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<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Melanie Munk, Features Editor munk@heraldnet.com   Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 Savvy pros Grammer, Heaton anchor 2 new sitcoms By Robert Lloyd Los Angeles Times HOLLYWOOD — Patricia Heaton and Kelsey Grammer, who last adventured into situation comedy opposite each other in Fox’s 2007 battling-anchors sitcom, “Back to You,” returned to prime time Wednesday night, heading their own individual series. Hers is called “The Middle”; his is named “Hank.” Both are family comedies on ABC. Neither show is destined for the sitcom hall of fame, but each represents, if not quite the triumph of old-school professionalism, at the very least its durability. In “Hank,” created by “Everybody Loves Raymond” vet Tucker Cawley, Grammer plays the fired chief executive of a sporting goods chain who, suddenly broke, moves his family back to River Bend, Va., where he opened his first store and met his wife, Tilly (Melinda McGraw, from last season’s “Mad Men”). “It’s going to take a lot more than a hostile takeover and losing all our savings to get me down,” Hank says. Notwithstanding the regular-guy name, Hank is only a slight variation on the puffed-up yet basically good-hearted character Grammer has played almost exclusively as long as we’ve known him, Frasier Crane. “Can’t we all pull together as a family and do as I say?” he cries in frustration. Hank’s kids include the familiar difficult daughter (Jordan Hinson) and the familiar slightly strange son (Nathan Gamble). There’s nothing here you couldn’t imagine from the premise, but there’s also nothing wrong with what’s here: McGraw is a good foil for Grammer, and Grammer is good at what he does. In “The Middle” — as in middle-aged, middle class and Middle West — Heaton’s family is also feeling the pinch: “I told you you can’t put wet things in the dryer anymore,” announces Heaton’s Frankie Heck, a phrase that instantly encapsulates their dollar-short, dryer-short life. Set in the fictional burg of Orson, Ind., “proud home of Little Betty snack cakes, demolition derby for the homeless and the world’s largest polyurethane cow,” the series owes some things stylistically to “Malcolm in the Middle.” This includes the conception of the younger Hecks: an older son (Charlie McDermott) who embodies the special lassitude of the 15-year-old; a daughter (Eden Sher) whose enthusiasm is matched only by her ineptitude; and a “clinically quirky” small child (Atticus Shaffer), who repeats certain words to himself in a spooky whisper. As Frankie’s husband, Neil Flynn makes tactlessness nearly charming. The pilot, written by executive producers DeAnn Heline and Eileen Heisler (“Murphy Brown” and “How I Met Your Mother”), begins and ends with Frankie in a “superwoman” costume trying to get a cell-phone signal on a long, straight, empty country road. Like “Hank,” “The Middle” is no Next New Thing; indeed, both shows argue for the opposite, for the pleasures of the known, of craft and of watching people who know what they’re doing do it. READER COMMENTS Be the first to comment. You must be a registered user and verify your e-mail address to post comments to blogs or articles on HeraldNet. To register, click here. To read other terms and conditions, click here. Log out

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