The ghosts of sitcoms past are hard to ignore in the new CBS comedy "Superior Donuts," which premieres 7:30 p.m. Thursday and returns again 8 p.m. Monday on its regular night going forward. Set in a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood — Uptown, specifically — and based on a play by Steppenwolf ensemble member Tracy Letts, the multi-camera comedy plants its feet in a doughnut shop that has remained unchanged in the nearly 50 years it’s been open.
The guy who runs the place is Arthur, a mostly even-tempered grumbler played by Judd Hirsch, always a welcome presence on television and an actor who has been around this block enough times to know how to make a performance like this look easy. Hirsch actually looks like he belongs behind the counter of some old joint that could be anywhere on Montrose or Lawrence avenues.
He sells regular doughnuts, nothing fancy. And no hybrids like the cronut. "Nor do I sell muffins, or duffins or muffnuts." He’s not kidding. "My parents did not smuggle me out of Poland in the hold of a cargo ship so that 65 years later I could sell you a damn cronut!"
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Changes in the neighborhood, including the Starbucks across the street, haven’t been good for business and that’s where Arthur’s new employee comes in. Franco (played by Jermaine Fowler) is restless and ambitious and not only talks his way into a job, but persuades Arthur not to sell the store.
Squint and the premise looks an awful lot like that ’70s staple "Chico and the Man," but the smarter money is on the show’s "Cheers" DNA. A cast of regulars — including Katey Sagal and Darien Sills-Evans as neighborhood beat cops, Maz Jobrani as an Iraqi-born owner of the dry cleaners next door, David Koechner (a former Chicago improviser) as a middle-age dude working the gig economy, Anna Baryshnikov (of "Manchester by the Sea" and daughter of dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov) as a suburban airhead grad student — could, if given the right material, come to resemble something almost as watchable as the gang that used to come together in a certain basement bar where everybody knows your name.
With Hirsch on screen, there’s a glimmer of "Taxi" in here somewhere as well, if only the show laid off on the gas a bit and focused on character-based comedy.
And better jokes. It needs better jokes.
By the way, the original play was not, strictly speaking, a comedy. Not to my mind, anyway. It was too schematic for that. (Per CBS, Letts has no involvement in the series.) But you can see why the show’s creators thought it had the bones for a sitcom: Old white guy resistant to change gives a leg up to young black guy with a willingness to experiment. Let the culture clash ensue.
Reviewing the play in 2008, my colleague Chris Jones called it "less wholly truthful in its depiction of the human condition" and the TV version shares this quality. But Bahis Siteleri the show’s strength — its real potential — actually lies not in the Arthur-Franco relationship but in the doughnut shop itself, which functions as a natural gathering spot for this group of cranks and oddballs. Any old excuse for some loose interplay and the carefully aimed punchline back-and-forth across the counter — that’s what "Superior Donuts" should be aiming for. That’s where laughter lies.
In January, while promoting the show, Fowler was asked about an emphasis on the racial differences between the two leads. "You can’t not talk about these issues," he said. "It would be a disservice to comedy. That’s what our show is about." Fowler is credited as an executive producer on the series and when I asked CBS if the show has any black writers on staff, the publicist responded that "we don’t give out specific breakdowns but we do have a very diverse writing staff."
Whether black writers are helping to shape storylines and write jokes matters. Who is framing the events of each episode — and is that only being filtered through the life experiences of non-black writers? That’s a question worth an answer, especially if a comic tension based on race is an essential part of the show. Too often black writers (and this extends to other people of color, women, people with disabilities, people of differing religions, I could go on) are still a rarity behind the scenes in television. In the case of "Superior Donuts," the show so far hasn’t found a less-than-clumsy approach to mining stereotypes and different cultural backgrounds for comedy.
When the neighborhood is beset by a crime wave and Franco thinks Arthur isn’t taking things seriously enough, he and his friend Sweatpants (Rell Battle) break into Arthur’s apartment to show him how vulnerable he really is. "All right, Sweatpants," Franco says as they stand there in the living room, "tell Arthur what you’d do to him."
"I dunno," comes the reply, "I guess I’ll probably tie you up to this chair, take all your stuff, realize you’ve seen my face, take that cigarette in my hand and burn this place down so nobody knows I was here." The scene progresses with variations on this idea — two young black men telling an older white man how they could commit crimes against his body and property — and you watch it thinking, this is conscious choice that didn’t have to be made, the framing is so baldly stereotypical. It doesn’t even feel comedic.
Or consider this exchange from the pilot, when Fawz, the owner of dry cleaners, walks into the doughnut shop and sees Franco for the first time.
Fawz: "Who’s this black guy?"
Franco: "Actually I go by Franco, only my friends call me Black Guy."
Fawz: "What, I’m not allowed to say you’re black? I’m not allowed to call black people ‘black people’?"
Franco: "It’s cool man, no reason to blow up."
Fawz: (sarcastically) "Ah, a terrorist joke — a first for me!"
As for the show’s setting, it’s about as Chicago as "Mike & Molly" — which is to say, not really Chicago at all except in name. It’s Anywheresville television, and like most sitcoms, it’s shot on a LA soundstage. (Bob Daily, the show’s executive producer and showrunner, is originally from Chicago; he has been a writer in Hollywood since the ’90s and his credits include "Frasier" and "Desperate Housewives.")
The show does toss in the occasional localized reference. "Don’t go north on Foster Avenue," a character says and you’re left to wonder how that’s possible on an east-west street. Or here’s Franco, on concerns about the neighborhood’s gentrification: "Great, jack up the rents so I gotta move down to the South Side and dodge bullets every time I go to the store." People get shot and killed in Uptown too, but OK.
The show also includes nods here and there to the caustic relations between people of color and Chicago police. "Oh, I must really trust you, I just turned my back on a Chicago cop," Franco says to Sagal’s character, to which she responds without missing a beat: "I’m not gonna shoot you, I got my body cam on." Depending on the performance, that kind of exchange could be uncomfortably funny or toothless. "Superior Donuts" almost always goes for the latter.
And yet the seeds are there for something good. Fowler is a charismatic performer; the show just needs to give Franco a worldview that exists outside of servicing these people in the doughnut shop. As for Hirsch — well, it’s Hirsch. You can’t beat that. Just give the guy a rag to wipe down the counter and tee up a few punchlines to the peanut gallery around him. If he and Fowler aren’t forced to shoulder so much as a pair, there’s real potential for something more relaxed and ensemble-based to develop.
I’ll end with this sentiment from Arthur as he contemplates selling the joint, only to reconsider.
"In this crazy and uncertain world, what could be more comforting than a doughnut and a cup of coffee?"
Oh, Arthur. I’ll dunk to that.
"Superior Donuts" premieres 7:30 p.m. Thursday on CBS
nmetz@tribune.com
Twitter @Nina_Metz
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