TV Review - Almost Family (2019)

This is an adaptation of an Australian series called Sisters (2017). It was later sold on Netflix and premiered in 2018. It's about a woman whose father tells her on his deathbed that he used his own sperm to father hundreds of children. The woman throws a party to meet all of these children. She learns that she does indeed have hundreds of siblings. In a weird twist, the majority of them are brothers, except for two sisters and only two sisters. The series then follows the woman's relationship with those two sisters. This series makes some changes to that premise. The first change is that the father who used his sperm doesn't die. The second change is that the siblings aren't majority brothers and the woman in the center doesn't just have two sisters. She potentially has more. These changes present some opportunities for the series to explore several issues. These changes also present challenges to the narrative, which make the whole thing a bit tougher to accept.

Brittany Snow (Pitch Perfect and Hairspray) stars as Julia Bechley, the communications director at a New York fertility clinic. Her father is the head of the clinic and the principal doctor. She loves her father and believes in him, but her illusions are shattered when a news reporter reveals that her dad has used his own sperm to impregnate tons of women. She's a bit awkward, a bit neurotic, and this news puts her in a bit of a tailspin, as she sorts out her feelings for her father, herself and this whole situation. All of a sudden, grown children who are like Julia, in their late 20's or early 30's, start showing up at the clinic to confirm if Julia's father is also their father.

Megalyn Echikunwoke (CSI: Miami and The 4400) co-stars as Edie Palmer, a young black woman who works as a criminal defense attorney. Her mom is a bit of a hippie who owns a record store. Unlike a lot of the other mothers who were duped by Julia's father, Edie's mom, played by Tamara Tunie (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), seems like she wasn't duped and knew her daughter's true paternity but simply didn't say anything. After three episodes, the series hasn't reconciled why she did that or even what her fertility issues were that she decided to go this route and lie about it.

Edie, meanwhile, is married to a very handsome man named Tim, played by Mo McRae (Empire and Sons of Anarchy). Tim is also a lawyer. Interestingly, before Edie found out that she was Julia's sister, Edie and Julia were friends. Unfortunately, the two of them not only shared a father. They also shared a boyfriend. Before Tim married Edie, he was dating Julia. The boyfriend swap caused a rift between the two. Now, Julia and Edie have been thrown back together because they're now related by blood. At the same time, Edie is trying to wrestle with her same-sex attractions and the fact that she may be a lesbian.

Emily Osment (The Kominsky Method and Young & Hungry) also co-stars as Roxy Doyle, an Olympic gymnast who won a silver medal. Now, she does branding and marketing stuff where she'll go around promoting various companies like an energy drink or she'll make personal appearances for birthday parties. She's getting sick of pimping herself out like this. She doesn't know what else to do with her life. She lives with her parents who are very controlling and force her to keep doing these kinds of dispiriting gigs.

When the truth comes out, it seems as if Roxy is the most eager to break away from the family she's known and try to make a new family with her newfound siblings. Roxy even gets Julia to allow her to move in together. Through a weird series of events, Edie also briefly crashes with Julia and Roxy at Julia's apartment. This is where the changes to the original Australian premise start to strain credulity. Yes, the original Australian series found a way to bring these three sisters together and bond them. Because of the changes to the premise here, bringing these three specific sisters together feels contrived or not as organic as how it happens in the Australian series, a series that on paper is highly contrived but doesn't feel as such in its execution.

Timothy Hutton (American Crime and Leverage) plays Leon Bechley, the fertility expert who used his sperm to father hundreds of children potentially. In the Australian series, his character died. His death took away having to deal with his crimes and the implications of them. Here, the show keeps him alive, so his crimes and the implications of them are something that have to be addressed. He is charged with sexual assault, but it seems like the show is going down the road of redeeming Leon and absolving him of his crimes, which as I said makes this whole thing a bit tougher to accept.

The tone of the rest of the show feels like a romantic comedy. In the first episode, Julia has sex with a man named Sam, played by Chris Conroy (Mr. Robot), who is later revealed to be one of the hundreds that Leon fathered. Yes, this is a romantic comedy involving accidental incest. The series is able to cleverly navigate the fallout of Julia and Sam's coupling. It'll be interesting to see if Sam continues to show up in future episodes and how it's handled, but how it's circumventing the fact that Leon is accused of sexual assault, or rape, isn't all that clever.

How the show is handling it so far is by ignoring the victims, the countless women who were violated by this man. Instead, the show focuses on getting him out of his legal battle and building relationships with the three, aforementioned daughters. Obviously, a TV show that has a premise involving hundreds of people can't follow all of those hundreds. Again, the Australian series had the hook of the three sisters being the only sisters among the hundreds. Without that hook, I question why the focus is what it is. It seems as if the show will introduce more of the hundreds, probably one by one as the series progresses year after year, but the trajectory so far is less on them confronting the pain or trauma of what was done and trying to butter it over.

Rated TV-14.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Wednesdays at 9PM on FOX.