‘MURPHY’ IS BACK!
Bergen’s newswoman takes on new battles in CBS’ revival
‘Murphy Brown” is back to fight.
Twenty years after it left the airwaves, the sitcom about an irascible newswoman and her nutty colleagues returns — and creator, executive producer and writer Diane English still remembers how to punch up.
In the premiere, Murphy (fivetime Emmy winner Candice Bergen) takes on no less than the president. Trump even guests, sort of — via his notorious Twitter account, insulting Murphy, who gives as good as she gets.
As the show opens, Murphy isn’t faring so well in retirement. She doesn’t know what to do with her time. “Take up gardening? It wouldn’t be fair to the plants,” she says.
Her pals aren’t faring well either. Investigative reporter Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) longs for the days he was breaking stories. Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford) has been fired from “Wake Up America” and replaced with a younger, bustier woman. Anchorman
Jim Dial visits in the third episode (actor Charles Kimbrough is mostly retired).
Son Avery (Jake McDorman, “Limitless”), now a TV reporter in his own right, has big news: He’s joining the Wolf network — “where all the male anchors are conspiracy theorists and all the women are dead behind the eyes,” Murphy cracks.
Murphy also makes a career decision. She accepts an offer to host a morning show on a cable network, but she wants the old gang back, including executive producer Miles Silverberg (Grant Shaud). Shaud is both humorous and heartbreaking, and judging from the first three episodes, he might be the best part of the revival.
Before her first show, Avery introduces Murphy to Twitter.
Avery warns her to think before she types: “Shows have canceled for less.” (Sorry, not sorry,
Roseanne.)
She reveals in her first tweet that she once went out on a date with Trump. “He made us split the check.”
Before she knows it, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has retweeted her. And Trump — via his Twitter feed — crashes her live show.
“Oh, you bring it on, hashtag Dan Quayle,” Murphy says, referring to that moment in 1992 when reality crossed into fiction and the then vice president criticized Murphy for becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
Upcoming episodes find Murphy sneaking into a White House press briefing to challenge Sarah Huckabee Sanders (grafted in from news footage) and considering the ethics of giving a platform to a Steve Bannon-styled white nationalist.
Bergen still rattles off her lines as if she’s in a hurry to get to lunch, but the cast has chemistry to spare. New additions include Tyne Daly (“Cagney & Lacey”) as Phyllis, the new owner of Phil’s bar, and Nik Dodani (“Atypical”) as Pat, Murphy’s social media manager.
While recent revivals, including “The X-Files,” “Roseanne” and “Will & Grace,” never truly left the airwaves thanks to constant syndication, “Murphy Brown” was not so fortunate. You can only stream a handful of episodes, and only the first season was ever released on DVD.
There’s a meta-acknowledgement early in the premiere when a star-struck mother points out Murphy to her daughter and her daughter replies, “Who’s Murphy Brown?”
Viewers are about to be reminded.