ABC comedies

She’s a downsized spark for TV comedy

Douglas Adams, the late “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author, had a vertical theory of humor:
All truly funny people, he said, were 6-foot-5-inches tall.
That might have seemed true in his native England. But now, in the U.S., it’s off by a foot-and-a-half.
Meet Quinta Brunson (shown here, foreground) , who is about to rescue us from a slow year for network-TV comedy. She’s the producer, star and sole creator of “Abbott Elementary,” which has an advance showing at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday (Dec. 7) on ABC, then gets a regular spot next month. She’s listed at 5-foot, but some of that is wishful thinking. Read more…

“The Conners” return with pandemic pain and laughs

When we last saw the Conner family, lives were in a familiar state of tatters.
Dan (John Goodman) saw his drywall business stumbling and his home was foreclosure. One daughter, Darlene (Sarah Gilbert, shown here with Goodman) struggled to start a local magazine; another, Becky, tried to cope with belated motherhood.
Could anything else go wrong? Definitely. “The characters were built for disaster,” producer-writer Bruce Helford said in a virtual session with the Television Critics Association..
The “Conners” season-finale aired in May, but was taped before the virus shutdown. Now the show is back, at 9 p.m. Wednesdays; its return (Oct. 21) makes ABC the first network this season with a non-rerun night of situation comedies. And yes, the pandemic is instantly reflected. As Helford put it: “A family that knows how to get through hard times … is thrown a curve like never before. Read more…