Mr. Sunshine 

Ben Donovan manages The Sunshine Centre, a second rate sports arena in San Diego.

Creators:

Alex Barnow, Marc Firek, Matthew Perry

Stars:

Matthew Perry, Andrea Anders, James Lesure

1 nomination.

Cast

Series cast summary:
Matthew Perry	...	Ben Donovan 13 episodes, 2011
Andrea Anders	...	Alice 13 episodes, 2011
James Lesure	...	Alonzo / ... 13 episodes, 2011
Nate Torrence	...	Roman Cohen / ... 13 episodes, 2011
Allison Janney	...	Crystal Cohen 13 episodes, 2011
Portia Doubleday	...	Heather 12 episodes, 2011
David Pressman	...	Mascot / ... 10 episodes, 2011

Storyline

Ben Donovan (Matthew Perry) manages The Sunshine Centre, a seconde rate sports/events arena in San Diego. A short lived quirky comedy that chronicles the daily goings-on of misfit folks working in an unorthodox job.

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Plot Keywords:

arena | 

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Taglines:

Oh, joy.

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Genres:

Comedy

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Did You Know?

Trivia

Allison Janney and Matthew Perry previously appeared together in three episodes of The West Wing (1999) [The West Wing: Life on Mars (2003), The West Wing: Separation of Powers (2003), and The West Wing: Evidence of Things Not Seen (2003)] and one episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006) [Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Disaster Show (2007)].

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Connections

Featured in Conan: If This Van's A-Rockin', I'm Having a Seizure Inside My Van (2011)

User Reviews

Easily my favourite new show of 2010-2011

This was my favourite show from this past T.V. season and I really hope it gets picked up for next year. It's a sharp, well-written sitcom with great comedic performances by virtually the entire main cast. The premise revolves around Ben (Matthew Perry), who is the manager of a major sports arena in San Diego, and his off-beat staff members and wacky boss (Allison Janney).

Janney really sinks her teeth into this quasi-insane character, who, despite being the owner of the arena, delegates most of the work and responsibility to Ben. I really enjoyed the season-long arc involving her awkward and contrived attempts to be a better mom to her 20-something son and new employee, Roman (Nate Torrence), who seems to have been neglected by her and is just looking for a healthy mother-son relationship. Actually, I liked any scene or plot line which involved Roman. Torrence is hilarious and charming pretty much every time he appears on screen and gets a laughs from me simply through his delivery. I've read some people saying they find him obnoxious and don't like him, but I just can't understand why that is, because to me, he's my favourite character.

Even though the performances are great, I think the real star of this series is the writing. I just watched the 'Celebrity Tennis' episode on NETFLIX and I was laughing consistently throughout. You can't find a lot of new shows with scripts this smart and so densely packed with humour. However, I have a sense that it may not have mainstream appeal, since there didn't seem to be a lot of buzz and fanfare for it.

I really hope people discover it on NETFLIX (The first 8 episodes are currently available) and a fan-base starts to develop that is large enough to keep it going indefinitely on ABC. I also think ABC should have been airing more reruns of the first season this summer to give it a chance to catch on, and I really hope this does not indicate that they are giving up on it.

I encourage you to watch it if you can (start with the first episode just to get a sense of all the main plot lines and relationships) and decide for yourself if you think it's as good as I do. Note, however, that this is one of those sitcoms without a laugh-track, which is an important feature of this show since I just can't imagine it working as well with one.

Season Rating: 3.5 stars out of 4

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

9 February 2011 (USA)

Also Known As:

Mr. Sunshine

Company Credits

Production Co:

FanFare Productions, Shoe Money Productions, Sony Pictures Television

Technical Specs

Runtime:

293 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1