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This week's Tuesday's Overlooked TV is the NBC sitcom Grand.
Grand was a spoof of soap operas, revolving around three families of different economic classes but closely intertwined: the wealthy Weldons, middle class Smothsons, and working class Pasettis. The Weldons owned the Weldon Piano Works (hence the series title) for which the Smithsons worked; single mother Janice Pasetti was the Weldon's cleaning woman.
Similar to previous and more successful sitcom Soap, Grand satirized the usual soap operas tropes while presenting its own story and unique characters, and not all material was comedic. The series infused its characters with heart and weren't necessarily cardboard cutout soap characters. Unfortunately, poor network management kept the show from developing any momentum with viewers, even though it was a critical hit. The show debuted as a midseason replacement in the winter of 1990 and was canceled right before the end of the calendar year.
The series has been available on DVD before but doesn't appear to be in print now. Online footage is virtually nonexistant, but here is the series theme song. Thanks!
4 comments:
I think it might've been spurred in part by the British series BRASS, as well...I certainly liked both, for similar reasons.
I remember watching Grand sporadically, mostly because NBC made it really, really hard to do so with any regularity. Great theme song, though... the season one credits feature the cast lip-syncing it, and that's probably the image(s) of the series that remain with me the most.
Hell of a cast, too.
Todd: I'm always surprised at how many American sitcoms are based on British counterparts (last week's DEAR JOHN yet another example).
Bill: That's the first thing I think of regarding this series as well. I thought for sure I'd find that version on the Web, but alas...
It goes both ways...certainly COUPLING probably wouldn't've existed without FRIENDS, even if COUPLING was far wittier (if not much more mature). And, of course, the writer/producer duo from COUPLING have since gone onto some success with such projects as DOCTOR WHO and SHERLOCK (inspiring US variations)...
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