The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire

"The Brotherhood of Poland, N.H." was probably the best television drama Kelly E. Kelly produced. It is unfortunate that only a few people found the program! First of all, the title was somewhat strange! CBS gave it a time slot of doom! After 4 or 5 airings, it was gone, & Mr. Kelly did not fight for the show, which is sad. The program could have developed into one of those long-running family dramas. A couple of brothers & their families experience life in a small New England town. The brothers are average middle-aged guys with average middle-aged wives and average kids. The program goes beyond average in tackling above-average issues. The ratings were less than average, & CBS did little to promote the show. The opening music was beautiful, & not one of the episodes was disappointing. I think there were only a total of four shows to make it to t.v. The brothers & their families interacted with each other in attempting to make ends meet, fulfill their dreams, and deal with modern issues. Sounds a little boring when someone could be voted off an island somewhere!

I saw commericals for this show, and had to at least check it out, and i'm glad i did. This show is really great. The cast works very well together. Though i don't think rating are good on it, i hope it doesn't get cancelled i really enjoy it. I suggest it to everybody.

What is this, instant karma? What horrible thing did we do to deserve the Old Man's passing & this DK washout wannabe? As previously stated, the people don't act a bit like inhabitants of the north country; not that we're talking Berlin or Groveton here, but it's like the people in the show behave more like the leaf peepers & skiers from the flatlands you encounter at Loon & Waterville! Why couldn't they do this to Burlington Vermont instead? Still, I got a kick out of seeing the ol' home town on the telly too. But I'm a bit put out about the way they seem to portray Granite staters as chunky, beefy, backwards. I'll enjoy it while it lasts, but since the only shots of plymouth seem to be the exteriors (scenes showing a place without any recognizeable characters in the shot) & interiors only at the movie theatre, I'm not overwhelmed. Plymouth is on the telly, but not too much. Of course, the programme *is* about Poland, NH (completely fictional, the closest thing to a 'Poland' is Poland Springs, in Maine) I guess I ought not complain long or loud about the fact that there isn't a single town north of Concord with that many lanes to a street! I think DK has completely undershot any north country atmosphere he may have been trying to tap into; this really ought to be re-named "Boston public suburb". I was born in Plymouth & I've never seen or heard of a buck hanging out in the yard when someone shooed him off! Now, a moose certainly, but Northern exposure already did that. I wonderer if this is how Keene felt about "Jumanji"?

This show, judging by the pilot episode which I just saw tonight, has limited promise. It seems like a night-time soap opera set in a New Hampshire/New England setting that I don't really believe exists.

Though I'm not a native of New England, I used to live in Maine, not too far from New Hampshire, so perhaps allow me to make some qualified observations nevertheless: I just didn't get a New England "feel" to this show, I just don't "recognize" any of these characters as being truly New Englander types. Sure, they can doll them up in LL Bean attire until the cows come home, but that in itself a New Englander does not make.

I think the show runs the risk of bombing because it brings too much of a Hollywood/California frame of mind to a New England setting. The men in this show seem way too giddy for real New Englanders, and all seem WAY too preoccupied with their personal "issues"; the women seem more like annoying busy-bodies from some rich enclave of Sausalito, California; the kids - at least those that have appeared so far - seem more like big city high school kids in Los Angeles dealing with image problems and the like, etc. These are not the New Englanders that I remember from oh, twenty or so years ago when I used to live in that glorious part of America. Have times really changed that much? I thinketh not.

One positive about the show is the incredible depth of the cast. Randy Quaid, Mare Winningham and Elizabeth McGovern just to name a few. I like these actors a lot, and hope the show really works for them, but the writing and the whole "atmoshpere" of the show really needs some work.

If this show develops further, I hope it loses some of the soap opera feel. Just a thought, but it would be kinda' cool (for me anyway) if the show took a sort of David Lynch/Twin Peaks detour and got rather twisty. New England lends itself to that. It can be very twisty there. Very twisty indeed. ("Ya can't get there from here" - Bert and I).

I loved the show and all the characters! They never gave it a chance! Im positive that if given a full season that people would have grown to love it like I already did! All of these stars had big potential I always had hopes of someone bringing it back! New Hampshire has a lot of Great possibilities for interesting storylines! Bring it back and give it another go..Purty Please!..lol.