drama rather than a sitcom, although its execution is not as good as the more acclaimed Modern Family.
The series premiere of Parenthood was dedicated to the memory of Nora O’Brien, a Vice President at NBC, who died on the set of Parenthood in April 2009 in Berkeley, California.
Written by: Jason Katims
Directed by: Thomas Schlamme
Starring: Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Dax Shepard, Monica Potter, Erika Christensen, Sam Jaeger
Date premièred: 2nd March2010
UK Details: TBC
and Party Down have enjoyed a moderate amount of success, but their latest addition is 
.
to cover manhood or lack there of. Starz looking to make a name for it’s original drama has created a series that promised much violence and plenty of full frontal nudity from both sexes.
, a 225 if you will, but this is only one piece of the puzzle – the slow motion fights. For dialogue they have thrown in the original Spartacus, while HBO’s 
provides influence for the explicit sex. Finally 
provides a great deal of influence for the series’ title character; Spartacus was a slave turned Gladiator turned leader of an army, here we have husband warrior sold into a Gladiator school. The Spartacus in this series has no bonds with slavery, there is no hint of what the man shall become which seems very short sighted. Away from the sex and violence the series feels like a movie of the week with melodramatic emotions and swearing thrown in just because they can.
, mainly because it gives credibility to some of the most evil people on the planet. Those who seek to exploit people in their most desperate hour, real police time is wasted and these charlatans are only too happy to profit off the back of someone else’s tragedy. For an insight into what these folk get up to check out Stop Sylvia Browne. Rant over.
