Two new shows premiere tonight: Melodramatic, soapy A Million Little Things and kind of fun, kind of dumb comedy Single Parents. Television critic Glenn Garvin reviews them both:
Everybody’s comparing ABC’s new melodrama A Million Little Things to its fellow feel-good-now-feel-bad soap This Is Us. No doubt the success of This Is Us (average weekly viewers: 17.4 million) encouraged ABC to take a shot on form of programming long considered moribund by the network suits.
But for a clue to the real origins of A Million Little Things, listen to ABC’s advertising pitch about a group of friends jolted by tragedy: “They discover that friends may be the one thing to save them from themselves.” If that sounds a bit like “In a cold world, you need your friends to keep you warm,” the advertising catchphrase for the 1983 movie The Big Chill, you’re onto the real inspiration of A Million Little Things.
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