Grand (1990)

About

"Grand" is a short-lived series focusing on the residents of Grand, Pennsylvania from three different walks of life -- poor maid Janice Pasetti (Pamela Reed) and her daughter Edda (Sara Rue), middle-class Carol Anne Smithson (Bonnie Hunt) and her husband Tom (Michael McKean), and rich Harris Weldon (John Randolph), his slacker son Norris (Joel Murray) and butler Desmond (John Neville).

It's hard not to compare the show to the 1970s hit "Soap," although the first season of "Grand" played more like a dramedy than a wacky sitcom. By the end of the season, the show was on the bubble, with even the crew believing it was going to be canceled. Unfortunately, NBC waited so long to renew that they lost cast members McKean and Andy Lauer (who played a local cop who was in love with Janice).

When the show returned for a second season, it became more of a standard sitcom, with stories largely contained in single episodes. It also became wackier, with the explanation for Tom's disappearance being truly reminiscent of Soap. Ratings steadily dropped. An appearance by John Goodman (whose Roseanne was produced by the same company) in "The Healing" gave them the best ratings of the season, but then it was all downhill. At the very end, they resumed the serialized format, opting to go the wacky Soap route, with storylines centered on a Satanic cult and a teenage boy who was raised by wolves, and NBC pulled the plug with Janice and Carol Anne stuck in a well. The final episode (which features future Drew Carey Show stars Kathy Kinney and Deidrich Bader) was never broadcast.

The series has been circulating in avi format for many years. I snipped out the commercials (and included them as a separate file) and snagged the unaired finale, which recently surfaced on YouTube. Thanks to the original rippers.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

NBC

Language

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Tweens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed