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.  Such a success was this multi generational look at one of life’s greatest challenges network TV rushed out to make a small screen version. Ed Begley Jr, David Arquette and Leonardo DiCaprio took on the roles of their big screen counterparts, unfortunately for Leo, the series followed the fate of other 80s and early 90s movies turned TV shows (Working Girl, Ferris Bueller, Uncle Buck and Baby Talk (based on the film Look Who’s Talking)) and lasted only on series.

Jump forward 20 years and the Buckmans are now the Bravermans and the new head of the house is Six Feet Under star Peter Krause. Originally intended for a September airing it pushed back to the mid-season as actress Maura Tierney was diagnosed with breast cancer, as a result Mercy was brought up in its place. Tiernay went on to leave the series due to her treatment and Lauren Graham took her place.

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

Tags: Comedy, Drama, Jason Katims, Mercy, Modern Family, NBC, Parenthood, spin-off, The Middle

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