I don’t really like making comparisons like I did in the title. It just sets you up for disappointment. And what makes Arrested Development so Arrested Development-y is its tone and comedic style.
And while A Moody Christmas/The Moodys don’t mimic AD’s style or tone (veering more into a dramedy territory at times), its story of a UK-based photographer who comes back once a year to his homeland of Australia to put up with his family’s shenanigans for Christmas reminds me of Arrested Development’s characters a bit.
There’s the man-child brother (a little Buster and a little Gob), the loopy uncle (Gob), the brother-in-law with a secret (Tobias), the straight-man lead character (Michael), the sister trying to get her life together (Lindsay-ish). None of them have a sure equivalent, save for lead guy Dan Moody, but there’s flecks of AD characters sprinkled throughout.
The conceit of the original series, “A Moody Christmas,” is that each of the six episodes takes place during Christmas, one year apart. Despite none of the characters looking at all like they’ve aged between the first and sixth episode, it’s certainly a fun style the show uses well. Each Christmas gatherings gives us a peak at how the characters’ various lives have progressed (or not) over the last year while still leaving us wanting to see more of what happened in the preceding 365 days. The humor is a little dry, a little silly, but fun.
Wisely, the show abandons the once-a-year Christmas idea with the series “The Moodys,” with pretty much all the characters returning. It’s still a fun show though the chemistry is a bit lacking between Dan and Cora. The will-they-won’t-they of Dan and Cora was strong throughout A Moody Christmas but less so during The Moodys.
However, one aspect of The Moodys that stays strong, if not even better, is ne’er-do-well, manchild brother Sean Moody, he’s a hoot and a half and in the hands of someone else, the character would be annoyingly one-note and over-the-top but he’s played with just the right amount of absurdity and semi-groundedness.
All 6 half-hour episodes of A Moody Christmas can be found on hulu with the 8 episodes of The Moodys to arrive at some point.
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