‘Fuller House’: Still family-friendly fare
It started with a lunch in 2007.
Jeff Franklin, the man behind numerous television comedy series including “Full House,” was dining with John Stamos, one of the actors who helped turn “Full House” into a ratings hit for ABC. Their conversation finally got around to the state of television, especially the lack of family-friendly programs on the networks.
You have to remember, “Full House” was just one of several shows that could be watched by everyone from toddlers to grandparents when it aired in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Similar shows at that time included “Who’s the Boss?,” “Growing Pains” and “The Wonder Years.”
“The kind of programs we grew up on didn’t seem to exist anymore,” Franklin says. “We said that maybe we should make one up, and then we thought, ‘No. We have already made one up.’ So we decided to try to bring ‘Full House’ back.”
Not only did they make “Full House” a hit years ago, it continues to thrive in syndication. Executives at Netflix saw that and brought the family-friendly show back with a few tweaks in 2016 with “Fuller House.” The final nine new episodes from the third season of “Fuller House” became available on the streaming service Friday.
Despite already having a successful track record, Franklin found it far more difficult to get “Fuller House” on the air than he did “Full House.” He pitched the idea to ABC, Nick at Nite, the Disney Channel and other networks of a follow-up series focusing on the older Tanner daughters (Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin) and neighbor Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber) as adults with children of their own.
“I was completely baffled that no one seemed to get that this would be of interest to people,” Franklin says. “It’s so hard to pull an audience these days and to have that kind of built-in interest in the show seemed like a no-brainer.
“I don’t know if it was because the big stars of the show were not attached to it at that time. I just don’t think they understood the power of the brand.”
Franklin based his feelings on the potential of a “Full House” follow-up on his years working as a producer. His long list of TV credits also include “Laverne & Shirley,” “Bosom Buddies,” “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” and “Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper.”
It took him several attempts over eight years before Netflix agreed to get behind the series as part of the streaming company’s expanding original programming.
Producing a show for a streaming service rather than a network has taken some adjusting by Franklin. Unlike a network show that will order 21-24 episodes in a season, the first two seasons of “Fuller House” were only 13 apiece, and Season 3 features 18 shows. Franklin likes the lower order number because it pushes every script to be important to telling the tales of the family living in San Francisco. That’s critical because Netflix likes serialized stories more than the stand-alone approach Franklin had used on “Full House.” The shows also are not confined by the 21-minute format of network TV where commercials are added to fill the half-hour timeslot. If an episode needs to go a little longer or shorter to deal with a story, it can on Netflix.
One thing that hasn’t changed is Franklin went against the words of W.C. Fields, who said to never work with animals or children. Both “Full” and “Fuller” have banked heavily on kids and animals to generate laughs. His three “Fuller” house leads and the Olsen twins provided humor on the original show, and now Michael Campion, Elias Harger, Soni Bringas and the Messitt twins are taking on those duties.
“Kids take tremendous patience and so do animals,” Franklin says. “But it’s worth it. Both of these shows feel like a real family, and that is something you don’t have unless you treat the children like they are real people, telling stories that are important to their lives.
“It’s working for us and gives kids something to latch on when they watch the show.”