“Old-Fashioned Quality on ABC’s Homefront”
by Matt Roush, USA Today, Apr. 1992
Three and a half out of four stars
ABC’s Homefront is great meat-and-potatoes TV, but that doesn’t seem to be the flavor of the moment.
This ’40s-era ensemble drama is trying to survive in an environment that favors long-term brand-name loyalty and the new and dreary comfort zone of fast-food reality.
It may lack the sanction of ‘hot’ TV (Northern Exposure and The Simpsons) or “important” TV (Law & Order and I’ll Fly Away). But like these fine series, Homefront in its freshman season has been consistently entertaining in a way that has lately eluded established mainstream hits like Designing Women, L.A. Law and lame duck The Cosby Show.
Yes, it’s a soap: contrived, with pat resolutions (especially during an intense union strike) and convoluted romance. But it’s blessed with a charismatic cast, nifty production design, jaunty music and especially the nimble writing of prolific creators Lynn Marie Latham and Bernard Lechowick.
Unlike potboiler serials of recent years, Homefront ends its season this week not with an over-the-top bang, but with kisses and clinches. Lechowick’s script is a witty rondo of new couplings, near-couplings, a betrothal, a departure and several impending upheavals.
To get a measure of how clever the show can be, tune in to the opening of Wednesday’s hour, as cute couple Jeff (Kyle Chandler) and Ginger (Tammy Lauren) cope with sexual tension even though they won’t be wed for six months. This is 1946, remember, and premarital sex – even with condoms, and especially among this Ohio town’s Catholics – isn’t broached lightly.
Things may be refreshingly quaint, but it’s almost never cloying.
In the breezy opening, Jeff turns to his baseball coach for advice, and Ginger to her priest. As each gets counsel that the best antidote to lust is avoidance of the other – “play hard” vs. “pray hard” – it’s inevitable that these kids who are stuck on each other will soon get stuck with each other.
Locked in a church, no less.
The Jeff-and-Ginger scenes are classic Homefront – snappy, playful, pure escapism – and are nicely juggled with other stories. The best involves beefy working stiff Charlie (Harry O’Reilly), who learns he’s been duped by his British bride (Sammi Davis-Voss) and nurses his broken heart and wounded pride on an unexpected bounty of sympathetic shoulders. As was the case all season, the hour races by, leaving the hooked among us wanting more.
Sluggish ratings through the year only testify how tough it is for good TV to catch on anymore. Dear Abby may have encouraged her readers to go to bat for the show, but if canceled, it will likely vanish without the resonant outraged clamor that greeted ABC’s dropping of thirtysomething and mishandling of China Beach last year.
Still, it would be a shame. Shows this enjoyable are harder to come by all the time. And if you’ve missed it so far, by all means line up for summer reruns.
A guilty pleasure that leaves you feeling anything but guilty, Homefront is as savory as any beach read.