Meet the Newmans

A slice of mid-20th-century American life turns Technicolor in the uneven latest from Niven (after the YA novel When We Were Monsters). By 1964, the Newman family have been playing themselves for 20 years, first with a radio show and then with a half-hour sitcom called Meet the Newmans. The program offers conservative life lessons from writer, producer, and patriarch Del Newman, who stars alongside his wife, Dinah, and their two sons, Guy and Shep. The show was once hugely popular, but with the frenzy over Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and other signs of cultural change, the ratings have slipped and the studio is threatening cancellation. When Dinah learns Del has been in a car accident and is recovering in the hospital, she seizes the chance to write the next episode. With help from a young female journalist, she weaves a kitchen sink’s worth of feminist issues into the script, from abortion bans to restrictions against women serving on a jury or opening a credit account. Niven effectively develops the characters, especially Dinah, who at first appears to be a restless housewife lusting after a neighbor before she starts to break out of her prescribed gender role. But as the plot plods to its inevitable happy ending, the story grows tedious. It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Kerry Sparks, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Jan.)