Family Ties of ‘Bridge’ Reach Beyond Brooklyn

It’s been almost an axiom in network TV that weekly series with a distinctly ethnic Jewish flavor will be tuned out because of limited appeal.

So imagine the delight of CBS as initial episodes of “Brooklyn Bridge,” a warm and witty comedy about a distinctly Jewish family in 1950s Brooklyn, have registered higher ratings nationally than in the big cities where many Jewish people live.

“Somebody said it looks like their grandmother’s house in Indiana,” says Marion Ross, the former mom on “Happy Days” who stars in “Brooklyn Bridge” as the grandmother and family matriarch Sophie Berger.

“As funny as the material is, it makes people cry. I don’t think it has to do with region. Gary (creator Gary David Goldberg) has tapped into everybody’s memory bank. I think the big yearning is, ‘Oh, my God, look what we’ve thrown away--the heavy parenting.’ Maybe people yearn to be told that.”

Ross is not Jewish, although some viewers may think so because of the accent she studied to portray the immigrant grandmother.

“I’m Scotch and Irish,” she says. “But I understand this woman perfectly. My Scottish relatives were all brought over. There were those awful, extended Sunday dinners. Everybody knew everybody’s business. I was raised on the immigrant philosophy: You make something of yourself.”

In two of its first three outings--including ratings reported this week--”Brooklyn Bridge” earned higher rankings with the national audience than in the 25 major television markets. In the other outing, its share of the national audience was only 1% lower than in the big cities.

Pulling between 17% and 20% of TV viewers, the beautifully crafted series has helped give CBS a presence on Fridays, where it had none last season.

Preempted this weekend by the baseball playoffs, it returns next Friday, switched from 8:30 to 8 p.m. as CBS thinks it can help as the network’s leadoff show of the night.

Regardless of whether “Brooklyn Bridge” can maintain its surprising and high-quality start, it has already shattered a lingering television myth and stereotypical thinking. Before the show’s debut, Peter Tortorici, executive vice president of CBS Entertainment, had put it this way:

“We don’t know if it will play for people who don’t know Brooklyn or Jewish. But whether it works or not--and I think it will--the show makes us proud.”

This week, Tortorici recalled how the cancellation of “Chicken Soup,” the 1989 ABC sitcom with Jackie Mason as a Jewish New Yorker, probably reinforced network belief in the old TV myth about nationally identifiable characters.

“Chicken Soup,” which co-starred Lynn Redgrave, was another twist on the old Broadway hit “Abie’s Irish Rose,” and wasn’t in the same league as “Brooklyn Bridge.”

But, says Tortorici, “blanket axioms get thrown up--’You can’t do that kind of a show.’ It’s funny. Because so many people in show business and advertising are Jewish, when a show like this comes on with a clear Jewish flavor, they say, ‘Well, we get it, but maybe they won’t get it.’

“But that’s not what this is about. It’s the universal experience of family and growing up. It represents something that we wished exists--a sense of community, where people looked out for one another. The common denominator is their care and concern about their children.”

Goldberg, who also created the hit show “Family Ties,” says of “Brooklyn Bridge”:

“I’m just trying to observe and report on this family (based on his own) as I remember it. I’m not trying to say, ‘How do I get everybody to accept it?’ That’s a recipe for disaster.

“I am thrilled about the response through middle America. CBS tested the show on cable systems in the Midwest, and it tested very high. If it works, it’s because people are saying, ‘That’s my grandmother. That’s my brother.’ The mail and emotional response transcend anything on ‘Family Ties.’ ”

Back in the late 1940s and 1950s, “The Goldbergs,” another Jewish comedy with strong family values--starring the popular Gertrude Berg--was a hit.

And in the 1972-73 season, “Bridget Loves Bernie,” yet another try at the “Abie’s Irish Rose” formula, was canceled--despite high ratings--amid rumors that some religious groups had complained about the show’s mixed marriage.

One irony about “Brooklyn Bridge”: Aiming for the broad national audience, CBS simply ignored the fact that the show is presented on Fridays, the start of the Jewish Sabbath, and some Jews who attend synagogue on that night reportedly have complained because they would like to see it.

For Ross, who leads a brilliant cast, “it’s the immigrant family” that makes “Brooklyn Bridge” work: “That generation made sacrifices for the next generations. Now we’re into ‘Let me do my thing,’ ‘I’m going to get a divorce, darling, and find myself.’ The biggest thing is that (the show) is really set before the breaking up of the family.

“I don’t think the show is about New York. It’s about families. Like where I grew up in a small town in Minnesota--you looked after your family and you helped them and they came over and it was a pain in the neck. We try not to be sentimental. That’s what Gary says: Don’t be funny, don’t try to be funny.”

Tortorici also plays down the geography of the show: “This New York is as strange to contemporary New Yorkers as it is to people who have never visited New York, because unfortunately this Brooklyn is a place that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Says Goldberg of his “Brooklyn Bridge” family: “They’re not so much a part of New York. They’re more old world and naive in a way. That neighborhood was so far from Manhattan for us, it might as well have been Tokyo.”