Summary
There’s longevity in this Netflix series; if the emotional angle and the importance of family togetherness strike a chord with the viewers, this could well be a comedy that stays on the streaming service
This review of Netflix’s Country Comfort season 1 contains no spoilers — the comedy will be released on the streaming service on March 19, 2021.
At the start of Country Comfort, aspiring singer Bailey (played by Katharine McPhee) stumbles across a country house in the storm; her partner has broken up with her, she’s homeless and has no career — she needed anyone nearby to help her. The children of the house embrace her — they needed a nanny after the recent passing away of their mother, leaving widower Beau (played by Eddie Cibrian) to fend for himself. It’s a match made in heaven, and even one of the kids remark, “from singer to Mary Poppins!“. It’s not as serious as it sounds, but it’s a welcome joke to set the scene.
Country Comfort season 1 relies on the laughing-track format, bringing a theatre-type feel to the production, but it’s striking that it’s easy to forget the format in the first few episodes. The children cast in this series are brilliant; they really embrace the script and are funnier than the adults. The team behind the Netflix series has dutifully put time behind guiding the jokes with the child actors, ensuring the timing is right and the context is made. It makes your heart melt. This is not a script that Netflix decided to commission from the bottom-of-the-barrel.
Netflix’s Country Comfort surprisingly pulls the heartstrings in its opening chapters; knowing that these children have lost a mother brings a dimension that goes beyond the silliness of a comedy. One of the children (Cassidy, played by Shiloh Verrico) brings an emotional few minutes between her and the nanny that feel unexpected and impactful. It gives the same vibes as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, where Will Smith was upset due to his father’s abandonment. While not as culturally impactful and unlikely to reverberate on social media, Country Comfort’s opening premise proves that bite-sized comedies with a laughing track can have serious undertones.
There’s longevity in this Netflix series; if the emotional angle and the importance of family togetherness strike a chord with the viewers, this could well be a comedy that stays on the streaming service. Plenty of original laughing track comedies have been released on the platform, but nothing gives the impression that it is a series to stay.
