'Til Death: Cast Photo - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

'Til Death aired from September 2006 until ? on FOX.

Suburban Abbington, Pennsylvania , was the setting for this comedy about married life. Eddie and Joy ( Brad Garrett, Joely Fisher)were the veterans. They had been married for 24 years and, although they loved each other, disagreed about almost everything. Grumpy cynical Eddie , a history teacher, believed he knew all, while sarcastic Joy, who worked as a travel agent, knew better. Their neighbors, Happy Jeff and perky Steph ( Eddie Kaye Thomas, Kat Foster), were cloyingly sweet newlyweds who were madly in love. As the new vice principal at Winston Churchill High School, young Jeff was the older Eddie's boss. Much of the dour advice Jeff got from Eddie was dispensed while they carpooled to school together or in the teachers' lounge, while at home Joy gave Steph, who was supposed to be working on a PhD in European history, lessons on how to manipulate a husband. Eddie and Joy had a daughter, Allison who was away at college.

An Article of 'Til Death

Brad Garrett stars in 'Til Death
by Amber Nasrulla

Jul 25, 2006

Forget Raymond and forget the phrase "supporting actor" - Brad Garrett stars in new FOX series

One of the clichés about celebrities is that in person they rarely resemble their on-screen personas.

Take Brad Garrett. He played Robert, Ray's long-suffering brother on Everybody Loves Raymond and earned five Emmy nods for his portrayal. (He won in 2002, 2003 and 2005.) He wasn't the brightest spot of that show, in fact, he was renowned for being an odd duck. The man is freakishly tall and resembles Herman Munster and sounds like him too. He seems sarcastic to a fault.

Oddly enough it's these characteristics that have landed him his own show 'Til Death. It's not a Raymond spin-off but an entirely new beast in which Garrett plays Eddie, a fellow who has been married for 9,000 days to Joely Fisher's character, Joy. It's safe to say there's little nuptial bliss for those two, in fact, they're chafing in their union. So, when newlyweds move in next door, Eddie is determined to teach the new neighbours that marriage sucks.

I didn't really like the pilot. I'm not a fan of Garrett's work. So it was strange yesterday to see him onstage for a panel discussion at TCA in Pasadena and to watch him prowl the stage and take control of the room without ever leaving his chair.

The man has a quirky brand of charisma and startling presence. Maybe it was his sense of humour?

Tanned and slim in jeans and a striped shirt, Garrett looked much younger than he does on TV. He explained why he signed on for another sitcom although he just finished shooting a film Music and Lyrics with Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant: "I'm very picky and I'm not in demand."

He added, "This is the first character this is close to me. I'm a large bombastic kind of windbag."

He talked about his appreciation for Jackie Gleason's work in The Honeymooners, how he will always do stand-up, and his own experience with marriage, saying "I've been married seven years but we've only been together three."

Asked if he thought the troubled marriage scenario might be getting old, he said, "I don't really think you want to watch marriages that work on television. Marriage is a blend of neuroses and Joely is incredibly neurotic." He paused. "So am I."

Forty-five minutes later, Garrett was still funny, charming, thoughtful, and quick-witted. Millions of viewers already know that about him but it was news to me. I might just give 'Til Death a chance. Now if only Garrett could do something about his voice...

A Review from Variety

'Til Death
(Series -- Fox, Thurs. Sept. 7, 8 P.M.))
By BRIAN LOWRY

Filmed in Los Angeles by Goldsmith-Yuspa in association with Sony Pictures Television. Executive producers, Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa; producers, Brad Garrett, Glenn Robbins, Doug Wald, Annette Sahakian Davis; co-producers, Erin Braun, Jim Kukucka; director, Ted Wass; writers, Goldsmith, Yuspa.

Eddie Stark - Brad Garrett
Joy Stark - Joely Fisher
Jeff Woodcock - Eddie Kaye Thomas
Steph Woodcock - Kat Foster

No one sells second-banana insurance, but perhaps networks should try applying for it. Brad Garrett was a hoot tossing one-liners from the sidelines on "Everybody Loves Raymond," but he's less appealing thrust to the center of this by-the-numbers sitcom about unhappily wedded bliss, which has one or two moments but generally hews toward the overly broad. Put it this way: Any comedy that milks multiple jokes from a character being named "Woodcock" is pretty much running on fumes.

Garrett's Philadelphia suburb dweller Eddie is hitched to Joy (Joely Fischer), who, we are told, are on day 8,743 (almost 24 years, for the math-challenged) of their marriage. Next door, meanwhile, move newlyweds Jeff (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Steph (Kat Foster), who have been hitched a mere 12 days and are still in that can't-keep-their-hands-off-each-other phase.

And so it begins: Will the gnarled, bitter Eddie teach Jeff cynicism about where his marriage is inevitably heading, or will Jeff -- who coos at Steph and waxes eloquent about "make-up sex" after the most minor spat -- rub off on Eddie in a warming way?

Created by "King of Queens" alums Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, the series attempts to create a second comedic front by having both Eddie and Jeff (or Mr. Woodcock, to the kids) work at the nearby high school. The producers also add a little "Kids Say the Darndest Things"-type pick-me-up by garnishing the show with interviews featuring real kids discussing love and marriage.

Not surprisingly, the banter and bickering between Garrett and Fischer is the most interesting and potentially fertile comedic terrain, and there's one semi-amusing sequence where Eddie -- with the benefit of married-guy hindsight -- predicts how an exchange between Jeff and Steph (just saying it makes your teeth ache) about a pool table will play out.

Still, there's nothing remotely fresh here, the younger couple is painfully vanilla, and Eddie actually says there's "a reason why china rhymes with vagina." Moreover, in any normal world, it's hard to imagine these two mismatched fellows spending significant amounts of time together, barring the requirement of delivering 22 minutes of weekly mirth.

CBS couldn't pull together a "Raymond" spinoff that would have featured Garrett in his established role, though even that would likely have been a longshot. Garrett was so perfectly cast as Robert it's difficult to imagine another vehicle suiting him as well -- yet there's still a significant difference between carrying a series and merely augmenting one.

As is, " 'Til Death" might command enough curiosity to avoid instant annulment, but it appears to lack the requisite magic for a long and prosperous union.

A Review from The New York Times

TV Review
George and Martha, Back With One-Liners, if Not Booze

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: September 7, 2006

“ ’Til Death,” the new Fox comedy with Brad Garrett, is presumed to be horrible. In May, Mr. Garrett bombed big time with an off-key stand-up routine at Fox’s live presentation of its pilots in New York. His braying set was not simply bad comedy, with the dry mouth and crickets chirping; it was like a tenor or politician blowing it in days of old. The audience grew spiteful and ready to throw things. Ray Romano’s also-ran taking shots at “American Idol” and other Fox sacred cows? What was his problem?

May the memory of that day always haunt him. With hindsight it seems not a mistake but the calculated cranking up of a jerky persona that he means to refine on “ ’Til Death.”

As Eddie Stark, Mr. Garrett reprises (without knowing it?) Richard Burton’s character in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Only this time — because it’s comedy and it’s 2006, and who cares about highbrow university infighting anymore? — Eddie is a high school history teacher. A typical lesson in world affairs ends this way: “People have always killed each other, people are currently killing each other, and people will continue to kill each other forever. Have a great afternoon.”

Edward Albee’s pleasurably miserable “Virginia Woolf” play has returned as farce: the conflict that exists between the old-hand Starks (Eddie and his wife, Joy, played by Joely Fisher) and the tyro Woodcocks (Steph, played by Kat Foster, and Jeff, played by Eddie Kaye Thomas) is nowhere near as dire or drunken as the nightlong siege with George, Martha and their innocent guests. But it has something of the same flavor. Eddie and Joy are run-down, cynical and overweight. “You said we could be fat, that was our 40th birthday present to each other,” Eddie says. The newlyweds next door are chipper, slender joggers.

To be sure, many of the “ ’Til Death” gags are part of what I’m coming to think of as whiteface, that dubious persona affected by comedians like Dane Cook who want to hit their line drives right down the middle of everyday frat bro culture. The hallmarks of whiteface are: big Caucasian guys, loud voices, muted ethnicity and those “Don’t you hate it when ... ” one-liners. Women are like this. Men are like this. Men want pool tables. Women want herb gardens. What’s an herb garden anyway? I don’t get enough sex.

It’s pretty easy to loathe this stuff if you like your comedy more ragged, drug-addled and confrontational. But there’s an easygoing red-state pleasantness to it too, a celebration of timeless and consoling suburban inertia. Who would have thought when George and Martha were screaming at each in the 60’s that all might have been resolved if they had just let each other get fat?

An article about Brad Garrett

Francine Brokaw

Monday, February 5th, 2007
Yes, Everybody Loves Raymond was a popular show. Yes, Brad Garrett was a pivotal part of that show. And yes, to Raymond fans it's sad it's not on the air any more. But take heart. Brad Garrett is returning to series television alongside Joley Fisher in the new sitcom 'Til Death. The series pits one middle-aged couple (Garrett and Fisher) against newlyweds (Eddie Kaye Thomas of American Pie fame, and Kat Foster) in a cute and funny show that will have audiences laughing week after week.

Garrett says he is more similar to this character than any other he's played. Audiences will notice the big guy is not quite as big as they remember him to be. He had to drop more than a few pounds for a film he recently completed. "It's a movie with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore called Music and Lyrics. I play Hugh's manager." The film opens Valentine's Day. The six foot eight -and - a - half inch tall actor jokes, "I tend to lose weight when I'm hired, because I'm too nervous to eat."

Returning to a sitcom wasn't on Brad's radar and he says, "I wasn't looking to run back into something. The pilot wasn't written for me. I read the pilot and I just loved the writing." He continues, "I knew that if I wanted to go back into television, I would want to do a character that was very far removed from Robert on Raymond, which I felt this character was."

Audiences might make the mistake of comparing 'Til Death with the old The Honeymooners series, and Garrett with Gleason, but that's as far as the similarities go, although Garrett thinks there is a little more to the comparison than that. "I'm a large, bombastic type of windbag," he says with a chuckle. "... what I think is comparative to The Honeymooners is [my character is] a flawed guy who loves his wife and doesn't really know how to show it, [and he] is really a big kid who won't grow up." Garrett played Jackie Gleason in the 2002 TV movie. "I'm not looking to do a Gleason impression." His new character will stand on his own.

The new sitcom focuses on the two different marriages, both of which will change as the season progresses. "I don't think you really want to watch a marriage that works on television. I don't know how funny that would be. I think there are different degrees of dysfunctional marriage. A marriage is a blending of neuroses," he comments with a straight face.

In the old Raymond show, Brad Garrett was a secondary character, but in this one he is the main man. "I'm looking forward to having a lot more creative input, if you will, than I did on Raymond. It's an exciting opportunity." The old series ran for nine years and as Garrett confesses, "It's tough to come off a show like Raymond and really into anything, but you go with your gut, you go with what you think feels right, and it's exciting that I have this type of an opportunity to do it."

Besides making movies and working on television series', Garrett is a stand-up comedian, and takes his act on the road quite often. "I work at the Mirage in Las Vegas all the time. I do a lot of theaters around the country. Ray [Romano] and I, believe it or not, just finished a 10-city tour." He says stand-up is his roots and feels comfortable performing on stage. "I've been doing that my whole life. And the last year and a half, I've kind of been out and about in the country doing that." Garrett worked in Las Vegas many years ago, even opening for Sinatra himself. He observes about the city, "It's changed a lot...it doesn't have that headliner type of panache, that Rat Pack feel that it had. There are a lot more variety shows... I was fortunate to tour with Sinatra and Sammy Davis. When these guys would come to town, it was an event."

An Article from The New York Times

Television
How ‘Idol’ Helped One Sitcom Cheat Death

By EDWARD WYATT
Published: May 27, 2007

WHEN Fox Broadcasting introduced its comedy series “ ’Til Death” to potential advertisers one year ago, the show and its star, Brad Garrett, were immediately the subject of cocktail-party chatter.

Unfortunately for Fox, it was for all the wrong reasons. Mr. Garrett, who was coming off a nine-season stretch playing the awkward brother to Ray Romano on the CBS hit “Everybody Loves Raymond,” left potential advertisers in a stunned silence at Fox’s presentation of its fall lineup in May 2006 with a stand-up routine of raunchy jokes about Ryan Seacrest, Paula Abdul and other of the network’s stars.

Once the show had its premiere, the chatter about “ ’Til Death,” which centers on a long-married, slightly embittered couple and their chirpy newlywed neighbors, did not get much better.

The show drew nearly nine million viewers to its premiere episode in September, according to estimates by Nielsen Media Research, but its audience dwindled by more than one-third over the next three weeks. And when the series returned in November after Fox’s annual baseball hiatus, the audience was less than half its original size.

Fox, however, had a secret weapon, one that this spring thrust the series into the top 10 of all prime-time shows. By moving it into the slot immediately following the Wednesday results show of “American Idol,” Fox gave new life to “ ’Til Death,” nearly tripling its audience and, in the process, guaranteeing that the show would return for a second season.

Fox announced this month that it had ordered 22 new episodes of “ ’Til Death” and would pair it on its fall schedule with “Back to You,” a highly anticipated new comedy starring Kelsey Grammer and another former member of the “Everybody Loves Raymond” cast, Patricia Heaton.

“Fox really put their money where their mouth is,” Mr. Garrett said this month in an interview at the Fox party following its announcement of the new schedule. “They said they believed in the show, they said they were going to put us after ‘Idol,’ and they did. It’s a great feeling of support.”

What lies ahead for “ ’Til Death,” however, is anything but certain. Ratings dropped noticeably for the season finale, which Fox moved to the slot before rather than after “American Idol.” The creators of the series have softened some of the harder edges of the main characters — following complaints about the direction of the series from Mr. Garrett and Joely Fisher, his co-star — but in the process of softening those characters, they have made others noticeably less likable.

Josh Goldsmith, who created the series with his wife, Cathy Yuspa, said he was confident that the show would continue to build its audience in the second season.

“In the first year, we had a lot of different things we had to change,” he said. “We learned what the different actors do well, what kind of stories worked. And as the series progressed, we started working toward everybody’s strengths.”

For Mr. Garrett, those strengths were evident in his work as the lovable giant Robert on “Raymond.” But in the role of Eddie Stark on “ ’Til Death,” Mr. Garrett had, in the first several episodes, traded that likability for a caustic sourness that was anything but an advertisement for long-term commitment.

Several episodes into the series, ratings were sinking and word began spreading throughout Hollywood that Mr. Garrett, whom Fox had aggressively courted as the star of a new series, was unhappy with the show. Production was stopped for about a week as the writers and producers tried to figure out what had been driving viewers away.

“Personally,” Mr. Garrett said, “I wanted to make sure I played Eddie a little less angry and a little more flawed. I wanted him to be more resigned to his marriage than embittered by it.”

Ms. Fisher, whose character, Joy Stark, was initially frumpy, argumentative and disillusioned with marriage, also underwent a change. “The first couple of episodes they wanted me to be in sweat pants and dark clothes and look like I didn’t care about myself,” Ms. Fisher said. “But I think that as a sensual woman, or a woman who’s been with somebody for 20 years who’s still there, she did care. She had a job, and when she got herself together to go to work, she put on a great pair of slacks and a suit and fixed her hair.”

The producers also added some characters, including a college-age daughter for the Starks and a co-worker for Joy, played by Margaret Cho.

Speaking to a group of television writers in January, Peter Liguori, the president of Fox Entertainment, noted that “ ’Til Death” was drawing about the same share of the television audience each week as “30 Rock,” NBC’s critically praised sitcom.

“We like the show,” Mr. Liguori said. “You have to be a little more patient with comedies. So we’re going to give it a shot.”

Mr. Goldsmith, who worked for several years as a writer and producer on “The King of Queens” and was a writer of the film “What Women Want,” said every television series he has worked on has had similar start-up problems.

“In the first year of ‘The King of Queens,’ we had a lot of things we had to change,” he recalled. So while Mr. Garrett’s Eddie was originally a curmudgeon with some dark theories on marriage, “we found that the episodes really clicked when we could put him in a position that he could become happy.”

“ ’Til Death” initially suffered from several other features, many of which were out of the control of the actors and creators, if not the network itself. Situation comedies seem to be out of favor with audiences, and even in its genre, many of the more popular comedies are of a different sort: shot with a single camera without an audience, rather than using multiple cameras and in front of a studio audience.

Fox also did not have any strong similar shows in its lineup to use to help introduce “ ’Til Death.” It scheduled the new series on Thursday nights at 8, where it competed with NBC’s returning comedy “My Name Is Earl,” ABC’s much-anticipated “Ugly Betty” and the CBS stalwart “Survivor,” which was being talked about last fall because of its plan to divide contestants by race. Fox paired “ ’Til Death” with another new sitcom, “Happy Hour,” which lasted only a few weeks before being canceled.

Preston Beckman, the Fox executive vice president who oversees program scheduling, said he was encouraged that throughout the winter, ratings and audience size for “ ’Til Death” stayed relatively steady, with about five million viewers tuning in each week in January and February.

“If you put it in a difficult time period and you see steady growth and people aren’t rejecting it, that means there is some audience for the show,” Mr. Beckman said. “We knew we just needed to be patient and wait.”

The real test was when the show was moved to Wednesday nights after the “American Idol” results show. “We knew it would do better,” Mr. Beckman said. “The measure was how it did compared to other comedies we had put behind ‘Idol’ ” in earlier seasons, shows like “Arrested Development,” “The Loop,” “Wanda at Large” and “Stacked,” all of which gained at first but then could not hold on to their new audience. All those shows have since been canceled.

“ ’Til Death” remained fairly steady in its post-“Idol” slot, drawing 14 million viewers each week, according to Nielsen estimates, meaning that it kept about half of the “Idol” audience.

But when the last two episodes were moved to just before the “Idol” results show, they drew an estimated 7 million and 8.6 million viewers. That was still higher than any Thursday showing since the premiere, but as little as half the ratings of the post-“Idol” weeks.

The showing was nevertheless strong enough for Fox to renew the series. And when the network introduced the stars at its annual presentation of its fall lineup to advertisers in New York this month, Mr. Garrett and Ms. Fisher got a warm round of applause. Fox was not taking any chances, however. After last year’s debacle, the network eliminated the performance part of its presentation, leaving its stars to simply smile and wave.

An Article from The Detroit News

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Mekeisha Madden Toby: Tuned in
Brad Garrett back on Fox's ''Til Death'

Sitting in the studio audience for Fox's "Til Death" means watching Brad Garrett yuck it up nonstop. He also doesn't hesitate to keep the show on course, helping the director whenever and however he can.

Believe it or not, Garrett is one of the hardest working men in TV.

During a taping at Sony Studios in Culver City, Calif., two weeks ago, Garrett pulled triple duty by playing his role as stubborn hubby Eddie Stark, helping the director with suggestions and talking to the audience before, in between and after shoots. The actor, who got his TV start with his Emmy-winning part on "Everybody Loves Raymond," seems to really like his co-stars.

But the best part of sitting in the studio audience for "'Til Death" is that Fox feeds you.

That's right. The taping ran a little late, so Fox bought all 200 people in the audience cheese pizzas and bottled water, and now the show has at least 200 guaranteed faithful followers.

Now that's what I call dinner and a show.

As for the show itself, there were some really funny moments. The addition of J.B. Smoove seems to really make things lighter, comedic and current. What impressed me most is when the writers -- and sometimes the actors -- would change lines in the blink of an eye to keep things fresh and funny.

This was especially necessary when some scenes were shot over and over until the director shouted "moving on!"

When you're in a studio audience, those are the two sweetest words in the English language. "Moving on!"

To listen to the theme song of 'Til Death go to http://www.televisiontunes.com/Til_Death.html