You can practically hear the machinery being hauled into place at times, and not every plot point is equally likely. But the spirits are high (there is dancing on three occasions), and the cast — also including Telma Hopkins in a guest spot as M'Dear's sister and Warren Burke as Moz's brother Daniel, a familiar (but well-played) sort of scamp — is game.

The sweetness is clumsy and the studio audience’s reactions blaringly false. If this multi-generational comedy were on ABC in the late ‘90s it would be torturing us for years. And it may yet. Despite all of its saccharine artifice “Family Reunion” is precisely the kind of utterly harmless, family friendly comedy that barely exists anywhere and on any platform, and at the very least it’s an earnest depiction of blackness that remains rare on television.