Word: lear
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...single-parent families that merge into one wholesome household -- recall a corny-but-lovable TV companion from childhood. For those with longer memories, it is a reminder of the insipid depths to which TV's family shows sank in the years between Leave It to Beaver and the Norman Lear revolution...
...good news. Even though summer pickings are slim, they are getting more interesting. With the audiences smaller and the stakes lower, the networks can afford to experiment more aggressively than they do during the regular season. So far this summer we've seen Norman Lear get religion (in CBS's Sunday Dinner); a former Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, get a prime- time showcase (in five low-rated NBC specials); and CBS News invade the courtroom for a new reality series, Verdict. Three even more atypical offerings will debut in the next two weeks. Each would probably be regarded...
Then came Freshman Week. It rained every day. I thought of King Lear, the way the rain is supposed to parallel the inner turmoil of the characters, and I fancied myself the protagonist in my own tragedy...
...whom, pray tell, is she talking to? There's no easy way to put this. It's God. Sunday Dinner, a new CBS series from TV trailblazer Norman Lear (All in the Family, Maude), bills itself as the first sitcom to deal explicitly with religious faith. Lear says the series, his first in seven years, reflects a turn toward spiritual values in his own life. It also marks TV's effort to jump on Hollywood's spirituality bandwagon...
Some conservatives have already objected to Lear's politically correct God. The Rev. Donald Wildmon, the Fundamentalist media watchdog, has attacked CBS for allowing Lear to "promote his New Age/secular humanist religion." (Idle thought: Is Wildmon now on the payroll of liberal TV producers, who use him to attract controversy -- and viewers -- to their shows?) It's hard to imagine many others being offended by the sappy sermonizing. Sunday Dinner doesn't engage the issue of religious faith so much as gawk at it: belief in God has become a character quirk, like having a funny job or being...