Arrested Development, Fox’s much admired but ultimately doomed comedy, hasn’t yet been buried a month and ABC has trotted out Sons & Daughters, a sitcom about a diverse clan of dysfunctional suburbanites. It’s an obvious copy. There’s Cameron, a lukewarm everyman with the best of intentions and the worst of results; his awkward son with a previous wife; two flighty sisters, one of them trapped in a sexless marriage—and don’t let me forget her wise-beyond-her-years daughter.
But Sons & Daughters is Arrested Development for nice people. Where Mitchell Hurwitz might have a punchline, Sons & Daughters has a hug or a heart-to-heart, without a wink of irony. Even the zingers—”You’d have been great at Nuremberg,” Cameron tells his insensitive mother—don’t zing.