La famille Torkelson

In the small town of Pyramid Corners, Oklahoma, Millicent Torkelson (Connie Ray) is struggling to raise her five children with no money after her husband abandoned the family. She needs to rent out a room to elderly loner Wesley Hodges (William Schallert). Dorothy Jane Torkelson (Olivia Burnette) is the oldest child at 14. She is often embarrassed by her family and their poverty. She's been longtime pursued by goofy boy Kirby and has a crush on the new neighbor boy despite him being 4 years older.

This is a sincere family friendly sitcom fare first on NBC and later on the Family Channel. Sometimes, it almost gets to be an afternoon school special movie of the week. Other episodes remind me of other better shows. I do like Dorothy Jane, even her monologues. I thought that they could do more with Riley Roberts although his character was probably always one season and done. He's a senior after all. The high number of kids do keep them from having their own stories other than a couple of episodes. After one season, the show gets rebranded as Almost Home and lose two of the kids.

Although The Torkelsons was an ensemble comedy, Connie Ray and Olivia Burnette were the obvious stars. They took characters who could have been caricatures (the frazzled, whacky southern mama and her precocious wannabe-poet daughter) and gave rich, realistic and complex performances. Dorothy Jane's crush on Riley was realistically poignant, exciting and angsty as only unrequited teen love can be. The jokes were cute, the lessons learned didn't clobber watchers over the head, and the Torkelsons had a moral-center much more admirable and realistic than most "family values" programming. Networks didn't know what to do with this show. It was so unique that it was difficult to fit smoothly into programming blocks. It was bounced around in the schedule so much that devoted fans set up calling networks to alert each other when they happened to find an episode on the air.

Almost Home tried to put The Torkelsons' heart and wit into a more marketable package, but the sarcastic city kids' reaction to the earnest Oklahomans mirrored the condescension shown by network executives.

I just loved "Almost Home" and "The Torkelsons." Both seasons were just great to watch. I remember always wanting to go to my aunts just so I could watch this one show. The acting was wonderful and fun to watch. It's a shame both were cancelled.

This show should have been on longer! It's terrific!

The Torklesons, and later Almost Home, were sitcoms originally aired on NBC, and later, canceled mid-season. We faithfully watched each week, until the bitter end.

I was so excited when The Disney Channel -years later- acquired the reruns (Disney went through a phase -before they started producing their own sitcoms- where they aired episodes of several good family shows other networks had dropped or canceled mid-season).

These little-known shows were much-enjoyed by my family. We were able to tape each episode as it aired later on the Disney channel and still play them, marathon-style, on rainy days. Most people are unaware that a very young Brittany Murphy got her start here (as well as a few other sitcoms from that era).