On May 11, 5:27 am, Bobcat <bob_c...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Variety re****ts that Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton may soon be
> looking for work:
>
> "No official word yet on anything from Fox, but it's understood that
> in addition to "The Inn," Fox has have given the nod to a third season
> of Sony sitcom "Til Death" and has pinkslipped the Kelsey Grammer-
> Patricia Heaton starrer "Back to You" after one season."
>
> http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117985450.html?categoryId=3D14&cs=3D1
>
> Too bad - the show was beginning to show promise, and the cast was
> excellent. But the writing......?
I thought I'd read/heard the show was already renewed for a second
season, or perhaps it was just an older re****t that the first season
would be picked up after the writers' strike, or beyond the initial
order for eight (or thirteen?) eps.
Either way, though, the show IMO never matched the skills of its
cast. I rarely watched "Raymond" so am glad to have become more
familiar with Patricia Heaton who is superb, and a great match for
Kelsey --- she holds her own with Peri Gilpin, Jane Leeves and Bebe
Neuwirth.
To be fair to the writers, I sense it was their intention to create a
more old-fa****oned type of sitcom. They weren't aiming for the =FCber-
sophistication of "FRASIER", but I don't think their concept worked
well. The initial premise about the child's unrevealed paternity got
stale quickly, and the writers seems to be juggling whatever they
could do with it against pratfall stories (the worst: goldfish
slaughter) at the TV station.
I much preferred "Out Of Practice" which did ape the "Frasier"
sophistication and had an outstanding cast. I'm surprised that show
didn't do better in ratings. Ironically, the problem for many of us
was that the stories were too closely and conspicuously modeled on
"FRASIER" eps, and many of us were reduced to automatically analyzing
this aspect of the show, and not being able to enjoy it on its own
terms.
On a related note, it's worth mentioning that five former "FRASIER"
scribes (Joe Keenan, Bob Daily, Lori Kirkland Baker, Chuck Ranberg and
Ann Flett Giordano) are now working at "Desperate Housewives", which
is almost a ***tet of Maris clones..!!!
If it's true that "BTY" is being canceled, I'd like to see Kelsey do
more work directing --- he's *really* good at that, and by the later
seasons of "FRASIER" was directing eps as well as the best work of
David Lee and James Burrows, and I don't think you can go nigher than
those two.
Charles
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