{"id":50177,"date":"2025-07-31T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/50177\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T14:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T14:00:15","slug":"leanne-review-a-conventional-sitcom-but-its-good-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/50177\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Leanne’ review: A conventional sitcom, but it’s good company"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The practice of building a situation comedy around a stand-up comedian is hallowed television practice<\/a>, going back to Jack Benny and Danny Thomas and running forward through Bob Newhart, Roseanne Barr, Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, George Lopez and Martin Lawrence, among others. These \u201cbased on the comedy\u201d shows are predicated on the not unreasonable and frequently demonstrable idea that the star comes with a built-in audience \u2014 the show and the character usually share their name \u2014 and that a person who is good at telling stories onstage might be a good fit for the multi-camera TV stage. This hasn\u2019t been true of every comic given a show; even someone as reliably hilarious as John Mulaney was an uneasy fit for the form.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeanne,\u201d which premieres Thursday on Netflix, stars Leanne Morgan, a 25-year overnight sensation from Knoxville, Tenn., whose star rose above the cultural horizon when she was already most of her way through her fifties. (She is 59 now.) Co-creator Chuck Lorre (with Morgan and Susan McMartin), the man behind \u201cCybill,\u201d \u201cDharma & Greg,\u201d \u201cTwo and a Half Men\u201d<\/a> and \u201cThe Big Bang Theory,\u201d earlier built \u201cGrace Under Fire\u201d<\/a> around another Southern stand-up, Brett Butler. The premise here is essentially: newly single mature woman in a sitcom.<\/p>\n

If the people around her are mostly types into which the players pour themselves, Morgan is more a person into which a character has been inserted. TV Leanne is not exactly Real Leanne, who is to all appearances happily married; is on tour through the year (under the title \u201cJust Getting Started\u201d); has starred in a Netflix special, \u201cI\u2019m Every Woman\u201d; published a book, \u201cWhat in the World?! A Southern Woman\u2019s Guide to Laughing at Life\u2019s Unexpected Curveballs and Beautiful Blessings\u201d; and, obviously, is starring in this situation comedy. Other than living in Knoxville, having children and grandchildren and representing someone more or less her own age, she is not playing herself; yet there\u2019s an honesty to her performance, possibly not unrelated to her being new at this. (Her only previous screen credit is a supporting role in this year\u2019s Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon meh Prime Video rom-com \u201cYou\u2019re Cordially Invited.\u201d) Even the hackiest jokes sound less hacky in her mouth, perhaps because she doesn\u2019t strain to sell them. Her delivery tends toward the soft and musical, and that she is wearing her own accent, which, to a Californian\u2019s ear, plays charming variations on vowels, is all to the good.<\/p>\n

As we begin, Leanne, the character, is primarily defined, like negative space, by the figures around her. There is a husband, Bill (Ryan Stiles) who has just left her for a younger woman, an event so fresh that only her sister, Carol (Kristen Johnston), knows; single, twice-divorced, up for fun, Carol regards herself as sophisticated because she once lived in Chicago. Daughter Josie (Hannah Pilkes) is a little wild, but not particularly troublesome; in any case, no one pays her much attention. Son Tyler (Graham Rogers), upon whom Leanne dotes, works for his father, who owns three RV emporiums \u2014 accounting for the nice house that\u2019s the series\u2019 main set \u2014 and comes equipped with a mostly off-screen pregnant wife, Nora (Annie Gonzalez); he feels oppressed, but perhaps he\u2019s just tired. Leanne\u2019s parents, John (Blake Clark) and Margaret (Celia Weston) are around for grousing and goofiness, respectively. Across the street lives Mary (Jayma Mays), the embodiment of nosy propriety in a town that can\u2019t keep a secret.<\/p>\n

Leanne recalls how back in the \u201880s she was \u201ccute\u201d and desirable \u201cbecause I had hormones, and hair spray, and a VW bug with a pull-out cassette player.\u201d (This is also a motif in Morgan\u2019s stand-up.) Now she\u2019s careful and proper, and can barely bring herself to chastely kiss the nice FBI agent, Andrew (Tim Daly), who wanders into the show as a potential romance. (Morgan said on the \u201cToday\u201d show that Daly was in fact the first man she\u2019d kissed apart from her husband in 33 years. Art and life.) One hopes he won\u2019t turn out to be a murderer, which would 80% be the case if this were a mystery. But I reckon we\u2019re safe.<\/p>\n

Younger viewers who find themselves here may be put off by jokes about hot flashes, pelvic exercises, enlarged prostrates and such and perhaps especially by sex jokes in the mouths of old \u2014 well, older \u2014 people. (I feel you there, youngsters.) The representative demographic may chuckle knowingly, or not.<\/p>\n

Here is Leanne, flirting with Andrew in their first encounter.<\/p>\n

Andrew (swallowing some pills): \u201cI had to have a thing and now I have to take these things every four hours or I might have to have … another thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leanne (sweetly): \u201cI got things. My purse is a little Walgreens with a cute strap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every fourth or fifth joke has the air of having been hammered out on an anvil, and a few might have been better left in the smithery. Yet I like this show, in no small part but not entirely because I like Morgan \u2014 the way she says \u201cspaseba, that\u2019s Russian for thank you\u201d to a bartender handing her a vodka, and sings a bit of the Human League\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t You Want Me\u201d<\/a> to herself. <\/p>\n

The company, which supports the star with veterans of \u201cThird Rock From the Sun,\u201d \u201cThe Drew Carey Show\u201d and \u201cWings,\u201d is generally good company, and I\u2019m happy to see that \u201cLeanne\u201d has a broadcast-style 18 episode season, time being an American sitcom\u2019s best friend. (I would give it a few episodes to make up your mind.)<\/p>\n

Apart from the star herself, the show is as conventional as can be. A character embarking on a new chapter is, of course, the starting point of every third sitcom ever made, but given that many of us have either had to start new chapters or wish we could, it\u2019s a suitable way to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The practice of building a situation comedy around a stand-up comedian is hallowed television practice, going back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[25562,15388,88,38805,29084,38807,13685,38804,32679,23640,38806,38808,1695,16153,92,14512,2394],"class_list":["post-50177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-andrew","tag-character","tag-entertainment","tag-good-company","tag-husband","tag-john-mulaney","tag-knoxville","tag-leanne","tag-morgan","tag-show","tag-situation-comedy","tag-southern-stand-up","tag-star","tag-thing","tag-tv","tag-way","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}