Critic Reviews

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.

It's very funny, rather charming and … well, GOOD.

Wonderful. ... Dean's adolescent adventures, sharply narrated by Don Cheadle as the wry voice of adult Dean, are amusing. [8 - 21 Nov 2021, p.9]

The series attempts to balance pointed cultural commentary with a genial coming-of-age narrative — and it largely succeeds, thanks to its warm humor and winning cast.

This is an evidently big-hearted show whose pilot has great fundamentals but tries to juggle a bit more than it realistically can in less than half an hour. That’s suggestive of ambition, which makes a viewer hope this show finds its voice and its pace in the coming weeks. That desire to do and say more is so rare on TV nowadays that “The Wonder Years” feels, for reasons beyond its setting, like an ultimately welcome dispatch from the distant past.

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

An impressive and ambitious ABC dramedy.

This look back through time leans more intense toward joy than sorrow. Don Cheadle's gentle narration as adult Dean sets and maintains that tone, although Dulé Hill's calm, fatherly presence as Dean's father Bill, a musician who works as a professor to pay the bills, solidifies the show's kindness. Really, though, this entire cast harmonizes beautifully. ... Seeing that play out in this new "Wonder Years" has a purpose, dispensed with the fuzziness of distant memory. One suspects not everyone will be in the mood for its cozy approach.

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.

The new version of The Wonder Years doesn’t try to be like the original, and that’s a good thing. It doesn’t have the impact the original one had, but we’re confident that it’ll follow its own comedic path and become one of the better network comedies.