Review of The Fanelli Boys

This short-lived sitcom about the four Fanelli fratelli boasted a good cast, a decent setup, and a dearth of genuine laughs. The actors playing the "boys" were not well-known at the time, though Pantoliano and Meloni have gone on to much greater fame. Pantoliano was a successful character actor already, but not particularly well-known. That description fits Eisenberg, too. Ann Morgan Guilbert played their mom, long after playing Millie on the Dick Van Dyke Show and shortly before playing The Nanny's grandmother. As I said, the show needed more laugh lines, but it also suffered from a lack of a framework on which to hang the laughs. The pitch must have gone something like this: "Let's do a show about some Italian brothers and their mom;" to which the response should've been "What about 'em?"