‘Nanny’ series really have value
Can makeover shows demonstrate anything more valuable than the ability of color to transform a room, the importance of exercise or the fact that nearly everyone looks more attractive with whiter teeth?
Surprisingly, two freshman series, ABC’s “Supernanny” and Fox’s “Nanny 911” – for all their slick editing, love of emotional outbursts and other reality shenanigans – have something important to say. And they say it with conviction and flair.
The makeover subjects of both shows are families, the parents no less than the children. The method, while hardly revolutionary, is as humane as it is effective.
Hustled onto the air last November, two months before ABC launched “Supernanny,” “Nanny 911” is the more melodramatic of the pair, stopping just short of outfitting its families with pro-wrestling-style costumes and nicknames.
As an off-camera announcer demands, in textbook Fox fashion, “Can this family be saved?” we see choice vignettes of domestic life in a chaotic American household. Families with four or more young children are preferred; especially showy or shocking misbehavior is honored with an instant replay.
Cut to a team of five professional British nannies watching the same footage and saying, more or less, “Oh, dear!” With little fuss, one of the five is dispatched to the home in question and given one week to, as the Brits say, sort it out.
One recent episode featured the Dunleavys – four rambunctious boys under age 10 and an angelic 3-year-old girl with Down syndrome, living with their harried parents in a suburban New York fixer-upper full of exposed wires, loose nails and other disasters waiting to happen.
In spite of an unfortunate spitting incident involving 6-year-old Logan (instant replay!) and a picketing campaign with signs made and carried by 8-year-old Kyle (“Get Out, Troublemaker!”), Nanny Deb Carroll patiently showed Denise and Kevin Dunleavy how to demand and get respect, not just from their kids but from each other.
Carroll’s child-raising motto – ” ‘I want’ doesn’t get” – may be pure common sense, but her demonstration of it was both firm and sympathetic, based on a shrewd understanding of what’s really bothering a kid who acts out.
In the Dunleavys’ case, she suspected that repeated moves were upsetting both the kids and Denise. And when Carroll convinced Kevin that his passion for puttering was putting undue strain on his family, the Dunleavys really did seem headed for better times.
“Supernanny,” which ABC executives say was in the works before the Fox version, is based on a British hit starring Jo Frost, the brisk, bespectacled whiz of the title.
Like the “Nanny 911” crew, Frost practically faints at the suggestion that a parent would hit a child. But, like them, she’s no pushover.
When Nanny Jo moves in, belligerent kids get a time-out on the “naughty stool.” Parents get advice on how to say no and when to relax and cut loose.
Does it work?
Frost’s first ABC family – Californians Barbara and Dave Jeans, the parents of twin toddlers and their 4-year-old sister – say that two weeks of in-home guidance worked amazingly well.
Friends and family members used to visit and say, “Oh, I don’t know how you do it! This is crazy!” Barbara Jeans told a recent gathering of TV critics. “Jo was really the first person who came in and said, ‘You can do this, and here’s how.’ “
More than two months after the taping, Jeans added, “I’m thrilled to say that it is still working.”