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- ABC
- Sep 22, 2021
- ABC
- Sep 22, 2021
Summary An adult Dean Williams (Don Cheadle) narrates the story of his coming-of-age in 1960s Alabama as a 12-year-old (Elisha "EJ" Williams) with his black middle-class family in this reboot of the 1980s family comedy of the same name.
Created By: Saladin K. Patterson
- ABC
- Sep 22, 2021
- ABC
- Sep 22, 2021
Summary An adult Dean Williams (Don Cheadle) narrates the story of his coming-of-age in 1960s Alabama as a 12-year-old (Elisha "EJ" Williams) with his black middle-class family in this reboot of the 1980s family comedy of the same name.
Created By: Saladin K. Patterson
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
75
89% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
11% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
75
89% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
11% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The show skillfully moves from coming-of-age comedy to drama. This “Wonder Years” also does a fine job of telling the story from the point of view of a Black family, and honors their experiences.
It would have been simpler to have made another nostalgia-loving period piece, which doesn’t examine the idea in any meaningful way; instead, it balances its plates with care.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 14 User Ratings
4.4
43% Positive
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
57% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 14 User Ratings
4.4
43% Positive
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
57% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
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This look back through time leans more intense toward joy than sorrow. Don Cheadle's gentle narration as adult Dean sets and maintains that tone, although Dulé Hill's calm, fatherly presence as Dean's father Bill, a musician who works as a professor to pay the bills, solidifies the show's kindness. Really, though, this entire cast harmonizes beautifully. ... Seeing that play out in this new "Wonder Years" has a purpose, dispensed with the fuzziness of distant memory. One suspects not everyone will be in the mood for its cozy approach.
This is an evidently big-hearted show whose pilot has great fundamentals but tries to juggle a bit more than it realistically can in less than half an hour. That’s suggestive of ambition, which makes a viewer hope this show finds its voice and its pace in the coming weeks. That desire to do and say more is so rare on TV nowadays that “The Wonder Years” feels, for reasons beyond its setting, like an ultimately welcome dispatch from the distant past.
“The Wonder Years” is a delightful series that should appeal to both fans of the original series as well as a new generation who have never watched the show. Williams, Hill, Sengbloh, and Kariuki have a wonderful chemistry, and they could very well be on their way to becoming the next great American television family.
All the young actors, and all the older actors, are well cast and excellent. ... Niceties of age aside, it has a boomer soul.
[The original] was more sweet than outright hilarious, one of the few things the two shows have in common. The old show was escapist, sure, the new one is not, but the inevitable question is why a network remakes a show in a way that largely ignores the charms of the original. ... Whether the new “Wonder Years” is a show for our times—or any—will have everything to do with whether it continues to be so utterly predictable.
