Hank – Fall TV Preview

Kelsey Grammer‘s next effort at sitcom, Hank, premieres Wednesday, September 30th at 8:00 pm, and the short version of that story is that the show is a lot more Back to You than Frasier… this assumes Frasier is a positive option for you.

ABC/PATRICK WYMORE

This story of the show is that Hank Pryor (Grammer) has just been ousted from his own giant retail sports company, and now he and his family are moving back to the small town of River Bend, Virginia. Having spent a good part of his life living high on the hog, Hank now finds himself with, more or less, nothing on the monetary side of things, and the show’s main play is that now he has to find out how much he really has… family-wise and whatnot.

The pilot opens with the family leaving a mansion and walking into something like the house from Roseanne, only without furniture. Hank now has to deal with his young son, who is rather odd… maybe, and his teen daughter who is not at all happy with the direction the family is going. Hank is used to running the show, and not being around his family an awful lot, and he is now not only forced to basically start life over, he’s got to do it in the midst of all this life he has rushing around him.

ABC/PATRICK WYMORE

We also throw in Hank’s brother-in-law (David Koechner), who is not at all above taking some shots at Hank’s expense, now that the mighty have fallen.

The show is written by Everybody Loves Raymond‘s scribe Tucker Cawley, and the main drawback of the show is that it feels exactly like Everybody Loves Raymond and Frasier meet in a cartoon, have a fight that turns into a rough-sketch tornado with stars floating around, and when the dust settles they’ve merged to form Hank.

As is the case with much of Grammer’s recent work, it’s just more and more difficult to differentiate him from Frasier as a general rule. Back to You felt like Frasier playing a newscaster, then we had Frasier playing The Beast, and now it’s Frasier as fallen CEO.

The show has some potential, but it all feels very easy, and I don’t think there’s any way to see Grammer as playing anyone noticeably different from Frasier. I think, on the other hand, there are some people out there (who may or may not work behind the scenes in television production) who would respond to that by saying, “What? He’s not a psychologist, or on the radio, or anything like Frasier at all.”

ABC/BOB D'AMICO

However you might weigh in on the plus or minus of seeing more Frasier in a show and comedy styling that simply reeks of Everybody Loves Raymond (well, what the hell, those both did well), Hank is ultimately a kind of lowest common denominator brand of humor, and it’s a show tailor-made to be on in the background while you’re doing something else. There are a few funny moments, mainly aimed around Hank getting rather upset ala you-know-who, but they aren’t around a lot, and the laugh track will kick in so you can look up.

The best thing going for Hank is the strange timeslot it winds up in, up against- The New Adventrures of Old Christine, So You Think You Can Dance, Mercy, and America’s Next Top Model, anything might happen. The Show might have a decent showing just as the default option of people who aren’t interested in Tyra, Dancing, or ER-redux.

In general I wouldn’t recommend Hank to anyone, but I wouldn’t recommend Frasier after the first season either, so take my opinion in an informed way. But, given that lineup it might not be a bad bet for a lot of people.

Meanwhile, as a side note, Modern Family , ABC‘s best new comedy is on the same night, but up against Glee .