NBC’s ‘Great News’ doesn’t offer much to yell about
Don’t we wish. Clearly, if there’s one thing we could all use right now, it’s great news. World peace and prosperity, of course, would be near the top of most lists — but failing that, some of us would settle for a funny, well-done, broadly appealing broadcast sitcom, a commodity in short supply these days.
It would be great to be able to say NBC’s Great News (Tuesday, 9 ET/PT, out of four) eeEE fits that bill, as it stars a deservedly well-loved comic legend, Andrea Martin. Unfortunately, once you get past “it stars Andrea Martin,” News doesn’t have much to say for itself.
Martin plays Carol, a 60-yearold stay-at-home mom who decides she wants a job outside of the home. Unfortunately, the job she ends up getting is an internship at The Breakdown, the cable news show where her daughter Katie (Briga Heelan) is an ambitious but overlooked producer. Adding mom to the mix is an issue for Katie, who already has to deal with a humorously dismissive British boss, Greg (Adam Campbell); a blowhard old fogey of an anchor, Chuck (John Michael Higgins); and Chuck’s shallow, tragically hip co-anchor Portia (Nicole Richie, acquitting herself well in her first regular sitcom role).
If that all sounds vaguely like a newsroom version of 30 Rock — bingo. The show is produced by Rock’s Tina Fey and was created by one of its writers, Tracey Wigfield, who based it on her relationship with her own mother. Which should lead any viewer to wonder why so little of real life seems to have slipped in.
Instead, after a decently funny start in Tuesday’s premiere, Great News quickly sinks into a sea of unspecific silliness — unrelated to the way any news show runs. You can’t expect a documentary, but you should expect a supposedly accomplished producer to find a way to get herself to the middle of Central Park without repeatedly falling off a rented bike. Or, for that matter, an anchorwoman to realize that doing the news in see-through shorts is not the world’s best idea.
Through it all, Martin almost miraculously retains her grace and charm, getting the most out of everything she’s given and lending the show what little warmth it has. Campbell almost keeps pace as the generally sane boss, and Richie does better than you’d imagine with a role that boils down to being a mash-up of air-headed celebrity/Millennial stereotypes.
On the plus side, when it comes to terrible sitcoms, Great News is hardly the worst you’ve ever seen. The cast combines for a few laughs each week, and outside of the stray fart or feces joke, little of it is bad enough to make you cringe. But goodness, this is Andrea Martin we’re talking about. Surely some network can find something better for her than “not terrible.”
Because that would be great.