Page 6 - Time Magazine, Sep. 17, 2018

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Murphy Brown

heads back to work
By Susanna Schrobsdorff

N A STICKY AUGUST NIGHT AT A RESTAU-
rant near the Kaufman Astoria Studios in
Queens, N.Y., the reunited cast, writers and
Ostaff of CBS’s Murphy Brown, including Can-
dice Bergen, are gathered for a drink and some food after
a taping of the reboot of the iconic 1990s newsroom com-
edy. The series hasn’t premiered yet, and there’s a kind of
wobbly joy in the room.
Most of the characters are familiar. Viewers will
remember Murphy’s colleagues Corky (Faith Ford) and
Frank (Joe Regalbuto) and her producer Miles (Grant
Shaud). Then there are new additions like Nik Dodani as
the social-media editor dragging the olds into the digital
era and Tyne Daly as Phyllis the barkeep—as well as Jake
McDorman, who plays Murphy’s now-grown son Avery.
But beyond the new characters, there’s also a new
challenge: making a scripted show about journalists at
a fake cable-news program who cover the presidency of
a former reality-TV star who
calls real journalists purveyors
of fake news. It’s beyond meta.
And in an era of reboots and
revivals that range from bland
(Fuller House) to lightning rod
(Roseanne), Murphy Brown is
re-entering the television land-
scape at a particularly auspi- △ takedowns. (Like the time she testi-
cious moment. It’s a network From a 1993 episode: fied before Congress: “How can you
show with aims as lofty as the Bergen, Charles claim to serve the public interest when
Kimbrough, John
many timely prestige shows Hostetter, Shaud, the public is fed up with you?” asks a
△ on streaming and premium Regalbuto and Ford Senator. She answers: “Senator, I think
The Sept. 21, 1992, cover platforms. But it’s still a show what the public is fed up with is see-
of TIME filmed in front of a live audi- ing their tax dollars spent on tropical
ence, with sitcom beats familiar vacations, health-club memberships
to anyone who watched TV in the ’80s and ’90s. and parking privileges for their elected
Show creator Diane English brings up another prob- representatives.”)
lem: How do you write an entertaining show about cable It just so happens that Shannon
news when your competition is the 24-hour drama of ac- looks a lot like Stephen Bannon, Presi-
tual cable news? “You think you’re going out on a limb and dent Donald Trump’s former campaign
then you turn on the TV or you read the paper and some- CEO and noted right-wing nationalist.
thing has been said like [Rudy] Giuliani saying truth is not The live audience cheers when Murphy
the truth,” she says. “If we had ever written that, we would calls men like him dinosaurs who will
go, That’s ridiculous. But it has found its way into this end up “extinct and in a museum with COLLECTION; JAMES: HBO; ROBERTS: AMA ZON; PENN: HULU; STONE: NETFLIX PREVIOUS PAGE: CBS; THESE PAGES: BROWN: WARNER BROS./COURTESY EVERET T
week’s episode, because it’s a brilliant comedic line com- a gin and tonic in a gold diorama.” She
ing from a real person who took it very seriously.” hammers it home: “Underneath all that
The membrane between reality and fiction, enter- clothing is a white guy scared of losing
tainment and news have been porous for a while, but his place at the table.”
on the Murphy Brown set, there’s no separation. At that The script of this one episode hits
afternoon’s taping, Bergen, now 72, unleashed an epic every raw spot in the American psyche
speech about a multiple-shirt-wearing character called right now—from immigration to office
Ed Shannon. It’s up there with any of Murphy’s classic sexism. And it only gets more relevant
54 TIME September 17, 2018