How I Met Your Father is the excellent seriality that recycles itself

We are in the era of the eternal return of seriality and How I Met Your Father, the new comedy series starting on May 11 on Disney +, is further proof of this. Eternal return in the sense that, alongside the rare innovations that often refer to well-known narrative universes, to avoid unnecessary risks, the streaming platforms continue to stir in the past successes to the sound of remakes, reboots, revivals and so on. But when, as in this case, an immediately cult series like How I Met Your Mother is reworked, perhaps the last great "shared" sitcom in the wake of Seinfeld, Friends and Will & Grace, which ended eight years ago (but still presentissima in the memory of fans), the operation can become extremely risky. In this case, however, it must be said that How I Met Your Fathe r gets along very well.

The narrative premise is practically identical, only in inverted genres and with some innovations: if in the original it was the late Bob Saget to narrate off-screen his exploits as a young man, now in the future - in 2050, to be precise - is Kim Cattrall (yes, the Samantha of Sex and The City), a mature woman at the center of the scene to tell her son (of only the voice on the phone can be heard) how she met her father, or the love of her life. Flashback to 2022, therefore, when Hillary Duff (yes, Lizzie McGuire's Lizzie McGuire) plays the same character as Sophie, obviously younger and looking for the man who makes her lose her mind. Due to Tinder dates gone badly, Sophie is about to lose hope until she runs into - in a ride on an Uber-like - Jesse (Christopher Lowell), who went viral for a video in which her marriage proposal is rejected. drying up all kinds of romanticism in him.

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Will he be the Father of the title? Difficult to say, given that the hope of other numerous seasons will surely multiply the plots and mysteries keeping us hanging until the final revelation. In the meantime, we are introduced to a variety of characters that could mislead, such as Ian (Daniel Augustin), a marine biologist who leaves for Australia. And then there are all of Sophie's friends, from her roommate Valentina (Francia Raisa), who recklessly gets involved with the very physically fit English artistocrat Charlie (Tom Ainsley), to Sid (Suraj Sharma) and Helen (Tien Tran), respectively. Jesse's best friend and adoptive sister.

While Mother creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are still involved as producers, writing this new version is Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, who they had previously worked on This Is Us and Love, Victor. The changing of the guard allows you to update a little the style of the series which, although perhaps not as tight and sharp as that of the original, is however vaguely more explicit and certainly more contemporary, between Fomo, blind dates, real estate problems and crisis millennials. The cast also reflects a greater focus on diversity of ethnic origins and sexual orientations. Duff, then, certainly more mature and multifaceted than in the past, then gives a credible protagonist with whom to empathize immediately, even if it is difficult to think that he has so many relationship problems, given that he is certainly more attractive and less clumsy than the Ted Mosby of the mother series. .

The fans of How I Met Your Mother, having set aside their nostalgic reservations, will surely find their match here, above all to catch all the references to the historical episodes: the apartment in which Sid and Jesse live, for example, it was inherited from "an old married couple", that is Marshall and Lily, while the jokes on Jesse's shirts recall the same ones made to Ted and the Goliath National Bank where Barney, Ted and Marshall worked will also return. For the rest, of course, How I Met Your Father has to find its course, its specific identity, and even if the characters take a while to delineate in their main characteristics (no one is as straightforward and immediately recognizable as Barney was. , for example), the premises are really good. By giving up a pinch of originality, perhaps, in this case we will be able to have fun anyway.