TVSquad

If you haven't heard, TBS has canceled The Bill Engvall Show after three seasons. I watched one episode of the show during its first season and found it to be a cute and harmless family sitcom.

Did you watch it, and if you did, will you miss it?

Matt Williams has an impressive sitcom pedigree. He created the quintessential '90s sitcom with Roseanne. Then, with Carmen Finestra and David McFadzean alongside, he struck gold again with Tim Allen's Home Improvement. Now they're hoping lightning can strike twice (thrice?) with another take on the traditional family sitcom for ABC.

Once a television staple, the family sitcom has probably never seen leaner days than right now. But with the multi-camera format making a comeback, there's no better time to test the waters. This time, the family will be a sports psychologist who works out of his home, along with his three kids and presumably a wife.

The big difference between this project and Williams' other two successes is the lack of an established comedian at the center of it. One could easily argue that both Roseanne and Home Improvement were just expansions of the stage acts of their respective stars. That was kind of a trend back then. Are you ready for a family sitcom in the vein of these classics, or has their time come and gone?

The popular '80s sitcom Growing Pains will be added to the Nick at Nite lineup this month, kicking off with a marathon on January 21 from 9pm to 1:30am (and then repeating from 1:30am to 6am). Starting on January 22, the show will slide into its normal timeslot Monday through Thursday at 9 and 9:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 10:30pm, and Sunday at 9:30pm.

Growing Pains was one of the shows my family watched while I was growing up, and that's pretty much where it stays: in my memories. I've tried watching reruns in recent years, but it's still very much "of the '80s" to me. That isn't to say it was a bad show, and it followed the precedent set by The Cosby Show of having a family where both the mother and father had high-paying careers. Also, the kids were mischievous but never complete hoodlums. Actually, the more I think about it, it was pretty much a white Cosby Show in many ways.