Of all the things I never would have predicted about 2016 — and just like the rest of the pundit class, there are a lot — perhaps the most surprising is this: I’ve found a primetime network television show that I can watch with my children.
“Little Big Shots,” which airs Sunday nights on NBC, is the closest thing to family fare you can find today. For an hour each week, comedian Steve Harvey showcases the talents of children — from dancing and singing to boxing and auctioneering.
The kids are just as adorable and impressive as you might imagine. But it’s Harvey’s interviews with them that make the show. It could just as easily be called “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”
Harvey’s humor is perfectly clean. It’s amazing how he can censor himself — on his talk show and on “Family Feud,” of which he is now the host, there’s an almost constant slew of jokes about sex.
But on “Little Big Shots,” there’s no double entendre — in the four episodes so far, I can count one mildly off-color thing he was about to say and it had to do with where ventriloquists put their hands in a puppet.
But he didn’t actually say it. My kids are laughing for the same reasons I’m laughing. The kids say funny things.
In a recent interview, Harvey explained his strategy: “First of all, the show was so built for me, because I know how to talk to kids, because I’ve had kids in my life for 33 years.” But not everyone who has kids knows how to talk to them on national TV. Harvey continues: “I don’t pay any attention to the cue cards. You know they prep the kids: ‘Mr. Harvey is going to ask you this and you say this.’ I keep trying to tell them you can’t prep an 8-year-old.”
The conversations have a fun, spontaneous quality. Even though these kids probably have been coaxed by their parents and they have stock answers they give to other people who ask how they got to be such a good singer or dancer, Harvey gets them to open up but in ways that don’t feel exploitative.
This isn’t entertainment for people who like “Toddlers and Tiaras” or “Dance Moms.” Nothing in Harvey’s questions is meant to elicit embarrassment. Unlike so much of what happens when parents expose their kids on media, it would be hard to imagine many of these boys and girls cringing when they see these episodes 20 years from now.
It’s not that there is no clean entertainment out there for kids. Even if you’ve realized that the producers of shows in the 8 p.m. slot on network television are happy to include references to masturbation or show graphic violence on screen, we live in a world where there are dozens of alternative sources to choose from.
There are channels like PBS Kids devoted to cartoons, and even a few like Disney that air a constant loop of tween dramas. But there are only so many episodes of “Wild Kratts” that adults want to watch and taking in shows like “Liv and Maddie” with our kids would only confirm the show’s message that we’re clueless old fools who never get the joke.
When I ask parents what, if anything, they watch with their kids, they typically will say classic movies — “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” etc. — but not much today. A few like watching construction shows or the Food Network. Watching live sporting events ends far too often in that dreaded question: “Dad, what is erectile dysfunction?”
As for the daily media intake, most families sit in the same room but with each one on a different device. Short of streaming “The Cosby Show” or “Leave It to Beaver,” it’s hard to imagine finding a show that the whole family would be able to watch together anymore.
Apparently Americans aren’t the only ones looking for alternatives to the crude fare that’s on these days. Warner Bros. recently announced that it has been asked to create a British version of “Little Big Shots” and one in Spain as well. At last, a cultural export we can be proud of.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.