Even when it was on the air, it never got the credit it deserved. For, during its original run (1993-1999), it eschewed the sophisticated appeal of “Fraiser,” the cerebral stimuli of “Seinfeld,” and the neo-realism of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” But “The Nanny” - yes, “The Nanny”! - in terms of both format and dynamic, in structure and storyline, was the perfect sitcom. It deserves to be remembered: as one of TV’s greatest guilty pleasures, for its larger-than-life leading lady and for the small screen lineage as old as some of this show’s plotlines.
Even if you never saw “The Nanny,” it won’t take me long to describe it to you: it was “Hazel,” it was “Who’s the Boss?” (with a gender switch), it was, even, “The Sound of Music” sans Julie Andrews but with a Brooklyn-bred “goil.”
“The Nanny’s” overall premise was pure American sitcom—half fairy tale, half farce. Fran Drescher played a Queens-born beauty who, in order to put the situation in “situation comedy,” went to work for a NY-based stuffy British Broadway producer with three motherless children. Even if you didn’t know the particulars, the whole set-up was recapped each week in the show’s stiffly animated opening credits where a theme song (ala “Gilligan’s Island” and other programs of yore) brought you up to date: “She was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens/Til her boyfriend kicked her own in one of those crushing scenes….”)
“The Nanny,” of course, was Fran Drescher, a performer of such forceful persona and style that she seems better described not as an actress but as a force of nature.
Drescher’s bigger than life character (on screen and off) is echoed in her bigger than life appearance. Drescher was/is wonderful to look at: supermodel slim with a head (and hair) slightly oversized for her frame. Each week on “The Nanny,” she’d find herself squeezed into various Todd Oldham-designer originals. (On screen, this “Nanny” had an endless wardrobe; just one of the show’s many time-honored TV cliches.) In the 1990s, her striking figure fit right into what was TV’s second era of “jiggle.” What began in the 1970s with “Charlie’s Angels,” got reborn in the bodies of “Baywatch” and the picture perfectness of “Melrose Place,” et.al.
For Drescher (who cut her teeth in scene-steeling roles in “This is Spinal Tap” and other comedies), in bringing her talents and trademark nasal whine (her voice is like a drill if it had a head cold) she wisely embedded herself in an environment where she was the “odd woman out.” Here, on this show, she is the classic fish out of water, like the Clampetts set down by the “cement pond” or “Jeannie” out of the bottle.
Such “other-ness” probably was not a mistake as, in Drescher’s performance, one can see many of the successful small screen queens who preceded her. Like Bea Arthur and other shoot from the lip comediennes, Drescher uses each of her comic lines like a well-aimed weapon. Her line readings have little of the gentle finesse of a, say, Mary Tyler Moore but plenty of the sass of a, say, Estelle Getty.
Drescher also has a set persona and, in this way, she has fallen in step with other classic comics who bring their well-established persona to a situation and then lets it loose. She’s like Mae West or W.C. Fields. They were always the same type of character in each of their films. Just as Lucy found a wining formula with child-woman antics, Drescher has found hers as a loud and proud dishy dame. One can easily imagine a later incarnation of her being found in a possible film titled “Fran in the Foreign Legion” or something similar.
Though in “The Nanny,” Drescher plays a single woman working on her own, her persona is far removed from the aforementioned Mary Richards of “Mary Tyler Moore” or any of the other “Independent Woman” series that plethorized the networks right after “Mary” hit. Obviously Fran is a long way from Sandy Duncan but, at the time she was on the air as “The Nanny,” she wasn’t “Caroline in the City” or “Ally McBeal” either. Instead, I think, you have to harken back to the pioneering solo women sitcoms of TV’s very first decades to find her match; you have to go back to the likes of “Our Miss Brooks” or Ann Sothern in “Private Secretary.” Like Fran years later, those earlier ladies knew their way around a wisecrack and their comebacks were far more lethal than, for example, Mary’s “Oh, Mr. Grant!”
Like Eve Arden’s “Miss Brooks” and Sothern’s “Secretary” (Susie McNamara), Fran Fine was darn near perfect too: she’s quick-witted, street smart and socially savvy. This nanny knows all. And it’s a good thing, too. This family needs it.
Before she moved in, the Sheffield family was a mess. Without a mother (like its forebearers “Family Affair,” “My Three Sons,” etc., “Nanny” turns the tragedy of dead parents into instant comedy fodder), this brood had issues: the eldest daughter, Maggie, was stuck in a perpetual awkward age; Briton, the boy, was on his way to being a rich kid delinquent, and little Gracie, was already so neurotic, she was already in therapy twice a week. (Gracie once exclaims, “Maybe Daddy’s seeing other children!”)
So…soon arrives this (unlikely) nanny, as if on her white horse. Film’s “Mary Poppins” is the movie’s perhaps most classic example of this entertainment archetype though TV has repeatedly coopted this theme. It is Inger Stevens in “The Farmer’s Daughter,” it’s “Nanny and the Professor.” The unusual outsider who comes in to save the day.
Yes, it’s a cliché. But there is something refreshing about this, “The Nanny’s” sweet long-game, and how it was then (and now) a welcomed alternative compared to so many other families on the air at that time and now who seemed more than happy to wallow in their dysfunction: “Titus,” “That ‘70s Show,” and “Shameless,” and maybe even “Young Sheldon.”
As mentioned, “The Nanny” is a fairy tale and like all fairy tales, everyone has to live happily ever after. For the show, if the “Cinderella” is an off-kilter choice then the “Prince” is true to form. He has an English accent and a Camelot-like career as a “big Broadway producer.”
Here, again, “The Nanny” is travelling a well-traveled road. It is “Cheers,” “Who’s the Boss,” and it’s the previously mentioned “Famer’s Daughter” and “Nanny and the Professor.” And while it’s work and employment…love is in the air!
Interesting that in prior decades, when women worked for men on TV, romance was seldom part of the job description. Miss Hathaway had no designs on Mr. Drysdale. Della Street and Perry Mason were just co-workers. And on the original “Superman,” Lois and Clark were friends. That’s all.
But, as stated, this is a fairy tale and, hence, we must have a happy ending.
Additionally, in this rubric, the roles of both Fairy Godmother and Evil Stepsister are accounted for.
The former is Niles, the smart-mouthed butler as, on TV, they usually are. Niles is a character so delightfully cast and played (by Daniel Davis) he always seems primed for his own spinoff. (I could always see him moving into the “inner” city to take over a boys’ school; thankfully, that never happened.) Davis and Drescher were always a wonderful comic pairing: his droll delivery played beautifully off her bitg schtick.
The role of Evil Stepsister role (a.k.a. romantic rival) is occupied by the character CC Babcock, played by Lauren Lane. She’s the Prince’s (Maxfield’s) business associate. She was, no doubt, conceived as the ultimate Yuppie joke: shallow, rich but worried about money, pretty, educated but still not completely “smart.” Yes, she’s a stock character too: pompous but not evil or completely hate-able, sort of a Dan from “Night Court.”
As the series wore on, all the players, thankfully, were able to find greater depth to their characters. Fran became just a little less brassy, Maxwell a little less up-tight, and even CC occasionally saw flashes of warmth. And though I came to miss little Gracie’s complete derangement, it was refreshing to see the core group grow a bit even as they continued to mine their trademark bits that, too, have a long history in TV i.e. Maxwell Smart’s “Missed me by that much” or about any reoccurring “Saturday Night Live” sketch (“Well, isn’t that special?”).
“The Nanny” was in many ways proudly unrealistic. And, in that regard, the series seemed to echo everything from “Topper” and “The Addams Family” to some of “Nanny’s” then more contemporary brethren like “ALF” or “Third Rock from the Sun.” Like these shows, “Nanny,” cared little for realism and, instead, seemed—like the aforementioned “Gilligan’s Island”—more of a live-action cartoon. (Interestingly, “Nanny” later aired a full animated installment, a Christmas-theme episode titled “Oye to the World.”)
So with this fairy-tale, cartoon-y, lighter-than-air on-air set up, the series could not and would not traffic in “nothing” like “Seinfeld” or in racial interplay like on shows like “The Neighborhood.” Instead, “The Nanny” had plots that were “zany” and old fashioned. Cases in point: Fran and CC find themselves seated on the same jury; Fran and her best gal pal, Val, have to go up and alter a mile-high billboard. For the latter, it might as well have been Lucy and Ethel at the candy conveyor belt.
True, there is a lot of “Lucy” in “The Nanny.” In taking from so many shows from the past as they did, “Nanny,” not surprisingly, profited the most from imitating the greatest of all domestic sitcoms, “I Love Lucy.” The accents might be different but once again the woman had big schemes and the man a short temper.
Like “Lucy” in her various incarnations over the years, “Nanny” also played host to a variety of guest star cameos over the course of its run. At one time or another, Pamela Lee, Chevy Chase, Celine Dion, Roseanne, and ever Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle, stopped by and appeared on the show.
And like “Lucy,” Ricky tried to keep Lucy “in line” with his man-of-the-house rules as dictated by a pre-second wave feminism. Fran was kept (supposedly) on her toes by being an actual employee of the wealthy Mr. Sheffield. Thus, accusations of backlash, domination and sexism, all under the umbrella of the American class struggle, could easily be made but, like Lucy before her, in the show, Fran’s feminine force always out-distanced and out-witted Max’s flustered, so-called “common sense.”
In the end, “The Nanny” concluded like we always knew it would. In the next to last season, Fran and Max finally marry after admitting their long-held love for each other. That following fall, Fran found herself pregnant. In the show’s final installment, Fran gave birth. And everyone, we assume, lived happily ever after.
Okay, so the program went out like it came in, with sitcom cliches galore. But it also existed with a lot of warmth, humor and heart.
With “The Nanny” doing as past sitcoms did, as Lucy did, and as Eve and Ann had done, what’s new? What’s special? Perhaps it was the program’s innate knowledge of and affection for its pop culture heritage and its expansive sense of the absurd, a reaction against all the “very special episodes” and the high-caliber histrionics of “ER,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and all the “Law & Order’s.”
Perhaps there was also a rapport with the audience: about family, funny ladies, fairy tales and inevitable happy endings. And maybe that’s enough.
WHY ‘THE NANNY’ MATTERS
