By Stacey Harrison, Karl J. Paloucek
After delivering a surprise smash with the Betty White-fueled Hot in Cleveland, TV Land is continuing its trek into original scripted programming with another sitcom that boasts a stellar cast of comedy vets, along with an often risqué sense of humor.
In Retired at 35, which premieres tonight, David (Johnathan McClain) is a successful but stressed-out young businessman living in New York City. On a visit to his parents’ leisure-filled home in a Florida retirement community, he abruptly decides it’s time to reevaluate his priorities, move back in with his mom and dad, and start living the retired life now instead of waiting until he’s too old to enjoy it. But as soon as he does, his mother bolts, abandoning the two men and condemning them to each other as they fall into a new routine, get reacquainted and start to learn new — and not always pleasant — things about each other.
Academy Award nominee George Segal (Just Shoot Me!) plays the dad, and says the script he received for the pilot made him laugh out loud, an occurrence he calls “as rare as hen’s teeth.” It wasn’t just the jokes that tickled him, but how the adult humor — a nude painting here, a toilet scene there — meshed with the otherwise squeaky-clean format.
“[It’s all] under the guise of being an old-fashioned, familiar sitcom,” he says. “Pretty seditious, huh? That’s what drew me to it, because it was cutting-edge in terms of subject matter and the way it’s treated. And yet, you always have the comfort of the old-fashioned sitcom.”
Just as it did in assembling Hot in Cleveland’s leading ladies, TV Land isn’t skimping on talent this time out either, enlisting the likes of Jessica Walter (Arrested Development) as David’s mother, Christine Ebersole (Royal Pains) as the sexy mom of David’s childhood crush, and perennial character actor George Wyner (Hill Street Blues) as Segal’s good-time buddy.
Segal says he didn’t know what to expect when he went to work for TV Land, but that their enthusiasm for him, along with unquestionable professionalism, has won him over.
“The people are so experienced, and the writers they got together are ridiculously good, all of them,” he says. “There’s nothing small-time about this; it is the big time. … I much prefer it to NBC, for example, which is rule by committee. [TV Land president] Larry Jones figures, you pick the right people and let them go. There’s a great sense of experimentation. We try stuff that I don’t think has been tried before.”
