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House of Payne aired from June 2006-? in first run syndication and on TBS
Tyler Perry's House of Payne is a new comedy series about a multigenerational, working class family who experiences all of life's struggles with faith, love and most importantly humor. Pops, the uncle and head of the household, has his life and home turned upside down when an unexpected event forces his nephew, CJ (played by Allen Payne), and CJ's kids to move into the house, putting three generations under one roof.
This chaotic living situation takes its toll on cranky Pops, who is reluctant to have his routine disturbed. In addition to CJ's family, Pops and Ella's son, Calvin, a wise-cracking college kid with no money, hangs out at home which makes it impossible for Pops to have any peace and quiet. It soon becomes evident just how wide the generation gap is, as the family tries to find a way to coexist through all of life's hilarious ups and downs.
Putting the family back in family comedy, Tyler Perry's House of Payne tackles real life issues with very funny humor.
A Review from Variety
TV Reviews
Posted: Tue., Jun. 5, 2007, 1:14pm PT
Recently Reviewed
Tyler Perry's House of Payne
(Series -- TBS, Wed., June 6, 9 p.m.)
By Phil Gallo
Taped in Los Angeles by Tyler Perry and Debmar-Mercury. Executive producers, Tyler Perry, Reuben Cannon; director, Perry; writer, Kellie R. Griffin.
CJ - Allen Payne Ella - Cassi Davis Jazmine - China Anne McClain Malik - Larramie Shaw Curtis - La Van Davis Calvin - Lance Gross
Tyler Perry has redefined the artist as salesman and succeeded at a level that's almost preposterous. While his stage shows and movies are evidence of a distinguished and perceptive imagination, his first series for TBS is the result of pure salesmanship. How he got the cabler to pony up for 100 episodes of such an uncharacteristically unfunny sitcom as "House of Payne" is worthy of a sitcom on its own.
It opens with the plotline that's a timeless guarantee of laughs: The old "I think my wife's on crack" story. How else to explain her hyperactivity, early rising/late arriving and endless money-borrowing, not to mention an explanation for how their house burned down?
Storyline is strictly there to explain how CJ (Allen Payne) and his two kids were forced to move in with mom and pop, disturbing the peace and quiet of their empty nest. CJ is a lieutenant in the local fire department; Curtis (La Van Davis) is the chief.
In the first episode, "House of Payne" rolls through a collection of stereotypes and characters familiar to TV auds. There are some Carol Burnett touches, a bit of the black family comedies of the late '80s and little sense that "Payne" is coming from an important comedic voice of the 21st century.
It's old-fashioned in structure, sets and characters. Despite having his name in the title, Payne is straitjacketed into a straight-man role; the saving grace is the grumpy father figure Chester as Davis huffs and puffs his way through the unnatural dialogue. As the mother Ella, Cassi Davis is all exaggeration -- from the bug eyes to the girth -- and she isn't given the material to make her character either outrageously humorous or poignantly comforting. She doesn't seem particularly real.
And that's the problem with the rest of the cast. Even the nutty neighbor -- in this case, a gospel-spewing gossip -- is lacking in charm.
Camera, Robin Strickland; production design, Ina Mayhew; editor, Joe Binford Jr.; music, Herb Magwood; casting, Kim Williams, Shay Griffin, Abbey Lessanu. 30 MIN.
An Article from The New York Times
June 6, 2007
Talking the Dream, Growing the Brand
By FELICIA R. LEE
ATLANTA — What looks from the outside like roughly 70,000 square feet of warehouse space near the King Center is the home of Tyler Perry Studios, where Mr. Perry is living his dream of running a media empire. On this day in late May, the dream meant talking and talking, so he really wanted something for his chapped lips.
“I got you,” a woman in the front row of the studio cooed, reaching into her handbag for some ChapStick. The bubbly, diverse audience laughed as Mr. Perry joked about calling security. It was a break in a long day of taping three 30-minute talk-show segments. One was about the efforts to help New Orleans residents; one focused on his 2005 film, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”; and yet another introduced the cast of his new TV show, “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” a comedy about an extended family that has its premiere on TBS tonight.
Viewers in some cities saw a version of “House of Payne” last year as part of test marketing for the series, which now has new sets and additional characters.
If “House of Payne” and the talk show “The Tyler Perry Show” hit their mark, that will represent the continuation of the Perry media juggernaut. It started with the success in 1998 of his urban morality play “I Know I’ve Been Changed,” which was followed by a string of similar plays blending soap opera, religion and humor with serious subjects like abuse and drug use. Then came moneymaking films like “Diary” and “Madea’s Family Reunion” in 2006 and last year’s best-selling book “Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life.” The message in all the stories is that faith and perseverance can lead to redemption and that people don’t need to end up where they started.
“I saw a need for positive, inspiring entertainment,” Mr. Perry said in an interview in his studio, “especially in the African-American community.”
Mr. Perry’s plays have made more than $150 million, according to his business associates. His three films (“Daddy’s Little Girls” was in theaters this year), released by Lionsgate, have grossed almost $145 million in total. The cash register keeps ringing for the DVDs of his stage plays and films, which have sold more than 11 million copies.
A major character in the Perry universe is Madea (black Southern-speak for “Mother Dear”). She is the muscular, 37-year-old, 6-foot-6 Mr. Perry in a fat suit, a wig and huge glasses. That blunt-spoken, pistol-packing grandmother has made Mr. Perry, who grew up poor and abused in New Orleans, rich and famous.
“Tyler Perry found a niche and created something new by figuring out how to get those folks out of their living rooms and out of their churches and into the theaters,” said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University and director of its Institute for Critical U.S. Studies.
“He finds a way among the comedy to tell these moralistic tales: Black women, keep your legs closed. Black men, take care of your children,” Mr. Neal said. “It creates a space for a non-hip-hop audience that you see in the incredible growth of ministers like T. D. Jakes, a 24-hour gospel music station and black Christian fiction.”
TBS is betting on similar success for “House of Payne,” a 30-minute comedy-drama about Curtis Payne (LaVan Davis), a grumpy, middle-aged firefighter, and his wife, Ella (Cassi Davis). The couple share their home with their trifling college-student son, Calvin (Lance Gross), as well as Curtis’s nephew, C J (Allen Payne), and Malik and Jazmine, C J’s two children. In subsequent episodes it turns out that Janine, C J’s crack-addicted wife, burned down their home.
The talk show, which Mr. Perry expects to broadcast on the Internet, is his way to stay connected to fans loyal to his message of redemption through the help of God and family, he said. These days, the single Mr. Perry lives mostly in Atlanta and also has a home in the Hollywood Hills. But he said his brand of entertainment was not exactly familiar to most film and TV studios.
“I went to L.A. and pitched to a room full of studio execs,” Mr. Perry told the audience in his studio that day about how “House of Payne” got started. “They told me I couldn’t say ‘Jesus’ on television and nobody would watch it.”
As he chatted with the cast, Mr. Perry turned to his audience. “If you give up on your dream and stop right where you are, you never know what’s around that corner,” he said.
That was the belief that kept him going during his early days, he said, when he took his plays on the road and spread the word through churches, barbershops, black radio. Inspired by an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that said writing was cathartic, Mr. Perry began scribbling plays in a notebook. He eventually booked them into urban theaters, where he would be director, producer and, often, star.
Niyi Coker Jr., a professor of theater and media studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said Mr. Perry’s work was filling a void in many mediums. “It’s not sophisticated or theatrical in the Western context,” he said, but it strikes a deep chord with Mr. Perry’s audience, which does not see their stories in many places.
Serious, soft-spoken, with a calm demeanor, Mr. Perry said he was now creating content for his own future TV network. “It would be somewhere when you turn it on, no matter what you tuned into, it uplifts you, you feel lighter, you feel better,” he said. He has shot episodes of a second comedy series, “Meet the Browns” (based on one of his plays and a film due out in 2008), about a man who turns an old house into a home for the elderly.
For Mr. Perry, “House of Payne” is but another example of doing things his own way. He took the highly unusual step of using his own $5 million to make 10 episodes of the show, which is shot at his studio. Working with the television distribution company Debmar-Mercury, he put together a deal to give those episodes to stations in 10 cities across the country so the series could be test marketed last year. High ratings created a bidding war. TBS won broadcast rights to the show exclusively until September 2008.
The usual route for a TV series is to find a network, sell 13 episodes or so, and cross fingers that the show continues and finds its way to syndication.
Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, which owns TBS, said, “What Tyler is trying to do is in the spirit of great family comedy that is colorblind.”
But is it art? Some critics don’t think so, and some people say they find Mr. Perry’s work demeaning to African-Americans.
Several Web site forums and blogs have featured lively debates about whether Mr. Perry and the comedians Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and Martin Lawrence are culturally castrating black men by playing women. Madea seems to be a particular flash point.
“It’s not funny,” Jill Nelson, the writer and cultural critic, said in an interview. She took Mr. Perry and the comedians to task in the May issue of Essence magazine. “It’s a disturbing kind of body snatching,” Ms. Nelson said, “and generates contempt for and ridicule of and erasure of black women as complex and substantive.”
Mr. Perry said he does not worry about the criticism. He is not making fun of overweight black women, he said.
He admires Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson, Mr. Perry said, but their acceptance by non-African-Americans does not mean that theirs is the only way to tell a story.
It could be that Mr. Perry will help Hollywood broaden the range of what is considered marketable, said Michael Paseornek, president of film production at Lionsgate. “Tyler has changed Hollywood in that the studio is recognizing the value in a market they never saw before,” he said.
In addition to “Meet the Browns,” the studio plans to release more films from Mr. Perry “Why Did I Get Married?,” starring Janet Jackson, is about couples re-examining their vows; it is scheduled to be in theaters in November. “Madea Goes to Jail” is scheduled for release in 2009.
One man cannot reinvent Hollywood, but perhaps he has provoked a conversation, Mr. Perry said. And his new television show will allow him into millions of homes unfamiliar with his kind of stories.
“We’ve been told that what sells is a lot of negativity,” Mr. Perry said, “but in this country we’re looking for answers to a lot of questions, for the way out, how to get through the pain.”
A Review from The New York Times
A Home Big Enough to House the Cousins
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: June 13, 2007
The setting of “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” a new comedy on TBS, is a tidy ranch with black shutters and neat landscaping. The proprietor, Curtis Payne, known as Pops, is an aging firefighter who has done well enough to own a place to maintain his extended family.
The house has no cordless phone, no flat-screen television, no chrome refrigerator (TV’s favorite affluence signifier), but it displays appointments detailed enough to convey that the Paynes occupy a position somewhere in the upper reaches of the working class. There are curios in the cabinets, unfussy ceramics on the console and a kitchen sprawling enough to accommodate a town hall.
The show’s creator, Tyler Perry, a playwright, author and filmmaker, has become one of the country’s most popular chroniclers of the African-American experience, and here he seems to have jumped into the tub of August Wilson’s politics, aiming to convince us that the problems confronting young black men and women today are issues of skin tone, not class.
I say that this is Mr. Perry’s agenda, but I actually have no idea. His narrative aimlessness, and languorous pacing, set, incongruously, against a laugh track, suggest a shaky command of his larger purpose. But watching “House of Payne” does have the effect of affirming the progressiveness of a show like Norman Lear’s “Good Times,” which seemed little more than urban minstrelsy in its day.
Set in the Chicago projects of the 1970s, Mr. Lear’s series understood poverty as the great underminer of African-American advancement. Mr. Perry seems to see something wayward in the African-American soul. In as much as it has a premise, “House of Payne” asks us to believe that a good-tempered, attractive young mother of two, the wife of another industrious firefighter (Curtis’s nephew C. J.), would turn into a crack addict prompted, seemingly, by nothing.
Beyond the odiousness of the message, Mr. Perry’s tone cannot support this foray into topicality. Imagine if, say, on a sitcom like “According to Jim,” the patriarch started molesting the neighbor’s children — ha! ha! — and you begin to get the idea.
Mr. Perry does seek to turn one stereotype on its head, though: the view that African-American families are imperiled by the bad habits of the men who lead them. In “House of Payne” the men are steadfast, committed and hard-working, and you won’t find a pipe on a single one.
TYLER PERRY’S HOUSE OF PAYNE
TBS, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.
Created, written and directed by Tyler Perry. Executive producer, Mr. Perry. A Debmar-Mercury production.
WITH: Allen Payne (C. J. Payne), LaVan Davis (Curtis Payne), Cassi Davis (Ella Payne), Lance Gross (Calvin Payne), Larramie Doc Shaw (Malik Payne), China Anne McClain (Jazmine Payne) and Demetria McKinney (Janine Payne) .
A Review From USA TODAY
'House of Payne': It hurts to watch
House of Payne
* (out of four)
TBS, tonight, 9 ET/PT
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Well, at least the title's apt.
Indeed, if ever a show could cause actual physical pain, TBS' House of Payne might be the one. Glaringly, shamefully, insultingly inept, this new cable comedy from filmmaker Tyler Perry isn't just the worst sitcom of the year, it's one of the worst of the modern era.
And what's worse, you have to imagine the people at TBS know how terrible the show is, and they are proceeding nonetheless. The other option — that they really think this horrendous mish-mash of old jokes and ugly stereotypes fills some TV void — is too hideous to contemplate.
Granted, through such films as Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion, Perry does seem to have tapped into a desire among some parts of the African-American audience to see old-fashioned, church-basement morality plays brought to big-screen life.
Still, whatever charms may exist in his movies or in Perry's drag act as Madea, none survives the transfer to TV. Perhaps he had trouble working under TV's tighter schedule and budgets, or perhaps his sense of humor doesn't work as well in a medium where the African-American family benchmark has been set by such shows as Cosby and Everybody Hates Chris.
Though the show seems to be named for Allen Payne, the young actor who plays CJ Payne, the main character is Uncle Curtis — played by LaVan Davis, who gives the character all of the bluster but none of the humor of Archie Bunker.
Curtis' main complaint is that CJ and his family spend too much time visiting, a problem that's increased in a later episode when CJ's house burns down and everyone is forced to share the same home.
If only they weren't sharing it on TV. The writing here goes beyond awful to staggering, from the reliance on stale jokes (asked to name two great kings, Curtis answers "smoking and drinking"), to the feeble attempts to address serious issues, to the ugly homophobia that threads its way through the show. In Payne's world, bigotry counts as a universal family value.
Given the quality of the script, the actors can almost be forgiven for turning in performances that could lead you to believe you were watching an early rehearsal — and one performed on a temporary set by the real stars' stand-ins.
Certainly, if any of these actors is capable of putting a line across in a way that seems even remotely real or funny, he or she is keeping that talent well hidden.
Too bad TBS hasn't done the same with Payne.
A Review from The Atlanta-Journal Constitution
Faith, laughs make one big happy family
By Jill Vejnoska
ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
To get his new Atlanta-set sitcom on the air, Tyler Perry says he "broke the cardinal rule of Hollywood - I spent my own money."
That was only the beginning.
"Tyler Perry's House of Payne" debuts tonight on TBS, the result of an unprecedented deal in which the Atlanta-based cable network committed to buying 100 episodes of the new series - essentially sight-unseen - from a guy who burst onto the national scene playing Madea, a very tall, very domineering, very funny, African-American woman.
"It is a gamble," says Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, which includes TBS. "But we have the creative confidence in Tyler and his track record. He gave us exactly what we asked for. We wanted a show that made people celebrate the pleasures and values of family, but in a real sense."
Perry has been rewriting conventional entertainment wisdom ever since his Madea-featuring movie "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" came out of nowhere to reach No. 1 at the box office in 2005. Now he's created a sitcom whose premises are at once comfortingly familiar - a multigenerational family shares love, laughs and the occasional spat living under the same roof - but also about as far removed from the usual slick sitcom template as the Varsity is from "Friends' " Central Perk.
There's a meat-and-potatoes quality to the Paynes' world you won't find on "Two and Half Men's" glossy Malibu beaches: Blustery patriarch Curtis (LaVan Davis) and his nephew CJ (Allen Payne) are firemen, Curtis' son Calvin (Lance Gross), is a college student who spends more time at home bumming meals and laundry service from his understanding mother, Ella, (Cassi Davis) than on campus.
"In my mind, he's somewhere between Morehouse and Emory, or maybe Georgia State," Perry joked last week about Calvin. "Maybe one day he'll graduate."
God is a regular presence in the Payne home, along with some nonstandard-issue sitcom problems: When increasingly erratic behavior by CJ's wife, Janine (Demetria McKinney) in next week's episode suggests a crack cocaine addiction, Ella convenes an impromptu family meeting at the firehouse. "We need to get together," she announces, urging the Payne men to join hands. "As a family, we're gonna pray."
Says Perry about including such scenes: "There are a lot of families who pray about situations, who go to church, who say 'Jesus' and do all the things the networks told me they couldn't do. Somebody has to tell me why not."
Far from telling him no, TBS launched a faith-based marketing effort that included screening the first episode for an informal advisory panel of ministers. There's a "Contagious Joy" campaign, in which ministers will highlight messages in "House of Payne" episodes in their weekly e-mails to congregations, and a contest to win money for church building funds.
Finally, Perry chose to set his sitcom not in impossibly hip New York or the bland Midwest, but rather, in Atlanta, right down to references to life on "Ponce" and the gorgeous downtown skyline that's the backdrop to tonight's opening credits.
"I have a love-love relationship with this town," says Perry, a transplanted New Orleanian. He shoots "House of Payne" here at Tyler Perry Studios, also the headquarters for his flourishing moviemaking business; coming next to a multiplex near you: "Why Did I Get Married," starring Perry and Janet Jackson. Says Larramie "Doc" Shaw, 15, the Cobb County resident who co-stars as CJ and Janine's mischievous son, Malik: "Mr. Perry's really trying to make Atlanta the new Hollywood."
First, though, "Mr. Perry" needed to risk a reported $5 million of his own money and put Hollywood squarely in his rearview mirror.
Perry always knew what he wanted his sitcom to be about - a firefighter with two kids moves in with his parents when his crack-addicted wife burns down their house. Several years ago, he thought he had a deal with a major network to do just that.
"They loved everything about it, but they wanted to change everything about it," Perry says.
Instead, adopting what could only be described as the "No Pain, No 'Payne' " approach, he bankrolled 10 episodes himself (at a reported $500,000 per episode) and partnered with a media-distribution company to test it around the country last summer. The ratings were a resounding success, including on TBS, where it aired in the Atlanta market only.
"It was a giant number," says Koonin, who sees "Payne" appealing to African-American viewers, as well as to fans of thoughtful family comedy in general. "This takes an incredibly powerful brand to a very underserved audience. Our hope is that it's like 'The Cosby Show,' where it crosses all lines."
It's no "Cosby" - not yet, anyway. But Perry suggests this "House of Payne" is a new and improved version of last summer's test run. Then, CJ's family moved in with his parents; now it's his aunt and uncle (and the ubiquitous Calvin). And with 10 times as many episodes to work with, "we'll be able to tell all kinds of additional stories," Perry says.
But the crack story line stayed. Of the handful of early "House of Payne" episodes previewed, those that deal with Janine's addiction stand out as the freshest and, yes, funniest. Despite the occasional community theater-style depiction of a crack house (apparently located somewhere on Boulevard), it's hard not to be genuinely moved by Ella's growing concern for her niece-in-law.
It's definitely not the normal stuff of sitcoms. In the real world, Perry says, drugs are "plaguing people," and not just in the African-American community. Nor is it only crack cocaine in the big city. "It can be methamphetamine, it can be addiction with women in the suburbs, or it could be alcoholism," says Perry, who stresses that the crack story line won't dominate the show. "It's not something that goes away in one episode. It's an integral part of this family's stuff, of what they're living with."
Speaking of things this family is living with, enter Madea. She didn't show up in last summer's test run, but with "House of Payne" launching for real, Perry decided it was time to pull out his popular on-screen alter ego's big flowered dress and bigger mouth.
"I wanted to give the show the best kickoff I could," says Perry, who guest-stars in tonight's premiere episode and suggests it could happen again. "Madea was the biggest thing I could think of."
And who is TBS to disagree with Madea - er, Tyler Perry?
"I'm not exactly sure if we suggested it," Koonin says of the Madea cameo. "But we sure as (heck) didn't argue with him!"
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