Murphy Brown (2018)

Ford and Regalbuto aren’t given enough new things to do and Charles Kimbrough (who played Jim Dial) checks in long enough to let you know he’s still around. The mother/son angle is the show’s best. ... But it’s English’s smart writing that will keep them [viewers] around.

It’s funny and sweet and true to its roots, if, at times, a little obvious in its aims.

Murphy’s comeback is as reassuring and entertaining as it is timely.

Just as Murphy strives to place her journalistic integrity above the sensationalistic cravings of cable news, Murphy Brown would be well served to place the human connection between its characters above its mission to make the ugliness of our current reality funny.

Bergen still rattles off her lines as if she’s in a hurry to get to lunch, but the cast has chemistry to spare.

The ensemble has held together nicely in the two decades since. ... When it comes time to take aim at today’s political landscape, Murphy Brown misses its target. ... The revival’s strongest asset, actually, is Murphy’s relationship with her now-adult son Avery (Jake McDorman).

Because Murphy is in a preachy, sanctimonious state of mind, the show can seem smug. But when the episodes slow down and focus on Murphy's relationship with her son, or her internal struggle with the new world of journalism, there's a spark of the old magic.

This new “Murphy Brown” is it at its best when the show is most topical, when Murphy is at her most outspoken as Ms. Bergen still delivers a zinger-filled rant flawlessly. ... There’s an obvious fire-in-the-belly for these scenes, but they’re surrounded by a lot of dated sitcom cliches.

The new iteration gets off to an uneven start. There are some bright spots, like original cast members Bergen, Faith Ford (Corky), Joe Regalbuto (Frank) and Grant Shaud (Miles) slipping effortlessly back into their roles. And Jake McDorman is an excellent choice to play Murphy’s now-28-year-old son Avery. ... But what doesn’t work as well, at least in the first two episodes, is how topical the show is trying to be.

English and company's writing is fairly sharp and Bergen's barbed tongue is still impeccable. Some people are going to come away from these episodes wondering why Murphy Brown has become so political and those people are strange and never watched the original show. A more legitimate complaint, though, is that even with a production window reportedly tightened to allow the show to be more timely, Murphy Brown can't begin to keep up with the genuine news cycle and the best the show can do is be specific, which isn't the same as being current.

Technically, English and her writing staff have done everything they can to preserve the style of the “Murphy Brown” of yore. As such, these new episodes aren’t terrible, or even middling. But they’re not outstanding, either. ... The good news is, thanks to Bergen, that Murphy is still there even though the world around her has transformed. Bergen’s scenes with McDorman coax forth the character’s best qualities, lending a fresh chemistry to a show too heavily reliant on the nostalgia for the old Murphy Brown.

To paraphrase Murphy's line, there's a difference between good television and an attention-getting concept and title. "Murphy Brown" certainly possesses the latter, but only sporadically qualifies as the former.

The humor is safe, edgeless, and aimed at the soft middle of America, with the exception of the political jokes, which are very obvious--and/or intended to provide Ms. Bergen with a platform for progressive diatribes, which themselves feel more than a bit forced.

Alas, it’s the new material here that is the weakest aspect of the show.

The give-and-take living room scenes between Murphy and Avery so far are the best and most natural parts of this reboot. ... Murphy Brown, through these first three episodes, is aggressively polemic to the point of diminished returns.

Fans of the show, and they were legion, are going to be thrilled to have everyone back--a possible romance between Jim and Phyllis is a welcome story line--and that may be enough for some loyal viewers. But as great as it is to see the cast reassembled and to witness Brown’s righteous fury, the show’s rhythms are creaky and lines are stale by the time they make it to air.

On the positive side, the natural chemistry between the core cast members is still alive. ... That said, there’s still a lot that doesn’t quite work--or at least not yet--in this new Murphy-verse. The first episode is definitely the bumpiest of the three provided to critics, mainly because it’s fixated on setting up the circumstances that bring the FYI team back into each other’s orbit, and also on introducing a couple of additional new characters.

There is some pleasure in reconnecting with the old gang, but that eventually wears off. This revival feels so last century.

The characters gripe about aging and its indignities, with Corky Sherwood, the Miss America alumna (played by Faith Ford), unsettled by menopause, for instance. Her jokes about hot flashes are so dated that they seem plucked from the original show’s discarded drafts.

The only part of the new Murphy Brown that’s truly promising is the relationship between Murphy and her now-adult son, Avery, well-played by Jake McDorman. ... Their moments together have all the unforced chemistry and good humor that’s in short supply elsewhere on the show.

They’re not good. I didn’t laugh, the jokes are mostly easy potshots at Trump. ... Every so often, there’s a flash of the old show’s panache, or a line-reading that Bergen knocks dead, or a flicker of terror at how bad things have gotten and how bad they could still get, and the show comes to life, for a moment at least. It’s not good, but it’s comforting.

Though there's comedy potential in watching Murphy and her co-workers try and function in a media world that includes a conservative cable news channel whose spin apparently influences the president's policy ideas, we hardly need a sitcom to shove it down our throats. Murphy Brown doesn't demonstrate a light hand in subsequent episodes, either. ... So much lecturing. So few laughs.

Murphy Brown’s political chatter has been reduced to a lot of Trump jokes. The reboot is much more interested in the current state of the media. The first three episodes are unsatisfying sitcom disquisitions on Conundrums in Contemporary Media Coverage.

The show makes sure that Murphy soundly and satisfyingly wins their argument, but it undercuts the stakes. Maybe the best aspect of the new version is Murphy’s relationship with Avery. ... But somewhere in translation, “Murphy Brown” has become the kind of sitcom you laugh at, not because you can’t help it, but because you feel you should.

The revival, again run by Emmy-winning creator Diane English, is conscious that the world has changed in the 20 years since we last saw Murphy and friends. The problem is that Murphy Brown itself really hasn’t, and that does more to tarnish the real show’s legacy than anything else.

The show that once took specific news anchors--even ones from CBS!--to task now defaults to a portrait of “the Wolf network” so generic as to have no bite at all. Murphy, meanwhile, uses her easily won platform as a morning-show anchor to deliver absolutely nothing that will surprise anyone. ... The supporting characters, once quirky and helpful pals to Murphy, now seem drained.