CBS’s “unlikely hit” Ghosts wasn’t as unlikely as you think
On paper, this adaptation of a U.K. sitcom was a huge risk; in practice, it’s hiding a familiar (and effective) sitcom structure
TV Features Ghosts
If you were to go back five years and tell me that CBS’ big new comedy was a single-camera adaptation of a British series about a woman—Rose McIver’s Sam, who can see ghosts—opening a bed and breakfast with her husband while managing the spectral residents that came with her inherited mansion, I would have stopped you at “single-camera” and said you were lying.
Watching Ghosts grow into a legitimate hit for CBS, both as a linear broadcast ratings success and the number one streaming comedy on Paramount+, has been a distinctly strange phenomenon. It was supposed to be that cult show you can’t believe is on CBS; instead, it’s the network’s second-biggest comedy, and a disruptive moment in our understanding of how the forms of the television sitcom are being deployed on broadcast television’s most risk-averse network.
Variety’s Michael Schneider calls Ghosts CBS’s “unlikeliest comedy hit in recent… history,” and he’s not wrong on paper. CBS’ reliance on multi-camera sitcoms has made any single-camera comedy feel like a lost cause—the only two shows that have lasted more than a single season are Life In Pieces, which was canceled after only three, and Young Sheldon, a spin-off of its biggest multi-camera success. The network also has almost no history of producing genre comedies, and while there’s a handful of genre dramas in its past the supernatural-tinged Evil was conspicuously shuffled off the network to Paramount+ for its second season. It’s therefore logical to consider Ghosts something of a risk for the conservative-minded CBS, making the show’s success a seeming turning point in the network’s comedy brand.
However, while we have been trained to think of single-camera as a disruptive format choice (especially at CBS) and genre as a limitation on a show’s audience, Ghosts’ success stems from the fact it isn’t treating them this way. While the show is pulling its template from the British version, it differs in its need to tell stories at a vastly different pace—the first season of the CBS version will equal the total number of episodes the BBC version has made across three. But what showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman seemingly realized when adapting the series was that even though the first impressions of Ghosts might seem out of place on CBS, its bones are something that broadcast sitcoms have always relied on: a diverse set of characters in a dynamic situation easily adaptable into the careful blend of mirth and pathos a sitcom needs to build a connection with its audience.
The ghosts of Ghosts, who are trapped in the land of the living after dying at the mansion, are the perfect engine for a traditional sitcom. They’re broad enough as personalities to be played for simple comic relief, whether alone or as a group, and there are enough of them that you can create a large number of different groupings to vary the tone of a given scene or episode. They’re one-dimensional when introduced in the pilot, and the fact they’re frozen in time means some of those jokes—like the eternally pantsless Trevor—can be relied upon throughout the show’s run. The fact of their existence also creates a fun dynamic between Sam and her husband Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), as only the former can communicate with them, and yet the latter is still always present, and forced to just act like they’re listening and go about his day.
But the ghosts are also characters who are being changed by their access to a “living” to expand their worldview. As they grow in Sam’s presence, we’re pushed to ask the same set of questions for each: how they died, how they lived, and how their perspective on life/death has changed in their endless purgatory. In “Pete’s Wife,” the slain scoutmaster (Richie Moriarty) gets closure with his wife, who he learns was cheating on him with his best friend. And in “Alberta’s Fan,” the Prohibition-era jazz singer (Danielle Pinnock) is thrilled to have a fan show up at the mansion to finally bring her the fame she deserves; he turns out to be a little too obsessive, but he also confirms her suspicion she was poisoned. Despite being trapped in this one location, there is a natural structure to the ghosts’ backstories that the show has deployed intelligently, understanding that their circumstances offer an emotional range most sitcoms would die for.
At the same time, though, the ghosts can also be engines for comic chaos, or odd couple pairings: as Pete is coming to terms with how his marriage ended, the two oldest ghosts—Native American Sasappis (Román Zaragoza) and viking Thorfinn (Devan Chandler Long)—are feuding over one binge-watching their favorite reality show without the other. This flexibility comes from the choice to view the supernatural not as the central focus of Ghosts, but rather as a tool at its disposal. While there are some existential questions about why some ghosts ascend and others don’t, the show mostly uses the ghosts and their powers much as sitcoms like I Dream Of Jeannie and Bewitched used magic: a plug-and-play story generator, with the benefit of having no set rules to limit the possibilities.
Accordingly, the show can just keep accumulating new wrinkles to ghostdom as the stories dictate. We learn kids can see ghosts so that we can pick up some touching backstory of Thorfinn having befriended Sam’s distant (and uptight) relative Hetty as a child without her remembering. We learn that ghosts can sometimes possess humans so that the writers can deploy the always-welcome body-swap trope and let Jay channel Rebecca Wisocky’s haughty energy as Hetty for much of an episode. When the idea of having Hetty’s robber baron husband reappear is too good to turn down, you can just create a vault that traps ghosts inside, have Matt Walsh emerge from it, and then send him to hell to add one more possible wrinkle into the ghosts’ future. And lest Brandon Scott Jones’ closeted revolutionary Isaac not have a proper romantic foil, the show can just have Sam stumble upon a British barracks on the property, because there can be ghosts anywhere (and Isaac happens to have accidentally killed the redcoat he had his eye on).
In practice, Ghosts’ supernatural elements aren’t there to make it different from a “traditional” sitcom: they’re there to give it more flexibility in telling a much wider range of still fairly traditional stories. Its use of single-camera is similarly utilitarian: You could technically make a multi-camera version of this show purely in terms of its style of humor, but it would be impractical from a visual effects perspective, and also limiting in terms of the show’s ability to use flashbacks or visit a wider range of locations (like Sam’s trip to visit her mom’s ghost at the restaurant where she died). Context may lead us to read the show’s format as an effort to separate Ghosts from the rest of the CBS lineup, but the show is still invested in the type of solid sitcom structure and character work that defines the network’s broad-appeal comedy brand.
Returning from a winter hiatus with the February 24 episode, “Ghostwriter,” Ghosts remains disinterested in reinventing the wheel: Sam and Jay are building a website for their bed and breakfast, and the show weaves the different ghosts in and out of the story, centering on Sasappis as he talks about his own creative struggles as a Lenape storyteller. The episode juggles the A-story about the website with a B-story about hippie cultist Flower pushing against the misogyny of Pete preferring to watch basketball with Jay—who cannot see or hear him—instead of her, and the whole thing just clicks into place.
By the time all the ghosts come together to let Sasappis finally tell his story, the episode delivers the kind of warm fuzzies that CBS is delivering with Young Sheldon beforehand, making you wonder how anyone could possibly think this show was “risky.” And frankly, to highlight the fact it isn’t breaking new ground for CBS could be seen as a disincentive to an audience that would only consider watching it because it’s not another multi-camera sitcom.
But the reason Ghosts has become an “unexpected’ hit is its ability to harness the tools of a more modern sitcom to deliver something that still gives that warm, familiar feeling CBS’ core audience expects: It may not be as groundbreaking as it seems on paper, but its skillful navigation of our sitcom moment is breaking new ground for CBS nonetheless.
106 Comments
Still weird to cast a couple with such opposite chemistry they may as well be siblings.
It’s cute, and I like it.
This was my first draft.
I hope you don’t get paid by the word if that was the case.
After reading skimming the review, I’m guessing Myles gets paid by the word. I figured we’d give it a try and have been pleasantly surprised. It is a very traditional sitcom, which is why it’s on CBS, which seems to only have room for shows that aim for the middle of the road (and authoritarian worship).
This show has me curious. Is it more like your standard, ole times. sitcom or does it have some elements of cleverness unit? It, is this more if a CBS style sitcom or an NBC one?
Not terribly deep or clever, so more CBS, but I agree with capitan. It’s a harmless diversion with nice characters that, since it is on CBS, will probably run for 8 seasons.
Don’t cost nuthin’.But the first 1/2 of the pilot is very tedious.
More standard, ole time. With some elements of clever. Worth watching. But I wouldn’t feel a hole in my life if it disappeared.
Rose McIver has built up enough goodwill from her previous work that I will watch her in anything. This show is cute and has decent roots as a UK transplant.
Cue all of the “The UK ‘Ghosts’ is way better’ comments … 3-2-1 … I watch both and both are A-OK. It’s interesting to watch for the differences. Both make me laugh. Both tug at the heartstrings; the US version moreso. But they’re essentially the same quality of writing and production.
I like and watch both. I do like some characters better in each version of the show … and the basement dwellers are way funnier in the British version. I think the CBS version has deviated enough from the original that it can start to become its own show now.
The plague victims and the caveman are the best.
I mean, it just is. You can’t beat the passion the writer/performers bring to it. You can’t replicate the chemistry of a group that has been working together for a decade overnight.
I am meaning to catch up on thisRose McIver was so funny & adorable on iZombie She made a short film, “Coward,” written & directed by Karen Gillan, that I want to see, that is kind of hard to find https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4520840/
There’s a Rose McIver-Karen Gillan collaboration!? Why did I not know about this!?[well, because it’s a hard-to-find short film, obviously, but the rhetorical hyperbole stands]
My husband and I loved the British version, got about 5 min into the American version and turned it off. The jokes were just so broad and awful, aping things that were in the British version – but worse.
You should give it more than one episode. While I like specific ghosts from each series, once CBS started to deviate from the British material, it got better (because I hadn’t already seen the jokes).
Who gives up on a show after 5 minutes? I have watched some pretty terrible shows and I at least finish the first episode or two before making a decision. Hell, one of my favorite comedies, Parks and Recreation, I hated the first season so much because it was poorly written and had very little direction
I’m so with you on Parks and Rec. It didn’t find its voice until the penguin episode in the second season.
Snooty assholes who do it just so they can go on a forum and haughtily declare. “I like the British version” as they sniff their own ass
Who criticizes the way others choose to view media, or spend their limited time on earth, for that matter? I also didn’t love Parks and Rec right away but I didn’t find it obnoxious enough to turn off before it got good. This was obnoxious.
I gave up on Fairview after about 2 minutes.
“Who gives up on a show after 5 minutes?”
pedantic people…
Huh, maybe I should give Parks another look. I hated the first season…
I’ve tried twice, looking in on two different episodes, and in both cases disliked the US version as quickly as liking the original.
Also, I almost puked at first taste of Marmite, so didn’t really feel like eating more to see if it got better.
Don’t give it more than one episode, it gets even more grating.
Speaking anecdotally, I showed my students the pilot for an in-class exercise on network testing and they were pretty lukewarm on it, but I caught up on a few episodes with my parents (who aren’t comedy people) and they were pretty hooked into the flow of the piece at that point.
Had any of you seen the English version or were you going in cold?
Question: Does that matter?Answer: No.
It actually does. I made the mistake of watching the British version first, which I now adore, and find the American version almost impossible to enjoy now because of it. But I’m sure the American version is great if you don’t have anything to compare it to!
I had watched the British original first. That’s why some of the early episodes of the CBS version weren’t as funny for me. Again though … they’ve moved away from the British storylines and have even added some new stuff (some works, some doesn’t) … but I’m all in for both shows.
How dumb, esp if you were excited about checking it out. The first 1/2 of the pilot was a bit tedious, but it’s blossoming nicely.
To be fair, there is a precedent of an American remake needing a few eps to find its own voice before developing into a classic of its own. Some shows need a few eps to break in; in fact, it’s probably rarer to find shows, especially comedies, that was in a A-game groove from the start.
I bailed because there were WAY too many bottom-of-the-barrel gay jokes about the Revolutionary War guy.
As a gay guy I… haven’t found that remotely true. Not that I’d call the depiction of him as progressive or even all that modern, but… (They dropped most of the “Oh, it’s obvious everyone knows he’s gay but him” shtick sooner, it seems to me, than the UK one to its benefit).
I think the whole point of Isaac’s character is to show how much times have changed. While I doubt anyone bought Isaac’s ruse during the Revolution, it was important to maintain the charade if he wanted to maintain his place in society. Few people, if any, would care today.
My girlfriend and I loved the British version and scoffed at the idea of the American version. We did not like the US version until around episode 4, and now we love it more than the original.
i mean, isn’t it also more likely that the kind of viewership a ‘cult show’ would have gotten 15 years ago are now big numbers?like i look at something like rick and morty, which by all accounts should be an invader zim style cult show, and doesn’t get particularly great ratings (compared to what great ratings used to be), but is arguably one of the most famous shows on tv.
I get what you’re saying, but Rick and Morty is not really the best analogue here: it’s on cable, where niche shows are meant to live, and where cult-like viewership can manifest in ways that far outstrip linear ratings performance.And while it’s true that Ghosts’ audience is miniscule compared to what even a cult hit would have been drawing a decade ago, the fact it’s pacing with Young Sheldon means that its relative success to the rest of TV remains surprising. It can’t just be drawing a cult audience and performing at this level in a linear broadcast context.
fair enough!
“Great” is relative. New episodes still get 3-4 times what anything else on Cartoon Network or Adult Swim get, aside from the Harry Potter game show a while back.
Rick and Morty doesnt get huge viewership on TV when it first airs….but once you add all the viewers for all the airings of that episode it starts looking up. And Adult Swim also releases every episode in full for free, and its also on Hulu and HBO Max. Overall Rick & Morty is likely pulling in numbers similar to most primetime shows on networks.
It’s a fun show, which I like better than the original (it’s an opinion; put down the pitchforks, Charlotte Ritchie fans) and I’m delighted that Rose McIver found her way off the CW.Personally, I can’t even sit through most multi-cam sitcoms. They’re usually poorly written, and the mechanics of “saying something not particularly funny, then stand and wait for the audience to laugh on command” just leaves me cold.
Yeah I feel the same about multi-camera sitcoms. Outside of a select few that I have enjoyed (Big Bang Theory, Friends, and the first half of Two and a Half Men), they are mostly poorly written and the cast cant come over that. Hell, even a good chunk of Big Bang Theory and Friends are so poorly written, but the cast is strong enough to overcome much of that lazy writing or direction
What terrible taste. The original destroys this. Farnaby alone!
I really enjoy both, which is a bit of a cop-out, but true nonetheless.
Samesies.
I like the American ghosts better than the UK, but I like the UK humans better than the Americans. Both are perfectly good sitcoms though, each with their own unique take of local history (aside from the scout master anyway).
and I’m delighted that Rose McIver found her way off the CW.what, you weren’t impressed by the webseries-quality production towards the end of iZombie?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. There were only ever 2 seasons of iZombie.But yes, it’s great to see that someone else has given her a job. She’s a good actress, and good at comedy.
Some of the characters in the British version are irreplaceable (sorry, the scoutmaster was perfect), but this one is finding its own way slowly but surely. They’re finally getting to the point where they’re comfortable letting episodes happen that focus on a few of the ghosts. Early on it was everyone competing for a line, and I get that for an ensemble this big you have to make sure people aren’t forgotten, but it didn’t allow for a lot of character development.
I’ve actually had a lot of questions about how the contracts are written on the ghosts, in terms of sitting out entire episodes: there’s a real cross-section of budget/COVID/etc. operating there. But I agree that the more they bi-sect the group the stronger it becomes.
it is interesting how not every episode has all the Ghosts. Thorfin should always be around though!!!
Yeah, Thorfinn is my favorite ghost across both versions of the show.
In this context it’s worth noting that the BBC version’s ghosts are basically the Horrible Histories cast, and have been working together for a decade or more, which has to help from the point of view of rotation and such.
I enjoy this show far more than I expected. If they could steal the caveman from the British version, it would be even better.
And replace Thorfinn? No, Thorfinn too good to remove
Or, to put it simpler, it succeeds because it’s funny.
BREAKING: Old People Still Watch Television.
C’mon, *two* old-baiting comments? Father Time comes for us all, young ‘un.
Oh no, I’m old too, unfortunately.
the supernatural-tinged Evil was conspicuously shuffled off the network to Paramount+ for its second season.counterpoint: Evil is a deeply weird show about creepy shit happening while two of its leads have enormous sexual tension, so it’s been a net positive that they could drop “fuck”s while being sexier and scarier.
S1 of Evil was great but once it got off CBS and got to say fuck, it became INCREDIBLE.
Oh, nobody is claiming that this wasn’t a net positive development for the show: just pointing out that CBS’ choice to abandon it showed they aren’t really in the genre business.
Yes, being given fewer content constraints and longer runtimes probably felt like being abandoned, especially in 2022 when linear tv is obviously the future and streaming is where shows go to die.
It was always such a weird fit for CBS. I mean, I get that the creators have pretty strong CBS ties via The Good Wife. It’s been nice that going to streaming let them even more off the leash than they already were, I just hope they get to keep going.
Season two of Evil was one of the most fun I had watching TV last year. Every Sunday night I was like, “okay, what the hell am I going to see this time?” and it was always weird, creepy, spooky, or incredibly hot.
It feels like there are too many ghosts which means the plot is spread a bit thin. I like it a lot, though.
The first 3 episodes were basically carbon copies of the BBC version – which I absolutely adore – but once it diverged from it, it became so good! I love them both almost equally now (Thorfinn please sing me lullabies to sleep, too).
From what I’ve seen so far the US version plays the heart strings more. Pete’s visit from family was played way better than Pat’s if you like more emotion and feeling.
Yeah, when I was reading summaries of the U.K. series in writing this I was struck by how that story in particular seemed to play out very differently.
I can’t believe they cancelled Matlock for this. Bring back Matlock!
“Old Man Yells At Cloud”
This one has been sitting on our DVR to fulfill the need for light-hearted easy watching comedy while we make or eat dinner. It sounds like that is pretty much what it is for, which suits out needs perfectly.
“bones are something that broadcast sitcoms have always relied on: a diverse set of characters in a dynamic situation easily adaptable into the careful blend of mirth and pathos a sitcom needs to build a connection with its audience.”From Mary Tyler Moore, to All-in-the-Family, to Cheers, to Herman’s Head, to Friends, to The Office. . . Formula for sitcom is give people who otherwise wouldn’t hang out together a reason to hang out together, and use their diverse outlooks to hang your jokes on.The formula fails or succeeds on the quality of the jokes and the incisiveness of the characterizations, not the format.
Has it really been that long since IZombie or are they intentionally making Rose McIver looking like a middle age suburban mom?
Hey so I just checked the internet and it says here that you are old.
I admit, I didn’t realize until now that it was seen as an unexpected hit. The UK version for the most part is VERY traditional sitcom in form, and this has been true of the remake (and, for the most part, I like both a lot!)
I just wonder what happened to the headless ghost in the first episode…
Maybe he got sucked off!
The interviews that the cast did for the most recent episode seemed to suggest their tip sheet on how to hint at the rest of the season involved Crash returning in some capacity.
I actually just had to look up who Crash could be–not actually paying attention to which of my posts you were referring to and, yeah, Crash makes sense… Anyway–I hope so, I hate TV shows that drop things like that (though of course with episodic TV characters are dropped all the time, especially after the pilot)
I didn’t know there was a US remake of this, and it being a hit feels weird, but it being an ‘unexpected’ hit feels weirder. I haven’t seen the UK version, largely because by all accounts it’s VERY conventional comedy. And given that the US is famous for its supernatural sitcoms, I’d have assumed it would be seen as even more looking-for-a-mass-audience than it is over here.[I’m reliably informed by a young relative (who enjoys US sitcoms a lot) that the first season of the original is great, but that the second season is a big step down. But her aesthetic judgments are still… unreliable… so that hadn’t persuaded me to watch it. But everyone here seems to love it, so maybe I should give it a go…]
I’m a Brit and was highly sceptical about a US version of Ghosts, but I am enjoying it a lot. It took the best of the British show – the variety of great characters and that silly and funny premise and gave it a US twist, with the ghosts being American archetypes just like the U.K. ones. The style of humour is actually very similar to the U.K. version, but the CBS show also benefits from seeing what worked best across the first 2 series of the Brit show. Just enough delving into the ghosts back stories, a vague premise of the living couple renovating the house and trying to start a B&B and just a fun bunch of characters. However unlike, say The Office which was successful as a U.K. show and the US version but ended up being very very different shows, The US and U.K. Ghosts are really very very similar, but just that regional adaptation to appeal to the different audiences.
Are they airing the US show in the UK? Is Paramount+ available in the UK?
While there’s a long list of American adaptations of British sitcoms that became hits, there’s an even longer list of ones that stunk. Fortunately, Ghosts is on the list of adaptations that work.The goods ones took the nugget of the British concept and put an American spin on it. All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Veep, and The Office are prime examples. On the flip side, there have been three failed attempts to make U.S. versions of Fawlty Towers, two failed attempts at Absolutely Fabulous, and one each for Dad’s Army, Are You Being Served?, and The Vicar of Dibley. I think those adaptations were doomed from the start—the originals were uniquely British.
Don’t forget the American version of Coupling, which had a word-for-word identical script and was canceled before it made it out of its final commercial break.
I assume we don’t even talk about this:
And rightfully so.Anyone considering rebooting Red Dwarf should be hugged by a despair squid and summarily flushed out of an airlock.
They had two bites at that cherry, too.
Jesus, it’s a fucking sitcom not Shakespeare. Are they paying you by the word? Anyway I much prefer the original BBC version. You can catch it on HBO if so inclined.
The familiar part is why is sucks. So dated and boring. Tried the British one when it first came out, pretty much garbage. Gave this one a quick glance to see it’s the same.
I love the original version , and the US version is growing on me , but…Hetty ..her whole anti-Irish thing is perfectly fine in a US sitcom , as Irish people are beloved nowadays mostly especially in the US ,and it was a historical thing , and allows her character to be shown as ‘racist because of her era ’ without actually being racist but..Its nearly unwatchable for me , as while things are fine now , I’m just old enough to remember that kind of prejudice happening in Britain *, so having someone rush out and lambast a worker for having an Irish name for example is played for laughs , but for me its ..uncomfortable. (I mean I’m not the intended audience so I shouldn’t really complain I guess ). I got as far as the possession episode and just stopped there .So I kind of hope they maybe eventually have her deal with it and learn (*I dealt with a little bit of it as a kid over for a summer in the 80s , but my dad and grandparents who went over to work for a few years in the 50s dealt with a lot of abuse for being from Ireland)
I appreciate this perspective: it’s a reminder that the process of localization changes how a show travels, sometimes in ways that an ethnocentric U.S. perspective would definitely miss.I will say that while Hetty certainly continues to have feelings about Ireland, there’s an episode involving her robber baron husband that does move the character forward GENERALLY if not specifically on that issue, and certainly implies that they don’t intend to have her live in that place entirely.
As someone growing up in a (part-)Irish family in England during the later stages of the Troubles… yeah. Irish jokes in this country annoy me, but US treatment of Irishness for comedy infuriates me. It’s kind of like watching someone play with matches, when you know they know you house just burned down. English and Irish people know what the joke is, and what the context of the joke is, and we can variously be intentionally offensive, or ironically pseudo-offensive for several reasons (some good some bad), or self-deprecating or reappropriative and so on; Americans don’t even seem to understand the real nature of the joke. It’s not their joke to make. It’s like the annoying kid who just repeats the jokes they heard another kid tell, but you can tell they don’t really know why it’s funny.[this is also true of serious things. I can to at least some extent respect the legitimacy of the Irish people you meet online who regurgitate nationalist hatespeech – I know my grandparents would be spinning in their graves at the thought of these incel teenage eejits with their IRA-cosplay who want to reboot the Troubles, but at least they’re playing with matches in their own fucking house. But a lot of the worst of them actually turn out to be Americans in dress-up, and they seriously piss me off. Oh, right, yeah, your four-times-great-grandfather got on a boat in Queenstown so you TOTALLY have an important opinion about why Ireland needs to have another civil war to kill all the British pigs, yeah, thanks, we’ll bear that in mind. [I was going to joke about them waving the starry plough outside their suburban house in Ohio, but I don’t think most of them would even know what that was].]
Umm. Irish jokes and jokes about bigotry against those of Irish descent in the US, are just that (Irish car bombs aside). The show is depicting good old-fashioned American discrimination. They are referencing the historical bigotry against Irish immigrants. It has nothing to do with the Troubles or the relationship of the English to the Irish.
It took a little while for the characters to show who they are, and now they are developing. There’s some fun writing and some very nice acting. I don’t really care what happened in the UK version, but I hope people enjoyed it. This is gentle fun.
The UK version was also a bit of a surprise hit. Its subject matter, production style and even its scheduling just screamed “mediocre”. I was shocked when I finally watched an episode and found it extremely funny.
Any time there’s a decent comedy on one of the networks, I only expect it to last a season. While the boring as hell spinoffs like NCIS Butte or Chicago: Dog Catcher just keep expanding or getting renewed.
This is a very fine and thorough analysis of a wonderful show. We enjoyed the BBC version and wondered how CBS would make it worse but instead, they made it better. For example, in the episode with Pete’s wife (who is Mrs. Maisel’s ex-mother-in-law) the US version added Pete’s grandchild (right?) which only made the episode more emotional.
I admit to skipping this one, almost entirely because every time CBS gets a show that I find novel enough to get invested in (anyone else remember The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams and a cavalcade of ringers? Or BrainDead with Mary Elizabeth Winstead vs. brain-eating bugs taking over the U.S. government?) it is quickly canceled. But I utterly adored Rose McIver in iZombie, so I’m glad to hear her show is a hit! Maybe I’ll get around to it someday.
Now that their top two sit-coms are single-cam, they will hopefully invest in them more. I miss Life In Pieces
Fan of the British version, thought the US version really grew into itself. The way that they are keeping the structure of a traditional ‘US TV season’ is the worst thing about this. Please make all the episodes/show all the episodes. One a week is fine, but the hiatus (hiatii?) don’t work anymore.