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Champs aired from January until August 1996 on ABC.
Arrested-Development men and the smart women who tolerate them seemed to be the theme of this sitcom. The 5 fourtyish guys were all former members of a championship school basketball team, 20 years before, and they seemed to live to reminisce about their glory days on the court. Male chauvenist Tom ( Timothy Busfield), was now a loving dad to supersmart Phoebe ( Libby winters), and underachieving young son Jesse( Danny Pritchett); Marty ( Kevin Nealon), was tall and taciturn, and breaking up with his wife Doris ( Julia Campbell); Vince ( Ed Marinaro), still horny after all these years, was in law school; Dr. Herb ( Paul McCrane), was the balding M.D. ; and Coach Harris ( Ron McLarty), was old and a little spaced out.
The guys shot hoops in the backyard, punched each other in the shoulder, and made gross jokes, while Tom's wife, savvy law student Linda ( Ashley Crow), and the other women made fun of their male piggery.
Champs was created by Gary David Goldberg of Family Ties fame.
A Review From Variety
Champs
((Tues. (9), 9:30-10 p.m., ABC))
By ADAM SANDLER
Filmed in Los Angeles by Ubu Prods. and DreamWorks SKG in association with ABC Entertainment. Executive producer, Gary David Goldberg; producer, Linda Nieber; supervising producers, Alan Unger, Patricia Jones, Donald Reiker; director, Will Mackenzie; writer, Goldberg.
Cast: Timothy Busfield, Ashley Crow, Ed Marinaro, Kevin Nealon, Ron McLarty, Paul McCrane, Libby Winters, Danny Pritchett.
Family Ties" creator Gary David Goldberg returns to the sitcom series wars in an offering rife with drop-dead one-liners and taut writing that uses school sports glory to cement show's underlying pro-social messages. He also proves that many of life's hurdles can in fact be explained with basketball metaphors. Series preem deals with Tom (Timothy Busfield), whose glee over his daughter's landing the lead in a school play is offset by the disclosure that the marriage of his best friend, Marty (Kevin Nealon), is on the rocks.
The guys -- all former members of a championship college basketball team -- pride themselves on their ability to discuss personal issues openly, in a sort of B-ball sweat lodge.
While acknowledging that Marty's plight is serious, Tom is more shocked at the news because it came from Linda (Ashley Crow), Tom's wife, and not his best pal, with whom he's supposed to have unbridled communication.
Show subtly, and quite deftly, tackles the revelation that despite their feelings of free communication, the guys don't reveal much.
The exception is the verbose Vince (Ed Marinaro), who constantly regales the group with annoying ex-wife peccadilloes and the lifestyle shortcomings of his former teammates.
After a soul-searching shoot-around session on the backyard basketball court, Tom suggests Marty bunk in, which leads to a sleepover in the attic and more male bonding -- and more jokes.
Busfield significantly advances from his whiny "thirtysomething" persona to a more watchable one as the father of an abnormally well-adjusted suburban family.
His is the perfect foil for "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Nealon, whose own brand of understated humor constantly tests his fellow cast members' comedic timing.
Scribe Goldberg weaves a funny tale, tapping dialogue that sounds natural while adding the de rigueur sitcom potshots.
Director Will Mackenzie -- a sitcom stalwart in his own right -- leads his talented cast into as much of a team effort as they espouse when recalling their glory days on the court.
A Review From The New York Times
TELEVISION REVIEW;At an Age of Anxiety, Whining Is for Laughs
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By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: January 9, 1996
Champs," a new ABC series, has its premiere tonight in the exceptionally comfy 9:30 time slot between "Home Improvement" and "N.Y.P.D. Blue." Pedigree is clearly a major factor. "Champs" is the creation of Gary David Goldberg, the writer-producer whose credits include "Family Ties" and "Brooklyn Bridge." This television series, produced in association with Mr. Goldberg's Ubu productions, is also the first to emerge from Dreamworks, the company formed by David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.
Timothy Busfield, once one of the "Thirtysomething" gang, moves on in "Champs" to fortysomething anxieties, all couched in whines with comic spins. His Tom McManus juggles two family units. There's his wife, Linda (Ashley Crow), an ideal partner who is a law student, and their two children, Phoebe (Libby Winters), a teen-ager, and Jesse (Danny Pritchett), her younger brother. That part of Tom's life is snuggled in loving security.
And then there are "the guys," his former high-school basketball teammates who will never forget that they were Western Massachusetts champs in 1973. When not watching basketball on television, the guys are getting together for poker and nonstop reminiscing. Unlike Tom, they have found stability to be elusive, and personal disclosure festivals don't seem to help, no matter how intensely, as one puts it, "hearts were bared, veins opened."
Vince Mazzilli (Ed Marinaro), his promising sports career ended by a knee injury, has gone through three marriages and is now raising teen-age sons by himself. Marty Heslov (Kevin Nealon) has his own marriage problems, not least his wife's quite open affair with a young, handsome waiter. Herb Barton (Paul McCrane), a doctor and the most successful of the lot, finds that his Porsche and Maui condo don't quite compensate for two failed marriages. And Coach Harris (Ron McLarty) is an aging widower in search of whatever diversions might be left.
Thanks to Mr. Goldberg's skillful maneuverings, "Champs" somehow manages to be very funny even as its rather lost heroes come to realizations like, "We're not kids any more, and life is never going to be that simple again." As Marty's wandering wife sarcastically observes, "An evening with you and your prepubescent friends is my idea of a slice of heaven." But then Marty is irrepressible in his goofy sincerity. He confesses that he was going to go see the movie "How to Make an American Quilt" but then "remembered I was a guy."
How many guy jokes can one series exploit? Mr. Goldberg has already announced that the series will be developed in a broader direction, one that will focus more on family issues. One episode on tap deals with Vince's sense of failure and his struggles to help his boys. It's funny, and quite touching. "Champs" shows encouraging signs of finding a distinctive voice that could keep the series around for a while.
CHAMPS ABC, Tuesdays at 9:30 P.M. (Channel 7 in New York)
Premiere written by Gary David Goldberg, produced by Linda Nieber and directed by Will Mackenzie. Mikel Neiers, premiere director of photography; Alan Unger, Patricia Jones and Donald Reiker, series supervising producers; Peter Schneider, series creative consultant. Music by Starr Parodie and Jeff Eden Fair. Produced by Ubu Productions in association with DreamWorks. Gary David Goldberg, executive director.
WITH: Timothy Busfield (Tom McManus), Ashley Crow (Linda McManus), Ed Marinaro (Vince Mazzilli), Kevin Nealon (Marty Heslov), Ron McLarty (Coach Harris), Paul McCrane (Herb Barton), Libby Winters (Phoebe McManus) and Danny Pritchett (Jesse McManus).
A Review By Entertainment Weekly
Champs
Reviewed by Ken Tucker
THERE'S A LOT of backyard basketball being played on CHAMPS (ABC, Tuesdays, 9:30-10 p.m.); in this new sitcom, the thunk-thunk-thunk of a ball bounced on driveway pavement does the work of recurring theme music. Created by writer-producer Gary David Goldberg, the man who gave us Family Ties and Brooklyn Bridge, Champs is chockful of rueful one-liners about a quartet of grown-up pals and their old high school basketball coach. They hang out, trying to recapture the irresponsible joy of their youth and to escape the banal pressures of their lives now, in which wives, ex-wives, girlfriends, and kids are tougher opponents than any team these former champs used to face.
Timothy Busfield, his red beard even wufflier than it was in thirtysomething and Byrds of Paradise, is Tom McManus, married to law student Linda (Ashley Crow) and father of two children (Libby Winters and Danny Pritchett). His buddies are divorced father of two Vince (Sisters' Ed Marinaro), the unfaithful, recently separated Marty (Saturday Night Live's Kevin Nealon), and wealthy divorce surgeon Herb (Paul McCrane). Their ex-coach is called -- gee -- Coach (Ron McLarty).
Busfield specializes in charming arrested development; it's his backyard hoop that gets a workout every week on Champs. The plots so far have all revolved around the ways men avoid emotional conflict and women confront it, whether it's about Marty's attempted reconciliation with his wife (a satisfyingly bitter Julia Campbell) or Herb's hopeless attraction to a woman who gives him the cold shoulder (Dream On's Wendie Malick delivered her usual smart, funny turn). There's a lot of talk about how ''lucky'' Busfield's Tom is to have a solid marriage, and advice about life is dispensed in sports metaphors about how ''you gotta stay in the game.'' Typical joke: Vince asks Tom's wife what movie she's going out to see and she says How to Make an American Quilt. Vince: ''Oh yeah? I was gonna go see that -- then I remembered I'm a guy.''
Champs is the first TV series produced by DreamWorks SKG, the ballyhooed media company started by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen. It has been given a plum position: right after Home Improvement and before NYPD Blue. This is the half hour formerly occupied by the on-hiatus Coach, so viewers are already accustomed to seeing a sports-based sitcom in this time period. Program scheduling doesn't get much cushier than this.
But Champs doesn't really deserve the success ABC is trying so mightily to ensure, because the show is predicated on a collection of sociological cliches that, whenever they aren't annoying, are painfully obvious. Over and over, in jokes, speeches, and plot turns, the show says that what men really want to do is bare their souls and speak to one another with affection and intimacy, but they can't because the culture has taught them this is ''feminine'' -- i.e., wrong. Well, du-uhh.
Like Brooklyn Bridge, Goldberg's acclaimed but low-rated show about a middle-class family in the '50s, Champs contains a lot of moral uplift and not enough laughs. Unlike Brooklyn Bridge, Champs is devoid of distinctive characters. Nealon's Marty is a dimmer bulb than the rest (Nealon delivers his lines in an abashed monotone, as if still stunned that this is what a stint on SNL got him), but other than that, there's virtually no difference between any of these chums. (For a guy who made his rep with the sharply whittled comedy writing of Family Ties, Goldberg has overseen a very dully written show with Champs.) In the show's debut episode, Tom mused about the gang's weekly poker game: ''It's a cliche, I know -- 'male bonding' -- but these nights have become kinda special for us.'' I doubt any weekly effort to watch Champs will be kinda special for anyone. Champs: C-
(Posted:01/19/96)
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