TV gets another ray of 'Sunshine'
MR. SUNSHINE - "Pilot" - Matthew Perry stars as Ben Donovan, a self-involved manager of a San Diego sports arena, the Sunshine Center, where curious mishaps and bizarre requests are nothing more than ordinary Credit: ABC Photo/
Same title, much different (and much more successful) show.
We've been down that road many times before: "Friends" was a 1979 comedy about three 11-year-olds; "Happy Days" was a 1970 variety show; "Lost" was a 2001 "Amazing Race"-like competition. This season, we've already seen the Jim Belushi legal drama appropriate the name of the classic E.G. Marshall legal drama, "The Defenders."
This week, the networks are at it again with the debut of "Mr. Sunshine," an ABC sitcom starring Matthew Perry (from, um, the better-known "Friends") as the self-absorbed manager of San Diego's Sunshine Arena.
Viewers with long memories, or brains designed to be crammed with totally useless information, may recall a similarly titled show that aired a quarter-century ago.
That "Mr. Sunshine" - which also aired on ABC - was actually a noble but ultimately failed attempt to build a sitcom around a character who was not only grouchy, but blind (and bald), to boot.
Jeffrey Tambor (several years before his starmaking role as Hank Kingsley on HBO's "Larry Sanders Show") was the title character, Paul Stark, a crabby college professor who had been blinded in an accident and recently divorced. Perhaps not surprisingly, audiences didn't warm to the show - even if Henry Winkler was co-executive producer - and it was gone in a matter of months.
ABC, undoubtedly, is hoping for a slightly longer run with this "Mr. Sunshine."
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