The Robin Williams TV series despised by its creator: “The storytelling was pretty bad”
There are TV moguls, and then there is David E Kelley. Best known for creating Ally McBeal and Big Little Lies, Kelley was such a strong brand in the 1990s and ’00s network television that in 1999, he won the Emmy award for ‘Outstanding Comedy’ (McBeal) and ‘Outstanding Drama’ (The Practice) at the same ceremony. After creating Boston Legal in 2004, though, Kelley went through a batch of short-lived series that didn’t live up to past triumphs. In 2013, he made his final stab at network TV glory with a much-publicised sitcom that saw Robin Williams return to television for the first time in decades – but wound up hating it so much he excused himself after a handful of episodes.
It’s hard to emphasise just how big a deal it was for Williams to make a sitcom in 2013. All the marketing for The Crazy Ones – a show that paired him with Buffy’s Sarah Michelle Gellar as a father and daughter advertising duo – played into the seismic nature of the iconic funnyman making his first ongoing show since Mork & Mindy. Fittingly, an enormous 15.52million viewers tuned in for the pilot, which guest-starred Kelly Clarkson – but it was all downhill from there.
By the time the last of The Crazy Ones’ 22 episodes aired on April 17, 2024, and it was subsequently cancelled, its ratings had plummeted to only 5.23million. Reviews had also gone from middling to downright vitriolic. Even Williams took a bit of a kicking from some quarters, with The Boston Herald writing, “Williams seems exhausted,” while Digital Spy wearily snarked, “Williams can’t resist falling back on his old bag of tricks on occasion – cartoon voices, gurning, rambling wordplay.” Worst of all, though – the show’s own creator wasn’t a fan.
“The show wasn’t very good,” Kelley told IndieWire in 2016. “It started off with great ratings, but after watching three or four episodes, I thought the storytelling was pretty bad. I wasn’t a half-hour person, so I turned that over to half-hour people and was willing to step back.” To his credit, Kelley tried to shift the blame from the show’s legendary star by acknowledging, “Robin Williams was great,” but then he stuck the knife in by saying, “The stories made me want to hold my nose.”
Kelley revealed that he actually had a meeting with CBS in which he tried to save the show’s creative direction. However, when he told them, “This isn’t very good,” the answer from a room of executives effectively torpedoed any desire he had to continue working in network TV. Kelley claimed, “Their response was, ‘We don’t care if it’s any good. The way people watch TV now is they’ve got their computers open; they’re updating their Facebook status. They have their iPads. They’re doing an email.'”
These days, the idea of people second or even third screening a TV show is depressing but not exactly surprising. In 2013, though, Kelley was shocked by the network’s blasé attitude toward the fact it knew viewers didn’t care enough about its show to actually give it their full attention. So, when he was told, “It’s very compatible, this show, with the way people watch TV now,” he resolved to never make another show like it.
Indeed, after leaving networks behind and exploring the world of streaming with Amazon Prime Video’s Goliath, Kelley has manufactured a new TV fiefdom almost as strong as the one he built in the ’90s. In less than 10 years, he has created Big Little Lies, Mr Mercedes, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Undoing, Anatomy of a Scandal, The Lincoln Lawyer, and Presumed Innocent – and wouldn’t you know it, none of them are half-hour sitcoms.
