The surprising success of the new 'Night Court'

Plus: ‘Missing,’ firefighters, and lots of ‘Traitors’ [View this email online]( [Pop Culture Happy Hour]( by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when a [war movie came on strong](. It was a week when [the first big festival of 2023]( geared up. And it was the week when a lesson was learned about [talking about Rihanna](. Let's get to it. The surprising success of the new Night Court It wasn't the most obvious move, rebooting the sitcom Night Court. The original ran on NBC from 1984 to 1992, a solid and successful (nine-season!) show that was nonetheless overshadowed by even bigger and even more successful NBC mega-comedies of the time like Cheers and The Cosby Show. Night Court also had a stubbornly quirky, gleefully uneven quality that left room for farce and fantasy and absurdism -- this was a workplace show that believed in aliens. It also relied heavily on offbeat talents who didn't seem like retreads of characters from other shows -- particularly star Harry Anderson, a trained magician who had done several very funny guest spots on Cheers before playing Judge Harry Stone, and the trio of actors who played bailiffs: Richard Moll, Selma Diamond and Marsha Warfield. Anderson died a few years ago, so the reboot centers on Stone's (heretofore unknown) daughter Abby, played by Melissa Rauch, who also executive produces with her husband, Winston. Rauch played Bernadette on the enormous hit The Big Bang Theory, so she comes with plenty of sitcom bona fides. The one member of the original cast who has returned is John Larroquette, who won four Emmys playing horndog prosecutor Dan Fielding, but who is now playing Dan as an older and gentler -- and widowed -- defense attorney. India de Beaufort as Olivia, Kapil Talwakar as Neil, and Lacretta as Donna Gurgs in Night Court/NBC The state of broadcast television is one of smaller audiences, so it's no use directly comparing the new version of the show to the original -- the one that existed in an era where hit shows could draw 20 million viewers a week. But the seven-ish million viewers who tuned in this week for the first two episodes [constitute a rousing success]( for NBC. It's no Cheers -- and it's no Big Bang Theory either -- but it's a healthier launch than most new shows get on broadcast in this era. One [interesting theory]( is that the reboot may be appealing to both the original show's audience (we're still alive!) and Big Bang's audience, which, while not necessarily young, is probably younger on average than the people who watched Harry Anderson do magic tricks in 1987. Rauch worked her way up on Big Bang, from playing a core cast member's girlfriend to being a core cast member herself; it makes sense that some of that (huge) audience would follow her. But it also goes to show, once again, that there is life in the most traditional kind of multi-camera sitcom, years after it went out of fashion and began to be replaced by single-camera shows without live audiences (or laugh tracks). The jokes in this Night Court are quite broad, quite sitcom-y, and quite expected in many cases. (It's one of those shows where you sort of expect somebody to do the "[he's right behind me, isn't he?]( joke at any moment.) But they are jokes, they are simple, they pay off right away, and they do not rely on complicated premises. There is a goofiness to (new) Night Court that isn't at the oddball levels of the original, but it takes a while for that tone to develop, and for everyone involved to figure out how to control it. (And by the way, the original had its detractors who [truly, truly hated it]( so let us not become clouded by nostalgia.) It's hard to say how this will work, in the long run -- it does have some rough spots and growing pains. New bailiff Gurgs (played by theater actor Lacretta) is written awfully broadly, but is then also expected to play serious when a racial justice protest breaks out at the courthouse in the show's attempt to acknowledge inequities in the system. That tonal shift, while it's easy to understand why it felt necessary, isn't smooth. And Abby Stone herself is still a little bit of a cipher; we learn about some struggles she has, but some of her personal qualities (an overenthusiastic desire to help everyone) are told more than they are shown. But these kinds of problems are very common with pilots and the earliest episodes. (In fact, Big Bang's pilot is terrible -- and I say that as someone who often thought the show was funny later.) The odder a show is going to be, the more time it can take to settle down into that oddity. There's something here that has attracted the attention of more of an audience than a lot of us expected. And there's something here when it comes to the talent involved. Whether they can come up with anything as fundamentally weird as Harry Stone's left-field obsession with Mel Tormé, however, remains to be seen. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- We Recommend Dan Kois wrote a [smart and thoughtful piece]( at Slate about authors (like himself) whose books have been affected by the strike at HarperCollins. Friend of the show Jesse Thorn interviewed an up-and-coming actor named Tom Hanks over at [Bullseye this week](. If you can't get enough of M3GAN-mania, don't miss [Brittany Luse over at It's Been a Minute]( talking about the film. I meant to mention this a couple of weeks ago, but NPR's Chloe Veltman [had a really interesting story]( about firefighting in TV and film -- a topic that's probably going to remain timely. What We Did This Week Storm Reid stars as June in Missing/Screen Gems If you missed my essay about The Traitors in last week's newsletter, you can [read it online]( and you can also listen [to the episode]( I did this week with Stephen and Glen. We shared a [Code Switch episode]( about Dungeons & Dragons. Barrie Hardymon and Jourdain Searles [joined me to talk]( about the excellent drama Saint Omer. In a return of one of our favorite segments, Aisha, Stephen and Glen [met up with PCHH producer Candice Lim]( to name some of the pop culture people they're pulling for. I [wrote about the drama]( Missing, which is a sort-of follow-up to the fine John Cho film Searching, about a young woman using all her online skills to track down her vanished mother. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - Stephen Thompson: ["Unholy," by Sam Smith and Kim Petras]( - Reanna Cruz: [Skinamarink]( - Linda Holmes: [Peloton]( and [power zone training]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. [Find a Station]( --------------------------------------------------------------- [Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+](. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: [pchh@npr.org](mailto:pchh@npr.org?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback) Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can [sign up here](. Looking for more great content? 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