Bram and Alice aired from October 6, 2002 until October 27, 2002 on CBS.
Bram ( Alfred Molina), was a blustery, coniving author, whose only successful novel, the Pulitzer Prize- winning Matthew Kent, had been published more then 20 years earlier. Despite his subsequent lack of productivity, Bram lived off his reputation and the continuing sales of Kent, which was still required reading at many colleges, and milked his publisher for money to live in a huge, book fill Dickensian apartment in Manhattan. Then one day a perky aspirng writer named Alice ( Traylor Howard), showed up at the door and informed him that she was his daughter. Her mother had had a one night stand with Bram when he was a guest lecturer at Vassar. Despite their mutual wariness-he was concerned that she would cramp his style, and she detested his drinking and womanizing-Alice moved into the apartment and they attempted to establish a functional father-daughter relationship. Paul ( Roger Bart), was the ernest young assistant who tried to organize Bram's life and keep him from getting into too much trouble. Also seen were obnoxious Katie ( Katie Finneran), one of Bram's neighbors, and Michael ( Michael Rispoli), a former priest who was the bartender in the lounge on the ground floor of Bram's apartment building.
The critics hated Bram And Alice and apparently so did the television audience. After 4 low rated telecasts CBS pulled the plug.
A Review from USA TODAY
'Bram and Alice': Get me rewrite!
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
There's nothing wrong with Bram and Alice that a better script and a different star couldn't fix.
Which leaves CBS in quite a fix of its own.
In yet another bad season for new sitcoms, no failure is more disappointing than Bram, if only because it comes from two of television's best-respected writers/producers: Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd. As two of the driving creative forces on Frasier when the show was at its height, their next effort has been eagerly anticipated — so eagerly that it's hard to believe this is it.
In a sense, Sunday's premiere is an example of a Frasierian farce carried too far. Bram Shepherd (Alfred Molina) is a famous author and infamous ladies' man. So when the daughter he hasn't seen since infancy appears at his door, he assumes Alice (Traylor Howard) is a one-night stand he can't remember.
Naturally, he hits on her. And then, when he thinks she's carrying his baby, he tries to talk her into getting an abortion.
To which one can only say, "Yikes."
Granted, Keenan and Lloyd pulled off some risky mistaken-identity jokes on Frasier, but they had two things working in their favor then that they don't have now: They knew when to stop, and they had a gifted cast that could sell almost any material.
Here, alas, the joke keeps going long after it has lost any chance of amusing us. Late in the game, for example, you get this daddy/daughter exchange:
Dad: "I'm looking at your face to see if you might have my eyes or my nose." Daughter: "I nearly had your tongue an hour ago."
Because Bram can't be planning to become TV's first incest sitcom, we can assume these jokes will disappear in the weeks to come. Given Keenan and Lloyd's track record, we can even assume the scripts will improve.
Unfortunately, that still leaves Molina, who should have proved to CBS in Ladies Man that he can't carry a sitcom. He may be fine when he can lose himself in a character role, but a sitcom requires something more. A show needs a star who can project a personality people want to visit on a weekly basis, and Molina has never given any indication he can do so.
In wasted support, Bram squanders the talents of two Broadway stars: Roger Bart of The Producers and Katie Finneran, whose Tony-winning turn in Noises Off was one of the funniest twists on a dumb ingénue I have ever seen. Here, Bart's entire role consists of having a gag for a name (Paul Newman), while Finneran spends the half-hour making laugh-free jokes about her Japanese boyfriend.
There are, no doubt, people who will find those jokes — and the entire show — offensive. But in truth, the real offense here is a criminal abuse of talent.
And that's a long-running problem Hollywood really should try to fix.
A Review From The New York Times
TELEVISON REVIEW; That Blonde At the Door? A Daughter!
By ANITA GATES
Published: October 5, 2002
So many fine performers have taken a shot at sitcom success and fallen flat on their faces: Nathan Lane, Bette Midler, Stockard Channing, Faye Dunaway. Even James Stewart had his own comedy series (''The Jimmy Stewart Show,'' NBC, 1971-72). Maybe the imposing Alfred Molina (''Chocolat,'' ''Murder on the Orient Express,'' the original Broadway cast of ''Art'') will have better luck.
In ''Bram and Alice,'' which has its premiere tomorrow night on CBS, Mr. Molina plays a despicable character who might be fun to hate. He's Bram Shepherd, world-famous author and full-time cad. Bram is so scummy that when he can't remember his one-night-stand's name, he peeks inside her wallet, and while he's there, lifts a little cash and offers it to her as taxi fare.
One day a pretty young blonde, Alice O'Connor (Traylor Howard, who was in the forgettable ''Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place''), turns up at his door, and he assumes she's another adoring fan who will be thrilled to spend a night in his bed. He's properly horrified to learn, as he's plying her with Champagne, that she's his daughter. Alice has just found out about their relationship, too. Her mother, convinced that she was dying of a bee sting, told Alice about her long-ago, fruitful extramarital tryst with Bram.
By the end of the first episode, Alice -- who was ready to give up her dreams of a writing career and go home to Vermont -- is set to move into her father's New York City apartment, paying her share of the rent (more than her share, actually, since Bram has financial problems and is perfectly willing to take advantage of his own flesh and blood).
The series has possibilities, with two ''Frasier'' principals, Christopher Lloyd and Joe Keenan, as executive producers. Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Keenan also wrote the premiere episode, directed by James Burrows, whose history of television greatness goes back to ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show.''
But great teams have flopped before, and it's not clear from the first episode whether the series is going to rely on predictable wacky mix-ups or on humor that actually grows out of character. Either way, the show has the requisite team of quirky supporting characters: a hard-drinking single woman, a writer's assistant with a movie star's name, and a bartender who used to be a priest.
BRAM AND ALICE
CBS, Sunday evening at 8:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 7:30, Central time.
Directed by James Burrows; Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd, executive producers and writers; Maggie Blanc, producer; Susan Rosen, associate producer; casting by Allison Jones; music by Bruce Miller. Produced by Paramount Television Network.
WITH: Alfred Molina (Bram Shepherd), Traylor Howard (Alice O'Connor), Roger Bart (Paul Newman), Michael Rispoli (Michael), Katie Finneran (Katie).
A Review from the Washington Post
THE NEW SEASON : TV Preview
'Bram': A Laughable Excuse for a Sitcom
By a Washington Post TV Critic
Saturday, October 5, 2002; Page C01
For much of TV's history, CBS has "owned" Sunday nights, dominating the evening with the likes of Ed Sullivan, "Murder, She Wrote," "Touched by an Angel" and, of course, the still-running "60 Minutes." But this season the network may be losing its grip -- in more ways than one.
Why should CBS worry about Sunday nights? If you tune in tomorrow night at 8, you'll see two reasons why: The return of the dark and snarly sitcom "Becker" and the premiere of one of the season's worst new shows, "Bram and Alice," a comedy that ricochets between no taste and bad taste and back again.
"B&A" is all yuck and no yocks -- a lame idea with a mediocre cast and a future that looks about as bright as Martha Stewart's.
NBC got a head start on the Sunday night race by premiering its new dramas "American Dreams" and "Boomtown" last week against a football overrun and an old theatrical movie on CBS. And HBO is riding high, of course, with "The Sopranos" and Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (which has been featuring Ted Danson, of "Becker," as a guest star, and putting him to better use than his own show does). Slotting sitcoms at 8 and 8:30 on Sunday, even though it's been done before, just seems wrong for the locale -- and would even if the sitcoms weren't awful.
The Bram in "Bram and Alice," played creepily by Alfred Molina, is an eccentric 55-year-old writer who is supposedly irresistible to women; heaven knows why. Alice, played by the inarguably cute Traylor Howard, is the grown daughter that Bram doesn't know he has, not even when she first shows up at the door of his Manhattan apartment in the premiere.
At first Bram assumes she is an ex-lover who slipped his mind. Then he worries that during one of his sundry sprees he impregnated her, and maybe she should have an abortion. This whole mistaken-identity business is not laugh-inducing but cringe-inducing, and it seems to go on forever.
A typical writer's fantasy of a writer, Bram is rich, wily and rascally and loves to avoid work, and we're supposed to find this, as well as his pathetic promiscuity, funny. Although his first encounter with Alice goes badly, she returns to the apartment on the script's flimsy pretext that she left her keys there. Bram begins to see a family resemblance, telling Alice she has "my eyes, my nose," and she responds, "Yeah -- I had your tongue an hour ago" when he tried to give her a non-fatherly smooch.
The charitable assumption to make, based on dialogue like that, and indeed on the whole conception, is that writers Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd have gone insane.
Eventually Alice, a perky innocent from Vermont who moved to the big city to become a writer, moves into Bram's apartment, and one can just imagine the sort of antics that will insist upon ensuing -- though it's harder to imagine anybody wanting to witness them.
Every sitcom has to have wacky sidekicks. The chief W.S. on "Bram and Alice" is Bram's long-suffering assistant, who happens to be named Paul Newman and is played by Roger Bart. Paul tells Bram that, with so many sexual partners coming and going, he really should "put a chalkboard over the bed and make them sign in," heh heh heh. Maybe that's a sly reference to "What's My Line?", a CBS Sunday night hit from the days when the network took more pride in itself.
Why should CBS risk putting sitcoms where the network has traditionally slotted one-hour dramas? "We needed to build another comedy night," says CBS vice president Chris Ender from Television City in Los Angeles. That sounds reasonable by the logic of the TV business, such as it is. But building a comedy night with "Bram and Alice" and "Becker" as the foundation is like constructing condos on quicksand. The prospects are as grim as the shows.
A Review From Entertainyourbrain.com
"Bram and Alice" Review
By Shawn McKenzie 10/31/2002
Aaaaah! I was so close! CBS’s Sunday night piece of crap “Bram and Alice” was the last new show I had to review of the network shows. I thought I could escape with only two casualties (see my review of ABC’s “That Was Then” and my review FOX’s “girls club”), but alas, that is not the case. To make things worse, I had four weeks to get this review done! This show, however, is much easier than the first two shows to explain why it was cancelled!
“Bram and Alice” is the story of Bram Shepherd (Alfred Molina), a famous Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and Alice O'Connor (Traylor Howard), is a naive young woman on the verge of dumping her dream of becoming a writer and going to Vermont when she learns that Bram, a man she idolizes, is her father. Bram has gotten by on his reputation for years, but is still required reading on campuses throughout the country. All Alice wants is to get a chance to know the father she thought she never had. She finally tracks him down, but their first meeting is a catastrophe. He first thinks she is a former lover who he just couldn’t remember that well. Once that confusion was settled, Alice sees Bram as a fast-talking, hard-drinking woman-chaser, all of which he is. However, they decide to continue trying to get to know one another better. Alice decides to move into Bram's New York apartment, not to Bram’s liking at first. Bram’s assistant is unfortunately named Paul Newman (Roger Bart.) Paul tries to keep Bram on the straight and narrow. Downstairs from Bram’s apartment is a bar, tended by Michael (Michael Rispoli), a former Catholic priest who serves drinks and listens to everyone’s problems. Katie (Katie Finneran) is a barfly who lives in the same building and has a mysterious Japanese boyfriend. The whole show revolves around Bram getting used to the fact that he is a dad and Alice finally having a dad.
I might be a little biased here, because I have rarely liked anything Molina has ever done. I find his acting style annoying. On the flip-side, I do like Howard (yes…even “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place.”) The rest of the actors in this show were okay, but everyone was just so hammy. The original almost-incest premise was creepy, and the show is (or was) just plain bad. I gave it two chances and then gave up on it, and apparently, everyone followed me.
“Bram and Alice” was a mistake, but I kind of like the idea of an hour of sitcoms in that hour on Sunday on CBS. I just hope they can find something better that will fit with “Becker,” because this show certainly wasn’t it. Good riddance, “Bram and Alice.” You weren't the worst new show this season, but you are one of the first to go.
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