The true successor to 30 Rock is now streaming on Netflix
The holy grail of TV recommendation is almost always a half-hour comedy. It’s not that people don’t want other stuff — a good thriller, weirder horror, or shows that go on forever that you can fold laundry to — but the thing most people I talk to will want at some point and burn through fastest is a half-hour comedy. I would say there’s only so many times you can watch 30 Rock or Seinfeld or Cheers all the way through, but history (and Nielsen ratings) shows that’s not true. And even still, the hunger for a new version of those is always there, particularly when you might have blitzed through one of your comfort sitcoms recently. Which is why it’s so great that you can now watch Girls5Eva on Netflix, and with a new season to boot.
The show picks up with a former girl group, now in their 40s and each wrestling with their life as a “has-been.” That is, until one of their songs gets sampled by a famous rapper, and the (now) four members come together and decide to give stardom another go.
There’s a bit of bootstrapping, but this is far from just a simple story about the can-do attitude succeeding in showbiz. Rather, Girls5Eva falls in line with 30 Rock, constantly skewering celebrity, show business, and the ridiculous ways those things converge and morph, all while being packed to the gills with jokes. Bits are taken to an absurd degree in a way that still feels astonishingly true — and yes, I’m including the part where the Property Brothers show up as themselves for a joke about how they secretly want to make a show about fighting people.
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Girls5Eva certainly benefits from its 30 Rock connections: 30 Rock showrunners Tina Fey and Robert Carlock executive produce the series, and Fey has the magical gift to pull in any guest star, no matter how small or absurd the part is. Most importantly, 30 Rock songwriter Jeff Richmond (who brought us such jams as “The Rural Juror” and “Muffin Top”) co-writes all the songs with showrunner Meredith Scardino (previously a
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