Bagdad Cafe

Goldberg is so sure-footed and likable in her part that she may at last have found a comfortable home for her talents, after some disastrous big-screen interludes. Stapleton, handsome and pert as ever, displays the gifts of timing and tact that brought her three Emmys. [30 Mar 1990, p.5C]

Now, done up by Mort Lachman, Sy Rosen and Zev Braun as a typical sitcom, it has become a vehicle for wisecracks and a soundtrack that goes "aaahhh" whenever the camera focuses on a cute infant.

The premiere episode attacks with a loud, hard-edged style that slams home every line and never gives you time to care. [30 Mar 1990, p.30]

Goldberg works hard and Brenda is the kind of likable, energetic character on whom a comedy can be built. However, the awkward budding friendship between Brenda and the well-meaning, super-tidy Jasmine not only doesn't click tonight, it yields no laughs. More than merely an unlikely pairing, they're an arid one.

Imagine a series that drains every bit of abnormality out of the wonderful spaciness of the feature film about life at a desert cafe. What makes this series unwatchable is that they also drained the humor out. Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton must be hard up for work these days. Stapleton adds a touch of class and Goldberg adds a good line or two, but this series isn't nearly good enough to be considered the road-company version of Bagdad Cafe. [28 Mar 1990, p.65]

Where the film began on a distinctly glum note, then built toward a spirit of renewal, the pilot episode of the sitcom starts out noisy and stays that way. In other words, a bewitching and intriguing movie has been trashed once again in the making of a har-de-har sitcom. [30 Mar 1990, p.E-17]

The pairing might have worked, if only they weren't saddled with trite dialogue. ("Am I disturbing you?" someone says to cafe owner Whoopi: "Too late, I'm already disturbed.") And it might have worked if the show had more resembled a "small" production of the kind that some pay-cable services specialize in instead of an assembly-line, go-for-the-cheap-shot sitcom. [30 Mar 1990, p.II-5]