"Life with Lucy" is an ill-conceived and misguided sitcom from the mid-1980s...one that you are amazed they made in the first place. After a 12 year absence from her last weekly television series, "Here's Lucy", Lucille Ball (age 75) is back with this sitcom...along with her perennial co-star Gale Gordon (age 80).
The series finds Lucy moving in with her daughter and her family. The husband's father (Gordon) is not thrilled to have her there, as she now insists on going to work with him since she has been the co-owner of his hardware store. Much of the antics that follow are quite forced and seem much like the banter Ball and Gordon had in the previous series.
This series only amounted to 13 episodes and the network didn't even bother showing all 13 before pulling the series...a series that only lasted about two months. Why? Well, most of it seemed to be because the pair could NOT just walk into their old roles. Too many years had passed and the leads just looked moribund...and the overreliance on pratfalls and slapstick was simply painful to watch. The writing and canned laughter weren't very good...and the supporting cast wasn't particularly distinguished. Had the show offered a DIFFERENT formula and had better writing, perhaps it might have worked. As is, it's a very sad experience watching these re-runs on YouTube unless you are one of those diehards who simply loves every single think Lucy did...and thinks they all are comedy gold. Gold this isn't!
The series finds Lucy moving in with her daughter and her family. The husband's father (Gordon) is not thrilled to have her there, as she now insists on going to work with him since she has been the co-owner of his hardware store. Much of the antics that follow are quite forced and seem much like the banter Ball and Gordon had in the previous series.
This series only amounted to 13 episodes and the network didn't even bother showing all 13 before pulling the series...a series that only lasted about two months. Why? Well, most of it seemed to be because the pair could NOT just walk into their old roles. Too many years had passed and the leads just looked moribund...and the overreliance on pratfalls and slapstick was simply painful to watch. The writing and canned laughter weren't very good...and the supporting cast wasn't particularly distinguished. Had the show offered a DIFFERENT formula and had better writing, perhaps it might have worked. As is, it's a very sad experience watching these re-runs on YouTube unless you are one of those diehards who simply loves every single think Lucy did...and thinks they all are comedy gold. Gold this isn't!