There comes a point in most TV viewer's life where mainstream TV just decides it doesn't want to cater for you any longer. Either you got too old or you've finally wised up. Or you want something different.
One could be forgiven for assuming Gortimer Gibbon is presented as another run-of-the-mill children's show with an improbable plot/sequence of events and a load of incredibly irritating characters who don't talk but shout at each other across some garish looking set (ie any recent Nickelodeon production). Your worries are unfounded because in Gilbert nobody's irritating, the sets are vast majority exterior and any indoor sets are quite nice looking. And the plots are improbable (but grounded in reality) and wouldn't have been too far out of place in Eerie Indiana anyway.
While I am reminded of Eerie Indiana, Gortimer isn't quite as dark as Eerie was, not quite as surreal in various areas as Eerie was and is clearly not trying to be Eerie in new colours. Gortimer at least ties the premise and location down to a street or a specific town maybe, as opposed to Eerie which effectively suggested the entire state was off its trolley.
I hadn't realised when I first wrote this review that this show is not a series of self contained episodes, but each episode runs on after the other with references to past events. Therefore the characters develop beautifully with the programme as they absorb details of whatever happened to whichever kid this time. The three main leads are written from the off as having been best friends forever and a day and it shows here in the writing. No spoilers but the relationships of the kids are regularly tested throughout. One event in one episode in particular (I won't say which one) in any other mainstream show would have ended up in a major bust up that would typically last 90% of the episode. Here it was given something different - a beautiful heartfelt resolution that didn't take up anywhere near that amount of time.
This is not a bad little production, this is the sort of live action stuff Nickelodeon used to churn out in the 1990s, so its nice to see there is still a place for something like this. I must sum up with what creator David Anaxagoras wrote as a comment on his blog in 2016 that I agree with for this show: "I never thought of it as a kid's show. I wrote it for the kid in all of us".
