Short-Lived Sitcom Potpourri Pop-Out – UP ALL NIGHT

[TMC]

https://jacksonupperco.com/2025/05/0...-up-all-night/

Thoughts: This semi-autobiographical work-plus-home single-cam from former SNL scribe Emily Spivey has a strong cast of three comic titans at the helm – Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, and Maya Rudolph. And it’s got a decent narrative setup as well, offering a twist in an otherwise familiar situation, as the gender dynamics for a married couple struggling to adapt to being new parents are flipped, and not as a matter of cliché, for while the pa stays home and the ma goes to work, the show avoids the comic parody that usually accompanies this stay-at-home-dad logline on sitcoms. That is, this series doesn’t do dumb dad stuff and is wisely centered on Applegate as the mom – Spivey’s proxy – which means, in the grand tradition of the work-plus-home sitcoms of yore, like The Dick Van Dyke Show or The Mary Tyler Moore Show, we’re following this lead as she goes between her two worlds, with comic problems existing on both fronts. Now, that is a reliable low-concept setup, enabling opportunities for great characters to make big fun in both realms, united by an anchoring star presence who allows them to mix and mingle. But I’m afraid Up All Night pulls too many figurative punches with its characters and never settles into a groove where the situation, in total, clicks.