Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Life With Bonnie: Cast Photo

Life with Bonnie aired from September 2002 until July 2004 on ABC.

Bonnie ( Bonnie Hunt) was a happy, harried talk-show host and mom in this fast-paced semi-improvisational sitcom set in Chicago. On the home front were her busy husband, Dr. Mark ( Mark Derwin); young daughter Samantha ( Samantha Browne-Walters); supercute , red-haired son Charlie ( Charlie Stewart), and gurgling baby Connor, all of whom were seemingly in constant motion. Gloria ( Marianne Muellerleile) was the dumpy, smart-aleck maid, and Frankie ( Frankie Ryan) was Charlie's pint-sized friend. Bonnie's other family was found on the set of her show, Morning Chicago-fussy producer David ( David Alan Grier), jazzy pianist Tony ( Anthony Russell), and wisecracking stagehands Holly and Marv ( Holly Wortell, Chris Barnes). One of the features of Life with Bonnie was Ms. Hunt's improvised segments with guests, who included such stars as David Duchovny, Jonathan Winters, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams and Carl Reiner ( as station owner Mr. Portinbody).

In one of those mysteries that only occur on television series, daughter Samantha disappeared in season two and was never mentioned again.

A Review from The New York Times

TELEVISION REVIEWS; Wisecracks at Home, Goofiness at Work
By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: September 17, 2002

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Bonnie Hunt's family to disappear.

Ms. Hunt's new sitcom, ''Life With Bonnie,'' which has its premiere tonight on ABC, is great fun when she's at work, intolerably stale when she's at home. Surely Fun Bonnie will gradually devour Stale Bonnie until eventually the family exists only as pictures on her desk at the office.

That, at least, is the hope one might have after viewing the pilot episode (the only one provided for review). Ms. Hunt plays the host of a television talk show, ''Morning Chicago,'' with a stereotypically busy family life -- her husband (Mark Derwin) is a doctor, and they have three young children.

The first episode opens with a frenetic scene of the household trying to get out the door in the morning to school and jobs; it's so familiar that you might mistake it for a commercial for cellphones or breakfast sausages. Note to dialogue writers: The comic possibilities in having young children make grown-up wisecracks were exhausted about 1985.

Anyway, when Bonnie finally gets to work the innovation level goes up considerably. She is surrounded by goofy co-workers, led by David Alan Grier, a producer prone to shouting instructions to people who are only a few feet away. The central gimmick occurs in the show-within-a-show: the guests on ''Morning Chicago'' will include real guests -- that is, not actors. Ms. Hunt will improvise.

These days, of course, when ''reality'' shows have demonstrated that reality can be skewed in the editing room, it's easy to mistrust a claim that something is unscripted. But certainly Ms. Hunt's hilarious cooking segment with two Italian chefs in the pilot episode is suitably off the wall. It's so daffy, in fact, that it may be hard to top.

LIFE WITH BONNIE
ABC, tonight at 8:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 7:30 Central time.

Directed by Bonnie Hunt; created by Ms. Hunt and Don Lake, who also serve as executive producers.

WITH: Bonnie Hunt (Bonnie Molloy), Mark Derwin (Dr. Mark Molloy), Samantha Browne-Walters (Samantha Molloy), Charlie Stewart (Charlie Molloy), Holly Wortell (Holly), Chris Barnes (Marv), Marianne Muellerleile (Gloria), Anthony Russell (Tony Russo) and David Alan Grier (David Bellows).

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
Life With Bonnie

B-By Ken Tucker

Bonnie Hunt is a sterling example of what the Australian critic Clive James meant when he once wrote, ''All you have to do on television is be yourself, always provided that you have a self to be.'' One reason Hunt has long been such a treasured presence on talk shows is that unlike most celebrities, she has a life, a sure sense of self to present, rather than the mere spectacle of her stardom to display for our admiration or envy.

Hunt -- a former nurse, raised in a large middle-class Chicago family and trained in improvisation in that town's Second City troupe -- is an artist who prizes spontaneity as a source of comedy. This last detail immediately distinguishes her from 98 percent of sitcom performers, and has proved both a blessing and a drawback. A couple of her earlier sitcoms, ''Bonnie'' (1995-96) and ''The Building'' (1993), were marvelous pieces of work but ratings flops. Viewers just didn't get into the rhythm of her comedy: She wanted to open up the sitcom format to allow for small chuckles as well as big laughs; for dialogue that sounded like ordinary speech, only much funnier and faster; for moments of silence that added poignance, in addition to eruptions of riotous slapstick.

Now, at a time when the sitcom form needs fresh ideas more than ever, Hunt has come up with Life With Bonnie, and it's the only -- let me emphasize this: the one, the single, the sole -- first-rate new sitcom of the season. The show's premise is, as usual for Hunt, deceptively simple: She plays Bonnie Molloy, a wife and mother who also hosts a Chicago morning talk show. At home, she banters with her doctor husband (played with charming bemusement by Mark Derwin), a son with a mop of unruly red hair (Charlie Stewart), a daughter with a mop of unruly blond hair (Samantha Browne-Walters), and a baby boy she carries around with that combination of exquisite tenderness and casual recklessness that too few TV parents perform with conviction.

''Life With Bonnie'' is great at capturing the chaos of family life -- running late for school and work, conducting constantly interrupted conversations with a spouse. Hunt's acting is terrific here; she laughs with genuine amusement at the kids' non-sitcommy reactions and mumbled remarks, and when hubby says, ''You always say we never talk anymore,'' she shoots back, ''I didn't say it bothered me.''

At work, her hosting gig on ''Morning Chicago'' is an equally rushed, often slapdash affair, overseen by a nervous producer played by David Alan Grier, and Hunt likes to gab with her pal, makeup artist Holly, played by Holly Wortell. (Both Grier and Wortell also appeared in the 2000 movie Hunt directed and cowrote, ''Return to Me,'' which starred David Duchovny, who guest-starred in ''Life With Bonnie'''s second episode as vain weatherman Johnny Volcano; Hunt seems to inspire loyalty. And if you want to see where ABC got the idea for its ''According to Jim,'' rent ''Return to Me'' -- Jim Belushi plays the same genial-slob character, only there he's married to Hunt, who should sue.) The talk-show segments on ''Life'' crackle -- you can tell that many of the interviews are semi-improvised, with lots of Hunt wisecracks and impeccably timed double takes.

A Review of Life with Bonnie

LIFE WITH BONNIE
Regular airtime: Tuesdays, 9pm ET (ABC)
Producers: Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake
Cast: Bonnie Hunt, Mark Derwin, David Alan Grier, Marianne Muellerleile
by John Dougan

Ever the Professional

You would be hard pressed to find a sitcom debuting this season with more people rooting for it than Life With Bonnie. Smart, funny, engaging, and sexy, Hunt's comic profile was elevated after a string of appearances on longtime pal and booster David Letterman's show. Her considerable talents (acting, writing, and directing) coupled with Letterman's clout led to her establishing a toehold on the sitcom landscape. And, by all rights, the story should end here, with me chronicling her immense popularity as she begins her latest creative venture.

The reality is Life With Bonnie is Hunt's third shot at a sitcom. First came 1993's blink-and-you-missed-it The Building, a "wacky neighbors" premise that, even with Letterman's imprimatur as executive producer, lasted only 5 episodes. Two years later, The Bonnie Hunt Show faired only slightly better; 13 episodes were produced, 11 aired. After its cancellation, Hunt appeared to be done with the small screen and intent on frying bigger fish. She played Robin Williams's love interest in Jumanji, then wrote, directed, and acted in the David Duchovny-Minnie Driver romantic comedy, Return to Me. Now, after starring in Stolen Summer (also known as the Project Greenlight movie), and with her next feature film writing-and-directing effort, Anniversary in pre-production, Hunt returns, somewhat surprisingly, to the small screen, as writer, star, director, and co-producer of sitcom number three.

Hunt plays Bonnie Molloy, host of Morning Chicago, an amiable little chat show that comes off as a cross between >The Rosie O'Donnell Show and Live with Regis and Kelly (without Regis). Husband Mark (darkly handsome Mark Derwin, most recently seen as Dr. Ben Davidson on the ABC soap One Life To Live) is a doctor; they have three young children and a live-in housekeeper (Marianne Muellerleile in a performance combining Shirley Booth's Hazel with Marla Gibbs's Florence). And instead of wacky neighbors, they have wacky co-workers, most notably the appropriately surnamed David Bellows (David Alan Grier who, thankfully, is used judiciously) as her frantic, put-upon producer.

The premiere episode rocketed by so fast that I was left wondering if (and how) Hunt will keep up this sprinter's pace in upcoming episodes. The pre-credits sequence effectively establishes the daily chaos that is the Molloy household -- a blur of physical activity complemented by rapid-fire (almost overlapping) dialogue that ends with smiles and all participants on their way (just a bit late). While hardly the most original of expository devices, it allows Hunt and Derwin to get off some sharp wisecracks.

While meant to represent love and togetherness writ large, the family scene, though ingratiating, were ultimately a little too familiar and slightly bland. Fortunately, for all of the show's implied "family values" rhetoric, it never turns into self-congratulatory sentimentality (the closing scene where an exhausted Bonnie and Mark fall asleep snuggling with son Charlie was, for those of us with busy lives and young children, touchingly familiar). And as sitcom kids, Charlie (Charlie Stewart) and Samantha (Samantha Browne-Walters) -- child number three is an infant who contributes the occasional cry -- have not been asked to act like snarky smartasses, but rather family members negotiating the daily madness and unpredictability of the Molloy household.

But if the family scenes suffer from sitcom conventionalism, it's during the Morning Chicago segments that viewers get a glimpse of how good this show might be. Here Hunt craftily morphs from harried mom into cheerful host, a persona that is pure invention, and only slightly dissimilar from Bonnie Molloy the mom. From the first note of the show-within-the-show's theme, she acts unflappably "host-like" (i.e., cheerful even after misapplying her lipstick), turning it on and off every time the fictional program goes to break. It is subtle shading, cleverly nuanced in a manner that (due to these scenes being partly improvised) takes full advantage of Hunt's deft comedic acting skills.

It is while Bonnie inhabits her host persona that Life With Bonnie generates sparks. After assuring the terminally frantic Bellows that she can bluff her way through an interview with an author whose book she hasn't read, Bonnie effusively praises her guest's tome, only to have the author tell her how refreshing it is to hear such kind words, since most book critics have labeled her "an ugly, filthy racist." Funnier still is a parody (that plays like an homage to Lucille Ball) of morning TV's obligatory cooking show segments, in which Bonnie happily mediates between two bickering Italian chefs (one cooks, the other acts disinterested and drinks wine). Ever the professional, Bonnie imbibes as she tries to offset the sniping with hilariously illogical quips ("Do you normally cook in leather, or is that an Italian thing?"). Barely able to keep the peace, she finally starts slugging the wine straight from the bottle. She's soon a little buzzed, and as the segment collapses into chaos, she starts acting flirty and sexy.

That's right, sexy. Hunt would be best served if she could play Bonnie not as a middle-aged mom whining about not being a size six anymore, but as a middle-aged mom who still exudes sexual confidence. She slyly smiles during the cooking segment, rolls her eyes curls the corner of her mouth after a well-timed joke: that's must-see TV. Such a characterization would also give Hunt the opportunity to play against expectations that Bonnie Molloy, in order to be funny, needs to be a prisoner of her imperfect middle-aged body. A confidently sexy Bonnie Molloy might then do away with gags involving stretching sweaters to cover widening hips, or feeling intimidated by her husband's impossibly thin and artificially glamorous female colleagues.

As for the future of Life with Bonnie, I have mixed feelings about it. It's off to a good start, but younger audiences might find Hunt's non-confrontational, middle-class, work and family-centered humor too inoffensively old school. The best hope for the show's success is with its presumed target audience -- 30- to 40something parents -- assuming they haven't already pledged allegiance to "edgier" offerings like Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Given how quickly the networks euthanise shows that, as they say, "aren't performing up to expectations," it's conceivable that Life With Bonnie could go the way of The Building. And while her big screen fortunes await, life on the small screen would be enhanced by someone as smart and funny as Bonnie Hunt.

A Review from Entertainment Weekly
Published on December 11, 2003

TV Review
Life With Bonnie
B- By Gillian Flynn

Seriously, where's the kid?

Life With Bonnie kicked off its bumpy second season by stripping Bonnie Hunt of a TV daughter -- played handily by Samantha Browne-Walters -- with nary an explanation. (I envision her in a special TV waiting room for misplaced siblings, making awkward conversation with Richie Cunningham's older brother.) It's a perplexing and off-mark move, as Hunt had some sweet moments with the girl, and dropping her did nothing to alleviate the show's crowded house.

The overpopulation -- no sitcom needs nine regulars -- is a major problem for ''Bonnie,'' which revolves around Hunt as Bonnie Malloy, harried wife and mother of (now) two, and host of ''Morning Chicago.'' That gig allows the Second City vet to improv with guest stars, which can yield some great, startling humor -- or be a real sinkhole. The Dec. 5 episode, with Rip Taylor as a gossip guru, is a fine example of the worst of ''Bonnie.'' Taylor's shtick overburdened a show that too often marches to a ba-dum-bum beat, with the cast popping random punchlines like a bad game of whack-a-mole.

May I recommend a culling? Anthony Russell provides a nice bumbling-bear vibe as ''Morning Chicago'''s piano player, but Hunt would be kind to release Chris Barnes and Holly Wortell from their generic wacky friend/coworker gigs. Whatever bus to Bootsville they land on, save room for Marianne Muellerleile's housekeeper-who-doesn't-keep-house-gee-how-zany.

This may sound cranky, but it's only because I'm rooting for ''Bonnie,'' Hunt's third stab at her own prime-time show. Hunt, with her longtime partner Don Lake, has made some hopeful changes of late, particularly with the ''Morning Chicago'' segments. Last year's parade of stars from Robin Williams to Tom Hanks has shifted down to folks like Jack Lalanne and the Smothers Brothers, allowing Hunt to play with -- rather than play second fiddle to -- her guests.

And bless the slightly contrived house fire that left David Alan Grier's uptight producer David Bellows homeless, forcing him to move in with the Malloys. He's made a persnickety foil to Bonnie's low-key boy (Charlie Stewart, who'd be a perfect Bobby in a live-action ''King of the Hill'' movie). Plus more home time means more of Mark Derwin, who, as Bonnie's doctor husband, shares her zingy humor. How pleasant in this world of bickering TV spouses (I'm talking to you, Mr. and Mrs. Barone) to see a husband and wife who really dig each other.

With her lovely effervescence and earthiness, Hunt seems ever more confident. When a scene is really hopping (which happens more often this season), her glee is as engaging as the banter itself. Give the girl more room, and ''Life With Bonnie'' could be peachy.

For more on Life with Bonnie go to http://www.wchstv.com/abc/lifewithbonnie/

For The Bonnie Hunt Guide go to http://www.geocities.com/bonnietides/