Turn Up Charlie

The slightness and lightness are soothing, in this quiet-storm remix of a sitcom pastiche. You feel that he has been wise enough to delight in the foolishness of Charlie’s situation, and you feel charmed to be let in on his boondoggle.

Turn Up Charlie, like Charlie himself, is admittedly a bit of a mess. As is the case with his 1997 hit “LUV,” there is some good stuff in the series. But if it returns, it might need a remix.

Idris Elba is a star. The least his TV show can do is reflect that.

What we have in Turn Up Charlie is an amiable, ambling, eagerly conventional, fairly superficial comedy, not hard to watch, although much longer than it needs to be.

While the show is breezy and mildly pleasant, in a less profligate streaming-TV environment the logical move would have been to turn down "Charlie."

As is, the series does many things, few of them well, despite containing all or most of the necessary ingredients. I suppose there’s a DJ analogy in there somewhere, but Turn Up Charlie can’t seem to find it, and neither can I.

A thoroughly mild, easily digestible sitcom that unfortunately dips into Disney Channel levels of saccharine too often to merit a recommendation. It’s a hard show to hate, but without Elba to anchor it, it’d be so lightweight, it’d disintegrate in the air like a dandelion.

There’s a dozen better versions of Turn Up Charlie, and, for all it offers its star, the one that exists simply isn’t worth hearing.

Elba is admirably committed to the drab, sentimental material (written by Georgia Lester, Victoria Asare-Archer, Laura Neal and Femi Oyeniran), and his portrayal is unfailingly gracious and warm. ... One problem, though: He’s just not funny.

Turn Up Charlie isn’t good, but it at least makes plausible the idea of a funnier or more laid-back Elba than we’re used to seeing.

When the series focuses on [Charlie and Gabby's] dynamic and Sara’s growing unease with her transient lifestyle, it’s perfectly fine and fun. ... But over its eight episodes, Turn Up Charlie keeps indulging its clumsier instincts. Its broad themes of learning to value others and balance ambition with family spill out in sporadic bursts. Its dialogue gets clumsier and clumsier. ... Its plots get lost in big set pieces and interpersonal DJ drama that’s nowhere near as interesting as the show wants it to be.

Clunky. ... Though it can be binge-watched painlessly enough (especially by those looking for Elba eye-candy), Turn Up Charlie is such a disassembled example of a “Welcome to my world” TV show that it ought to come with its own Allen wrench.

Turn Up Charlie isn't [a watchable series], mostly because of all the ridiculous conceits added to the premise, which effectively shift the lead of the series to a child actress written to be insanely annoying and who delivers on that in every scene she's in.

In other words, not even Turn Up Charlie can totally kill Elba’s natural charisma by bludgeoning it to death with a turntable. But as Charlie careens from one baffling decision to the next, it sure seems determined to try.