The Wonder Years (2021)

The show skillfully moves from coming-of-age comedy to drama. This “Wonder Years” also does a fine job of telling the story from the point of view of a Black family, and honors their experiences.

Tackling thorny racial issues with nostalgic grace and humor is this Wonder Years' specialty. It needs a bigger spotlight. [3 - 23 Jul 2023, p.6]

There’s a lot of promise here; the child actors are great finds, and the adult cast — featuring Saycon Sengbloh as Dean’s mother and Allen Maldonado as his baseball coach — evince a roundedness that you hope will mean story lines dedicated to their characters, too. ... One thing’s for sure: You’ll want to return to this world.

Patterson and Savage navigate the tricky material with finesse and not too much sentimentality, and they mostly pull off an ambitious, dangerously heavy ending.

“The Wonder Years” is a delightful series that should appeal to both fans of the original series as well as a new generation who have never watched the show. Williams, Hill, Sengbloh, and Kariuki have a wonderful chemistry, and they could very well be on their way to becoming the next great American television family.

Uneven pilot which at least promises something much better.

[The original] was more sweet than outright hilarious, one of the few things the two shows have in common. The old show was escapist, sure, the new one is not, but the inevitable question is why a network remakes a show in a way that largely ignores the charms of the original. ... Whether the new “Wonder Years” is a show for our times—or any—will have everything to do with whether it continues to be so utterly predictable.