Thursday, March 31, 2022

Thursday Movie Picks #403: Family Comedies (TV edition)

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This being the final Thursday of the month, it's time for another TV edition, with the theme being "Family comedies". That's a fairly easy theme, with the bigger issue being whether or not I had used any of the movies before. I had quite a few shows in mind, but wound up going with three from the 1980s:

Family Ties (1982-1988). The Keatons, a pair of 1960s lefties (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney) have a family now, with the eldest son Alex (Michael J. Fox) being a decided Reaganite, which causes a fair amount of comedic clashing between him and the parents. There are also two younger daughters in the family, played by Justine Bateman and Tina Yothers.

Mr. Belvedere (1985-1990). I've briefly mentioned this one a couple of times on the blog, both in conjunction with the Clifton Webb movie Sitting Pretty. Based on a book from the 1940s, the premise is of a family (baseball pitcher and play-by-play guy Bob Uecker, and Ilene Graff) who have difficult children they need a nanny for. Who should show up but Lynn Belvedere (Christopher Hewitt), who has an unorthodox style that actually works with the kids. The TV show turns one of the kids from the movie (I haven't read the book) from a son into a daughter, and makes the kids older than in the movie.

My Sister Sam (1986-1988). Pam Dawber plays Sam, a photographer in San Francisco whose kid sister Patti (Rebecca Schaeffer) shows up unexpectedly after their parents die, having left their aunt and uncle in Oregon to move to the big city and live with big sister. The show is probably better known for the tragedy that befell Schaeffer, who was murdered by a stalker about a year after the show wrapped. The stalker had shown up to a taping of the show trying to get in, but was turned away by security.

2 comments:

Brittani Burnham said...

Family Ties is the one I'm most familiar with here. I didn't watch a lot of it, but saw a few episodes here and there.

Birgit said...

These are great choices. I used to watch Family Ties and enjoyed it but I haven’t watched it since. I never watched Mr. Belvedere and would like to see some reruns. I did watch My Sister Sam but never found it funny so 8 stopped. I remember when this poor girl was murdered in broad daylight. It was very shocking,