One Day at a Time (2017)

The series is so full of empathy for its characters, and its actors are so game to dive into any conversation or game, no matter how silly, that One Day at a Time becomes a joy to watch almost immediately.

The show that is, both as entertainment and as cultural commentary, exceptionally good. The revived One Day at a Time is fantastic in part because of all the things that will typically make a sitcom fantastic: sharp, witty writing; charming, multi-faceted characters; plot lines that, in their seamless synthesis of the wacky and the serious, suggest life in all its messy complexity.

Any viewer, regardless of political stripe, can [have] something to embrace in the Alvarez family, which is true of Lear’s oeuvre in general. By taking the classic family sitcom and making it feel vital and relevant, the show has invited us to connect to the truths we hold in common. Sometimes refreshing the familiar is precisely the entertainment we need.

This is the sort of series that makes difficult things seem easy, so easy that you often don’t realize how artful it is until you think back on it.

The new show, which updates the original’s single-mom plotline to follow a Cuban-American family in Los Angeles, is fresh, funny, and smart. ... The pilot episode alone is an exercise in using sitcom rhythms to further, not just flatten, the themes of the show.

Yes, One Day at a Time is old-school enough to shoot live, with multiple cameras, but it's not one of those joke-punchline sitcoms in which everyone pauses while the audience cheers. Instead, we feel as if we're watching real people, who may fight noisily but come back together out of love.

What could be predictable in its efforts to be topical, though, yields an abundance of pleasant surprises. That includes stretching out the party planning over the entire 13-episode season, and plenty of heartfelt moments, such as Penelope's tearful monologue about the strain of being a single mom, which is real and touching.

In short, there’s nothing fake about this multi-cam sitcom, and that’s more than enough to set it apart from the pack.

Royce and Kellett have turned a multi-cam sitcom into a great working-class comedy that’s as aspirational as it is realistic.

So far, muy bueno. Somewhat amazingly, this turns out to be a comedy whose time has come again.

Not perfect, but pretty darned good, and Moreno and Machado are a formidable comedy team indeed.

It preserves the domestically framed, socially engaged flavor of the original while mixing in new verve. And it has turned out very well: smart, fun, bighearted and less noisy and hectoring than Lear works of old could sometimes be.

It doesn't try to get too edgy (looking at you, Netflix's The Ranch), yet feels new all the same.

The new “One Day at a Time,” arriving on Friday, is lively and full of voice, a rare reboot that’s better than the original. It’s a throwback in the best sense, to an era of mainstream, socially engaged kitchen-sink sitcoms.

It feels even better that the new One Day is so good, and so vital--a throwback to an earlier era that also feels like it absolutely belongs in this one. ... Lydia winds up occupying a lot of the space that Schneider did in the original, which leaves the new hipster iteration a bit adrift. Grinnell is amiable and has his moments, but Schneider’s among the new version’s thinner characters.

Netflix's One Day at a Time is timely, soulful, consistently funny and, more than anything, blessed with great warmth.

Sounds pretty standard, but Lear and his producers, Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce, have given Machado a full-fledged role to play. She is completely believable as a middle-class mom and nurse who is not afraid to keep her kids in line.

When it comes to One Day at a Time, it’s best to go moment to moment. You might get hooked.

When it moves beyond easy cornball laughs to tackle tough issues like sexism, immigration and faith, this is as pungent as the current standard-bearer, CBS's Mom, and just as memorable. [2-15 Jan 2017, p.19]

The family is Cuban-American. The single mom, Penelope (the excellent Justina Machado of “Six Feet Under”), is ex-military. Hispanic culture is one of the show’s founts of humor--a painful one, in the case of Rita Moreno’s live-in grandma, Lydia. Otherwise, the show is recycled Norman Lear.

It’s warm, it’s goodhearted, it sends out positive messages. What it isn’t is funny.