Malcolm’s in the middle again, and this time he’s wearing a tie. Frankie Muniz, now 40 but eternally youthful, returns in Malcolm In The Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, a four-episode revival of the Fox sitcom that ran from 2000 to 2006. The revival premieres on Hulu and Disney+ on April 10. Despite having a teenage daughter of his own, Malcolm has prospered by avoiding his chaotic family (whose last name remains unknown), until his parents’ 40th anniversary brings them all back together. You can’t have a Malcolm In The Middle revival without a family for Malcolm to be in the middle of, and that’s where Life’s Still Unfair picks up: with Malcolm reconnecting with his kin.
Seven-time Emmy nominee Jane Kaczmarek (she was nominated for every single season of this show) and four-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston (who won all four for some other show, but was nominated three times for Malcolm) return as parents Lois and Hal; the trailer wastes no time getting Cranston naked, as he so often was in the original run. Malcolm’s older brothers Francis (Christopher Kennedy Masterson) and Reese (Justin Berfield) are also played by the original actors, but series newbie Caleb Ellsworth-Clark steps in as younger son Dewey, whose original performer, Erik Per Sullivan, declined to return. And fifth son Jamie, who was so young when the original series ended that he was still being played by twins (because child labor laws), is being played by Anthony Timpano. Emy Coligado returns as Francis’s wife Piama, and Keeley Karsten and Kiana Madeira play Malcolm’s daughter Leah and girlfriend Tristan, respectively. And wait just a second, there’s also apparently a sixth child in Lois and Hal’s clan, as Vaughan Murrae plays their youngest, Kelly. So Dewey is now almost as much in the middle as Malcolm ever was. Time makes fools of us all.
Cloris Leachman, who played Lois’s mom Ida, sadly passed in 2021. Could she be the character whose funeral is glimpsed in the trailer? Or could another member of Malcolm’s ever-growing brood be on the way out? And an even bigger question, the biggest one possible about the revival: Will Bret Hart still be locking the Sharpshooter onto somebody in the opening credit sequence? And if so, will it still be the guy in the original credits, or somebody who’s, uh, not quite so infamous? April 10 can’t get here fast enough. Until then, watch the trailer for Malcolm In The Middle: Life’s Still Unfair below. (Yes, they got somebody to cover They Might Be Giants’ original theme song. It sounds fine.)
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