When I interviewed this century’s most successful creator of sitcoms — Chuck Lorre — earlier this summer for a podcast, I asked if he had any new shows coming up. He immediately singled out Leanne, which premiered Thursday on Netflix. All 16 first-season episode are available now.
Lorre, who has worked with some pretty fair sitcom stars in the past (Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory; Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men; Roseanne), singled out Leanne Morgan as “just a brilliant, brilliant stand-up comedian.” She is also, right from the start of this series and especially as it goes along, a very good sitcom actress.
Set in Knoxville, Tennessee (where happily married Morgan in real life resides), and based on much of her stand up act, Leanne is a fairly conventional comedy. She plays a woman who is blindsided when her husband (played by Ryan Stiles from The Drew Carey Show and Whose Line is it Anyway) leaves her for another woman. Helping Leanne pick up the pieces is her twice-divorced sister (Kristen Johnston from 3rd Rock from the Sun).
Morgan and Johnston make an instant comedy team. Jayma Mays, not seen since Glee, recurrs as the nosey neighbourhood bitch who can’t want to tell all of Knoxville about the latest marital split. Veteran actors Celia Weston and Blake Clark plays Leanne’s parents, big fans of their son-in-law Bill (Stiles) who are kept in the dark about their daughter’s marital woes — a sitcom trope dating back many decades. Graham Rogers and Hannah Pilkes play Leanne’s grown children and are given less to do, although Pilkes makes the most of the physical shitick she gets to do in early episodes.
Pairing sitcom newcomer Morgan with seasoned players Stiles and Johnston seems smart given the lead’s lack of three-camera comedy experience. Unlike when Roseanne made the transition from stand-up to sitcom, however, Morgan does not appear to need two tugboats to steer her towards her marks. She has the chops and is as effective in the funny moments as she is in the more heartfelt.
As in her stand-up, the 59-year-old is also frank and fearless about the hormonal hell that is menopause. Venturing out to a bar to troll for eligible men with her more carnivorous sister, Leanne snaps into stretchy apparel that is not a flattering match for her real mom body — a brave moment of reality that no doubt provoked many viewing at home to nod in sympathy and recognition.
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Lorre tackled male menopause and the even more advanced nuisance of aging a few years back in his brilliant one-camera comedy The Kominsky Method. Morgan and Johnston tell the female side of the story, this time with a pronounced southern twist.
Here is what I didn’t like: Lorre’s comedies have been criticized in the past for seemingly amplifying the laugh track. Based on sitcom tapings I’ve attended, the reactions aren’t likely sweetened at all. Studio audiences, however, are primed and ready, and laughter is infectious. Still, there were several lines in the opening three episodes that seemed to get an over-reaction. To me they took away some of the power of the genuine laughs, as well as a few of the more touching moments.
This is the kind of criticsm, however, that probably drives Lorre nuts. Three is too small a sample to judge anything. If you watch the first three episodes of Cheers or The Big Bang Theory, for example, well, those shows simply haven’t hit their stride yet. As I kept watching the rest of the series, the audience response seemed less cranked and more natural.
SECOND UPDATE: I have seen all 16 episodes now and — as suggested above — the series gets better as it goes along. Recurring cast member Tim Daly (Wings) is sweetly effective as an FBI agent/potential love interest for Leanne. The chemistry between Morgan and Johnston is real and both seem to bring out the best in each other. Weston and Clark are a slow build as the parents but they do grow on you as the series goes on, especially in a surprise wedding episode. A few other guest stars add to the fun including one who found work in no time following the end of The Conners.
Lorre employs some familiar conventions in Leanne, including those conversations-in-the-car scenes used to good effect in Young Sheldon and Big Bang. Of the early episodes, one laugh-out-loud moment for me involved a CPAP sleep apnea machine in the bedroom. Are jokes told in a workout room funny? I get that this is a place where you might find these ladies but, so far, not as funny as in the Big Bang cafeteria.
One other quick observation: Leanne is a very conventional broadcast network sitcom shown on a streaming service (Netflix). It almost seems reverse engineered so that it can one day be sold back for a syndicated network run. The way television hops back and forth between platforms these days, who knows.
The effect of watching a 21-minute, network-length comedy on a streamer, however, is that these episodes seem to whiz by very quickly — now that we’re all used to watching 31- or 35-minute streamer-length half-hours.
The series, therefore, is an easy binge. We zipped through Leanne in four nights — and look forward to more.
