In the US: Mondays, 8.30/7.30c, Fox. Starts tonight
And so it begins – the summer burn-off of all those shows the US networks thought they might need as mid-season replacements but didn’t. We’ve Save Me on NBC this week as well, but on Fox, we’ve starting with The Goodwin Games, a sitcom from the makers of How I Met Your Mother that has some of that show’s charm, but lacks its sparkle or any real hook.
The idea here is that Beau Bridges, patriarch of the Goodwin family and bad father, comes into a sizeable fortune – more than $20 million. He also knows he’s going to die, so before his death, he creates a series of games and videos through which he can get his three estranged children (Scott Foley, Becki Newton, TJ Miller) to come together again and parent them from beyond the grave, the lure of all that money being what keeps them playing his games.
And while it’s a moderately intriguing idea – I’d be happy to see The Game as a TV series or a US version of The One Game – the show has only a few innovations in an otherwise ordinary sitcom. And it also has TJ Miller. Sigh.
