Leanne, like any multi-camera sitcom worth its salt, features a superfluous laugh track. Netflix’s series opens with co-creator and star Leanne Morgan’s titular character sitting in a tidy kitchen, her face sullen as she sighs loudly to convey that she’s very upset. Cue the audience chuckling, even when there’s no need to add a joyful soundtrack to her emotional crisis. A relatively common trait on network TV, canned laughter feels dated today and is hardly ever used on streaming, where the usually darker or more provocative comedies don’t feel the need to remind viewers when to crack up. Once you get past this specific, antiquated hurdle, though, Leanne is quite entertaining. It’s one of two new shows this year whose appeal lies in the earnest attempt to revisit the traditional format through a relatively contemporary lens.
While the series counts sitcom vet Chuck Lorre as a creator/producer, it’s less Two And A Half Men or The Big Bang Theory and more Reba, with a sweet, warm, tough Southern woman steering the ship while dealing with a personal upheaval. If Reba McEntire’s eponymous figure was forced to cope with her husband of two decades leaving her for his dental hygienist, Leanne’s dilemma isn’t all that different. After 33 years of marriage, her partner leaves her for the young dentist he’s impregnated. Now Leanne is suddenly a single parent to two adult children, the older of whom is expecting his second kid. Season one charts the next chapter of Leanne’s life, complete with a new romance, a renewed sisterhood, and a reconnection with herself. The lighthearted, formulaic comedy goes down as easy as pie, with the surface-level similarities to Reba lending it a certain sentimental value.
Various platforms have tried to recreate multi-cam hits for the binge model by invoking nostalgia. Netflix itself started as early as 2015 with The Ranch, staging several That ’70s Show reunions on That ’90s Show,and in 2016 with Fuller House, although the latter shows felt too stuck in the past. However, in 2017, One Day At A Timestruck the right balance between paying homage to Norman Lear’s original work while crafting a story rooted in the present. Since then, Netflix has struggled to hit a similar sweet spot, offering only a string of disappointments in Pretty Smart, No Good Nick, Country Comfort, and Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!, among others. Leanne, which premiered in July, is a pleasant enough outlier.
In a rare move for streaming TV, Leanne delivers 16 installments, allowing the characters room to grow without letting their arc drag out. Loose ends tie up neatly, usually within the same half-hour episode. The humor coasts along with zingers about cults and TikTok, silly fights over church table desserts, age gap discourse, and commentary on menopause. (Some of these barbs, to be fair, may make you wince.) A talented supporting ensemble, including Kristen Johnson, Celia Watson, Blake Clark, Ryan Stiles, and Tim Daly, boosts the show even when the jokes might not land. If one of Reba‘s big anchors was her unexpected bond with her husband’s mistress (played by Melissa Peterman), then Leanne‘s is the soulful connection with her sibling, Carol (Johnson).
With the benefit of a longer run, Leanne eventually settles into a rhythm that makes you want to spend time with a slightly messy yet endearing fictional family. Ultimately, isn’t that why we’ve traditionally leaned on network TV multi-cams, choosing to return week after week for 30 minutes of low-stakes entertainment? Another recent example of this type of storytelling on a streaming platform is Hulu’s Mid-Century Modern, which premiered in March. Co-created by Will & Grace writers Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, the premise is simple enough: Three longtime gay pals—Bunny (Nathan Lane), Jerry (Matt Bomer), and Arthur (Nathan Lee Graham)—live together in a Palm Springs house with Bunny’s mom, navigating their respective love lives, health issues, and careers with each other’s help.
Once again, the charming trio will reel you in despite the laugh track and some wince-worthy humor, as will the reliable sitcom trick of welcoming a roster of guest stars (in this case, Pamela Adlon, Vanessa Bayer, Richard Kind, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Rhea Perlman, among others). Hulu has tried to tap into the multi-cam format before, most notably with the short-lived How I Met Your Father. That HIMYM spin-off showed some potential as it went on, but ultimately felt limited by trying to directly connect to the original.
Instead, Mid-Century Modern borrows The Golden Girls‘ formula and relies on the camaraderie between its trio for a fun time. MCM‘s goal is to depict that age is no barrier for meaningful, risqué, or silly comedy. The show doesn’t always succeed in this mission, infrequently resorting to caricaturish depictions of its central players. But the 10 half-hour episodes have a heartfelt, easygoing quality to them. They track how Bunny, Jerry, and Arthur—their clashing personalities notwithstanding—spend their days joking around, dancing in the living room, going on trips to Fire Island and Las Vegas, and, most amusing of all, keeping up with Bunny’s sassy mother (played by Linda Lavin).
Mid-Century Modern and Leanne boast a couple of meaty storylines, too. The former tackles grief in its penultimate outing to honor Lavin, who died last year. Meanwhile, Leanne mourns a lengthy relationship and deals with the fear of starting over as a single grandmother. Both shows center exclusively on mostly older protagonists contemplating their purpose in life or how to make the most of the time they have left yet deliver this serious subject matter in a breezy manner. That’s because neither comedies can nor want to escape the trope-heavy, stereotypical multi-cam structure. And by carrying on the spirit of the hits that came before, Leanne and Mid-Century Modern carve an interesting niche for themselves in the current streaming landscape.
