I so desperately want to be happy that Reba McEntire is back on network TV.
The country singer and actress anchored one of the most enjoyable sitcoms of the 2000s with “Reba,” about a single mom who works too hard, loves her kids and never stops. The WB show ran for six seasons and 125 episodes, with its dysfunctional but lovable Hart family at the heart of every story Reba and co-stars Melissa Peterman, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Steve Howey and Christopher Rich told.
So you would think that a new sitcom starring McEntire and Peterman set in a Tennessee bar (hello, “Cheers” aspirations) and with another very dysfunctional family dynamic would be a guarantee of another “Reba”-style good time. Alas, NBC’s “Happy’s Place” (Fridays, 8 EDT/PDT, ★★ out of four) is no “Reba.” It’s just another low-rent sitcom with stale jokes, bland characters and a limp plot. It’s not so much that it’s bad, it’s just so boring, banal and blah. And that is simply not good enough for the likes of three-time Grammy winner McEntire, 69. She deserves scripts that sing just as well as she does.
