About A Boy

Solid writing and even sharper delivery (all without an intrusive laugh track) make this one of the season’s upper tier freshman comedies.

Overall, it’s a whole lot of premise-setting and foundation-building, but there’s enough here to be optimistic that this will be one more tick in the Good column of movie/TV synergy.

He [David Walton] and About a Boy are at its best in those disarming moments when Will lets down his guard and faces his grown-up responsibilities to teach Marcus how to enjoy the "total exuberance" of boyhood.

Both shows ["About a Boy" and "Growing Up Fisher"] are well written and actually quite engaging, but what is most interesting is the focus on the brighter side of splitting up. It’s a new genre of heartwarming family show.

Walton and Stockham are a seamless comedy team straight out of the gate. Their banter is more salty and cynical than sappy, but that’s how it gets to you.

Two sweet, funny, even poignant dramedies ["About a Boy" and "Growing up Fisher"] launch on NBC this weekend, both helping midseason feel richer than the meager offerings of the network's fall slate.

About a Boy is an utterly charming pilot, and almost certainly the most endearing half-hour NBC has developed in some time.

It's familiar enough territory, to be sure, yet it's covered in lively fashion, thanks mostly to Katims' breezy script and the delightful comic chemistry between Walton and young Stockham.

The show is funny, warm and bloody irresistible because of the care taken with creating characters who are multidimensional, vulnerable and credible.

An eccentric kid (Benjamin Stockham, “1600 Penn”) looking for a father figure finds one in his man-child neighbor, Will, played with the right amount of humor and heart by David Walton (“Bent”).

With Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights, Parenthood) as creator and producer, About a Boy could very well be the next universally appealing family show.

The cast is very good and if the central relationships are beefed up, it could be a keeper.

Driver's at her funniest in scenes where she and Marcus revel in their oddness, but "About a Boy" left me less sure of who Marcus is: He veers between painful naivete and canny opportunism with alarming speed.

It’s sweet but not syrupy. The pilot is so beautifully written and acted that it’s difficult to offer any kind of resistance, flaws and all.

When the writers nail the truisms--Madrigal’s character says he hasn’t seen a movie since 2008, and when Andy and his wife, Laurie (Annie Mumolo), get a couple of free hours to ostensibly have sex, they choose instead to catch up on Homeland--the series really clicks.... Where About a Boy suffers is when the storytelling gets a little too saccharine in the Will-Marcus friendship.

Will is so apparently happy that most of the pathos inherent in his arrested development will have to be supplied by the viewer. But there is uplift in the theme. A man whose life is passing him by has a chance to stop being useless and search for the origins of true joy--and a little child shall lead him. Even if there are not too many creative surprises here, it's a journey that never loses its appeal.

Produced by Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights," "Parenthood"), About a Boy is snappy with some well-observed one-liners, but it's a fairly conventional sitcom about an unconventional family.