Comedies aren't the genre of television most viewers typically flock to these days. The most popular shows of the moment are usually the limited series everyone's talking about, like Netflix's Adolescence, or the shows that push the envelope and leave you hanging on every line, like HBO's The White Lotus. But there's something to be said about settling in for some hearty laughs.
Hulu dropped all 10 episodes of its new sitcom Mid-Century Modern on March 28. It's not a murder mystery, it's not a thriller, there's no clues or theories you have to piece together. It's a sitcom about three gay men of a certain age who, in the wake of the death of the fourth member of their little group, decide to move in together in Palm Springs and do life as a chosen family.
In true sitcom fashion, it's not just Bunny (Nathan Lane), Jerry (Matt Bomer), and Arthur (Nathan Lee Graham) cohabitating and living it up as bachelors. They also share their space with Bunny's mother Sybil, played by the late and great Linda Lavin, inspiring some of the show's most delicious humor. Mid-Century Modern doesn't pretend to be anything other than exactly what we need right now.
Mid-Century Modern on Hulu review
Some reviews have been lightly criticizing the show for minor, unimportant infractions, like the title having nothing to do with the premise (when it's actually a clever play on words) or the setup relying too much on past classics. It's true, the series does have a striking resemblance to The Golden Girls, with Bomer often channeling Betty White's Rose, but I'm not sure how that could be a downside.
Others will try to tell you that the jokes are stale, that we have seen this all before, but if that's your takeaway from Mid-Century Modern, then that just tells me you aren't especially well-versed in sitcoms and don't fully understand the point of them. They aren't always meant to reinvent the wheel, and that's actually not possible for every sitcom to do. Isn't it enough to simply be funny?
In the streaming era, there's some sort of unfair desire for every single show to be different than the last, a completely new take on its genre, a remarkable achievement in creating this shiny new thing. God forbid a series, a multi-cam sitcom at that, celebrates its genre and allows its writers, cast, and audience to unplug their brains and have some fun for 22 minutes at a time.
That's all to say that Mid-Century Modern is an homage to a simpler time, when most (if not all) TV comedies were multi-cams with razor-sharp performers delivering biting one-liners and excellent physical comedy. It's a soft place to land if you have been leaning into nostalgic watches lately as a salve for a turbulent moment in time. It's a comeback to the purest form of the sitcom, a season of television that's bursting with life.
Now that I've gotten the "please be serious" portion of my review out of the way, let's get into what I loved about the series, and I won't cop out and say "everything" (even though I could and want to). First and foremost, Mid-Century Modern's greatness begins behind the camera with Will & Grace creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, executive producer Ryan Murphy, and director James Burrows, who's responsible for helming a vast majority of the greatest sitcoms of all time.
And then in front of the camera, the series strikes lightning in a bottle with four main cast members with so much instant chemistry you'd think this was season 4. Lane and Graham are right at home and devour these familiar sitcom beats, Lavin has a ball in her final role before her death (which is written into the end of the season), and it's nice to watch Bomer revel in joy after some of his more recent, heavier performances, like in Showtime's Fellow Travelers.
While some of the issues-based storytelling can be clunky (for example, the show doesn't really know what it wants to say about religious trauma), Mid-Century Modern takes some big swings for a first-season sitcom and lands nearly all of them. Through heart and humor, these characters battle grief, tackle aging, and rediscover themselves with a fresh start. We're so lucky to have a show with such a specific LGBTQ+ point of view on the air, one that wouldn't have been on 20 years ago.
If you go into Mid-Century Modern expecting one of the on-trend high-brow streaming comedies (some of which aren't even comedies by definition), then you're going to be disappointed. But I can't see how you would stay disappointed if you keep watching. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and maybe you'll even dance along to the various musical numbers. I love this show and want to continue to watch it grow, evolve, and find its full voice for many, many more seasons to come.
Watch Mid-Century Modern on Hulu.