Friday, January 13, 2023

Night Court reopens. The potential is there

 40 years ago, The A-Team kickstarted NBC's ratings turnaround in primetime. A year later, another mid-season replacement, Night Court, found the jackpot as well, and actually outlasted A-Team by 5 years.

31 years after the original series' conclusion, Night Court is reopening for business.

Melissa Rauch (ex-The Big Bang Theory) has the lead as Abby Stone, daughter of the late Judge Harry Stone (Harry Anderson, who passed away well after the original series ended). This will call into question whether or not Harry finally settled down with public defender Christine Sullivan (Markie Post, ex-The Fall Guy, Hearts Afire). That will certainly be addressed when the series returns next Tuesday.

So far, the only cast member from the original series to return is John Larroquette, reprising as attorney Dan Fielding, now filling the public defender role. Seems as though he'll also be asked to be a sort of mentor to Abby after she arrives on his doorstep, as we'll see in this teaser.


Markie Post and Charles Robinson (Mac) both passed away within the last couple of years. What we don't know is if Richard Moll (Bull) will return. Moll segued into a cartoon voice over career after the original series ended, and was back in front of the camera for the Nickelodeon series, 100 Deeds For Eddie McDowd. Fans are hoping that Brent Spiner, who was a frequent guest before Star Trek: The Next Generation made him a genre icon, will make an appearance or two.

This should be a fun trip.

3 comments:

Chuck Miller said...

I'm actually looking forward to this. Night Court was a nice little 30-minute blast of fun, it was a very simple sitcom and it had lots of great laughs to it. NBC has a very rough record in terms of reboots - the new Quantum Leap is finally hitting its stride, so there's that.

Goldstar said...

This new series is already disappointing for me because I know that Harry, Christine and Mac will never make a guest appearance or even a cameo on the new show because all 3 actors have passed away. There's not a lot of incentive for me to watch the new show knowing that my favorite character (Harry) is gone forever.

@hobbyfan: According to the show's producers, Christine is neither Abby's mother nor her stepmother. The identity or whereabouts of Abby's mother have yet to be revealed. They may be saving that for a future episode.

hobbyfan said...

Ok, so we have the now-trendy season-long mystery. Ok, cool!! Night Court had a strong pedigree when it debuted nearly 40 years ago. The show's creator was a writer on Barney Miller, a similar sitcom.