Kevin James remains a reliably solid TV property, but his new sitcom, Kevin Can Wait, feels like a bit of a retread.
James was CBS’s big get for a new sitcom this fall and understandably so. He was the driver behind the decade-long run for King of Queens, and after King ended he created an enormously profitable movie character in the Paul Blart: Mall Cop films.
Kevin Can Wait, which premieres Monday at 8:30 p.m. ET, wisely doesn’t take James out of character.
He plays Kevin Gable, who has retired young from the police department and is licking his chops thinking how much fun he’s going to have with his cop buddies now that they can play all the time.
Trouble is, they don’t because he can’t. His wife Donna (Erinn Hayes) has decided she’s going back to work after all those years staying home with the kids.
That means someone else has to tend to the kids, and that would be Kevin, who it turns out doesn’t even know them very well.
His idea of a household routine, created on the fly, is a central pillar for the comedy in Kevin Can Wait.
The show is built on several premises that are embedded both in life and in sitcoms – a husband and wife who love each other, but after a couple of decades sometimes also drive each other nuts. Kids who are precocious and just getting the hang of being wise guys even though they still get tangled up in kid dramas.
While it’s an ensemble show, it revolves around James, who has had this character nailed for years.
If Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners had kids, he would behave much as Kevin Gable behaves. He knows what he has to do and he never stops looking for an angle, a shortcut, any way to avoid just doing it.
For Kevin, that’s compounded by the fact he doesn’t just have to finesse his wife, but those kids – Kendra (Taylor Spreitler), Sara (Mary-Charles Jones) and Jack (James DiGiacomo) – who often just shake their heads at what he says and does.
His posse of cop buddies rolls with him a lot more easily, except they expected he’d now be basically their beer buddy, not Mr. Mom.
As sitcom premises go, Kevin Can Wait aims for the safe zone. Proven star, quirky family, befuddled Dad, perceptive Mom, regular affirmations that they all love each other.
Trouble is, it also needs to bring something that feels fresh, and at the start, at least, it doesn’t seem to do that.
Familiar isn’t the worst idea on TV, and these folks are likeable enough so they could stick around a while. You hope that if they do, the show will separate itself a little more from the pack.