tek's rating:

Evening Shade, on CBS
CBS Wiki; IMDb; Sitcoms Online; TV.com; TV Tango; Visual Entertainment; Wikipedia

This was a really funny, charming, somewhat quirky and comfortable show with an incredible cast. They were all great. Burt Reynolds played a retired football player named Wood Newton, who returned to his hometown of Evening Shade, Arkansas, where he coached a high school football team, the Mules. His wife, Ava (Marilu Henner), was a prosecuting attorney. They had a son named Taylor (Jay R. Ferguson), who was on the team that his dad coached. I guess they had a couple of younger kids, who I don't remember well. Ava's father, Evan Evans, was played by Hal Holbrook. He was either a widower, or divorced, I forget which. But he married a much younger woman, a stripper named Fontana Beausoleil. There was also a guy named Ponder Blue (Ossie Davis, who sort of narrated the show). And there was a doctor named Harlan Eldridge (Charles Durning). He was married to woman named Merleen, who was kind of spacey. There was a guy named Herman Stiles, who was mainly a high school math teacher, but also Wood's assistant football coach (though I don't think he knew much about football). There's Ava's aunt Frieda Evans. And a guy named Nub Oliver, who seemed... I dunno, childlike, or whatever. And there were probably plenty of other characters. It was very much an ensemble show. I wish I could remember it better than I do, and I'd like to see it again someday.


comedy index