It’s been 21 years since Ron Howard’s hit comedy Parenthood, starring Steve Martin, was released in theatres.
The Oscar-winning director always felt there was potential to do more with the Buckman family, but making a sequel didn’t seem fitting, and an attempt at a sitcom-type show a couple of years after the film came out fell flat as well. Two decades on, writer Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights) approached Howard with the idea to create a dramatic series loosely based on the film.
"Brian Grazer and I are intensely proud of the film Parenthood. Our friends (Lowell) Ganz and (Babaloo) Mandel did a brilliant job writing it. And it, you know, it remains a movie that people compliment us on," Howard explains in a telephone press conference. "We tried a television series a couple years after it and it couldn’t capture the scope of the family. It was a half-hour sort of sitcom approach. And it was frustrating in that way. And we thought that was the end of Parenthood.
"Then Jason came to Brian and I, and of course we know Jason from Friday Night Lights where he does a spectacular job, and said, ‘I want to do a one-hour dramatic version of Parenthood.’ We were thrilled, Brian and I, (and) very open to the idea because of Jason and his talent. Lo and behold he has given every character its own contemporary voice and of course the actors are now going even further with it. I’m incredibly gratified that those characters – that situation, the DNA of that family can evolve. And now I know it’ll continue to in the right way where you can really understand so much about what it is to be, you know, a family member or a parent."
The pilot focuses on Sarah Braverman, who’s moved back home to Berkeley, Calif. with her two kids Amber (Mae Whitman) and Drew (Miles Heizer) in order to be closer to her family. The impressive cast includes Craig T. Nelson as Sarah’s headstrong father Zeek, Bonnie Bedelia as her mother Camille, Peter Krause as her brother Adam, Dax Shepard as her brother Crosby, and Erika Christensen as her sister Julia.
What’s immediately evident (aside from the slight surname change from Buckman to Braverman) is the shift in subject matter — where the 1989 film was fairly light in tone, the new series examines weighty issues such as juggling work and motherhood, raising a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, and marital woes. That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom, Katims insists.
"The idea of the show is to sort of try to explore as much about the experience of parenthood as we can," he notes. "And that includes the joyous moments, the celebration of family, the embarrassing funny moments. But it also includes some very dramatic stuff, (for example) having a kid with special needs, which is something that is very much a part of the show."
This is Graham’s first major television role since she played Lorelai Gilmore on Gilmore Girls, and she jokes that it’s a "more sane life" being part of an ensemble cast.
"The work can be more specific. I have to really make sure I know where I am in the story because I’m not in every scene and I have to sort of think about it as an actor in terms of the arc of each episode," she says. "As opposed to Lorelai Gilmore who had a very sunny outlook on things, it’s been really interesting for me to play someone who is shouldering a lot of baggage in terms of being disappointed about where she is in life and just, you know, the feeling of living in your parents’ house at 38 and how that informs everything and doesn’t make you feel too great."
Parenthood premieres Tuesday night on Citytv at 10pm (8MT/9CT).