Kirstie

Every so often, Alley extracts a solid laugh from an unexceptional joke. [9 Dec 2013, p.45]

Kirstie breaks no new ground, and it doesn’t try to. It walks a path we have enjoyed before.

Kirstie, with Ms. Alley mugging through her role as a kindhearted narcissist, is more like the Ford Focus. If it’s late and it’s all the rental company has left, you might as well take it.... Rhea Perlman is funny as Thelma, but the real revelation of Kirstie is Michael Richards as the shady chauffeur, Frank.

Alley, Perlman and Richards were far more gainfully employed on their previous classic comedy series. Now they’re in a sense doing dinner theater in Yuma but seemingly having a good time together nonetheless.

The expected jokes about Botox, nose jobs, and Alley's weight abound and are executed with old-school shticky competence, like a middling '90s sitcom that never was. [6 Dec 2013, p.74]

[The cast] throw themselves into Kirstie wholeheartedly, but it's hard not to feel that they're slumming.

It’s difficult to escape the show’s plasticky veneer and misplaced exuberance.

The comedy is predictable on every level, which is part of the TV Land formula.

The pilot has some funny moments, but after that, Kirstie starts to flatline.

The jokes, while occasionally funny, almost all feel reheated.

If viewers are drawn to the familiar faces of the cast members individually (Alley has a number of celebrity friends set to appear this year) and are happy to see them back on TV, then the show is a late-evening diversion at best. At worst--and more likely--it might end up as another genre struck off from Alley's valiant list of big efforts to return to the small screen.

Kirstie goes for the worst of both worlds, arraying itself in the worn-thin comfort of predictable humor and sloppy sentiment in the vain hope that it comes off as retro, or quaint or something.

A comedy so broad it might as well wander off the sides of the screen.

Sadly, Kirstie is all about cheese, including the moldy hook of the show's gimmicky premise.