TV: 'LOVE, SIDNEY'
By JANET MASLIN
Published: October 28, 1981

THE first episode of ''Love, Sidney'' begins with a tearful reunion and ends with another tearful reunion, but it's possible that all this sentimentality is just a way of getting the show on the road. The situation for this comedy series, which is billed as ''warmhearted,'' takes a good deal of setting up (even though the fulllength television movie ''Sidney Schorr'' helped launch the series several weeks ago). ''Love, Sidney,'' which hits its stride only in the latter half of this promising and well-played premiere episode, will be shown tonight at 9:30 P.M. on NBC-TV.

Sidney (Tony Randall), a fussy, lonely man, is first seen pining for little 6 1/2-year-old Patti (Kaleena Kiff), whom he evidently helped raise. Then the doorbell rings and Patti has arrived to surprise him. There are tears and laughter, until Patti's mother, Laurie (Swoosie Kurtz), makes her sassy presence known. ''Careful, Sidney, if you break her, you buy her,'' says Laurie while Sidney hugs the child. Half an hour and a few false goodbyes later, Sidney has persuaded mother and daughter to move in with him.

Laurie is an actress on a soap opera called ''As Thus We Are.'' This affords Miss Kurtz the chance to play a hilarious on-the-job scene in which she vamps around in a black negligee and ankle cast, since her character, Gloria, is supposed to be the only survivor of a plane crash that killed 275 people. ''You don't love her,'' snaps Miss Kurtz as Gloria, draping herself over her handsome co-star. ''She's only tryin' to use her brain tumor to hang onto you!''

''Bravo!'' cries Sidney from the sidelines, and he adds ''That was great theater.'' ''You don't get out very much,'' one of the television technicians observes of Sidney, who is by now trying to get the co-star to ask Laurie for a date. Sidney's main traits on this show will evidently be his sweetness, his fastidiousness, and his incorrigible desire to meddle in everyone else's affairs.

Mr. Randall has plenty to work with here, and so does Miss Kurtz, who makes a fine impression as a wisecracking foil to Sidney. Miss Kiff is an effortlessly adorable child. Oliver Hailey's script has a maudlin side, but it also shows signs of originality and humor, aspects of the show that may well prevail in subsequent episodes. Jay (''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'') Sandrich's direction gives ''Love, Sidney'' the potential for intelligent, knowing comedy once the soft spots are out of the way.




http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E5D61039F93BA15753C1A967948260&scp=1&sq=%22love%2C+Sidney%22&st=nyt

Thanks for sharing, Justin. :cool:

I am very happy to see that, after over a year, there is finaly a post on this page by someone other than me! I really thought that this sereis was forgotten by the public! However, I will have to say that there are two important factors that that review neglected to mention. In the first place, contrary to popular belief, I insist that there were episodes of the sereis in which the fact that Tony Randell's character was gay was spelled out! Although it was far from being the main theme of the sereis, it was made clear. On top of this, there was also no mention of the character of Sidney being Jewish. This is another charactoristic that, although not major did come out in some episodes. For the record, the late Tony Randell was, in fact a Jew in his actual existance.