The Moodys

A well-crafted, consistently amusing, occasionally touching confection, as warm and welcoming as a cup of hot chocolate after a friendly family snowball fight in the backyard.

The cast gels nicely, and “The Moodys” was obviously shot in a real neighborhood (and not a studio back lot), which lends an air of reality to the situation, however contrived it might be. Those situations, though, are kept to a minimum, and this is one TV family in which you won’t mind investing six hours of your time.

Occasionally funny but mostly sort of dull, “The Moodys” seems unlikely to become a Christmas classic.

Never quite as madcap as it wants to be. ... The nicest surprise is Denis Leary's low-key and slow-burn performance. [9-22 Dec 2019, p.13]

The upside is “The Moodys” moves fast and goes down easy; the downside is there’s no reason to get invested in the family. Their stories don’t really make sense; even though each arc’s ending is predictable.

All six episodes function more like a strange experiment in accentuating a project’s flaws, despite a solid cast and writers who know how to work with said cast.

Even darker holiday movies end in a place where one is glad one spent the time with the family in question. At the end of time spent with the Moodys, one’s simply ready to leave.