In an interview with Collider's Steve Weintraubfor the upcoming Malcolm in the Middle revival, Life's Still Unfair, series creator Linwood Boomer was asked for his thoughts on Rebecca Sonnenshine's Little House adaptation with Netflix. Before he was introducing viewers to the ultra-intelligent Malcolm and his chaotic family, he played Adam Kendall, who joined the Ingalls clan in the original series after marrying their eldest daughter, Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson), and starting a life with her, helping to teach the blind. Not only is he on board with the idea of new creatives and actors revisiting the books, but he also put in a good word for one of the cast members of the upcoming Hulu and Disney+ sitcom miniseries, who auditioned for the western historical drama.
"I'm all for it," Boomer said. "I'll tell you one thing that was great was this kid we had that we hired in the show to play the Krelboyne’s created kid, Hubert, was so good in our thing that he told me, 'I'm going to audition for Little House,' and I just said, 'Call that producer. I'm going to tell him how great this kid is.' And apparently, they got the job?" His fellow Life's Still Unfair producer Tracy Katsky confirmed, "I think he got it," before Boomer added that he thought the actor in question "was amazing." When getting back on topic, he added, "I think it's awesome" regarding the reboot, and largely agreed with his former co-star Melissa Gilbert that there's room for more than one Little House in the world. Compared to the original, he also sees the Netflix version as even more accurate to the books and darker than what Landon built around the Ingalls family. He told Collider:
"I know the world of it is completely different. It's much closer to the books. Michael Landon just had that thing of that family and then just ran with it. It was a great thing for what it was, but it wasn't what the books were, which was a little bit grimmer of a life. To me, I think it's much more appropriate now because I think people understand that vocabulary, that things can sort of be grim and really tough, and you can still have that loving family in that situation, and it still works."
Television has long been a modern touchstone for events of the past. Let's look at eight shows that look at eight moments in history.
Netflix's 'A Little House on the Prairie' Will Naturally Feature a Different Structure
Of course, one obvious difference between the Netflix version and the NBC series is the format. Landon created and starred in Little House at a very different time, when seasons of television could regularly be 22 episodes long, even for an hour-long show. "Yeah, and that was back when an hour show had to do, like, 55 minutes," Boomer added, further clarifying the series sometimes shot as many as "26, I think, for a while they were doing 28," episodes in a year. Season 1 of Sonnenshine's series, however, is likely to follow the typical streaming formula with eight episodes. Alice Halsey, Luke Bracey, Skywalker Hughes, and Crosby Fitzgerald lead the cast as Laura, Charles, Mary, and Caroline Ingalls.
While Boomer waits to head back to the prairie with everyone else, his work helping to reunite the family of Malcolm in the Middle is about to come to fruition. Life's Still Unfairpremieres on April 10, consisting of four episodes that will see Frankie Muniz, Bryan Cranston, Jane Kaczmarek, Christopher Masterson, and Justin Berfield reprise their old roles, with Caleb Ellsworth-Clark and Anthony Timpano stepping in to play the youngest siblings, Dewey and Jamie. The short revival takes place nearly 20 years after the series finale, as Malcolm has spent years trying to avoid his family and living a happy life with his girlfriend and daughter. That is, until Hal and Lois's 40th wedding anniversary arrives, and he's forced to involve his loved ones in the chaos of his family.
Netflix's Little House on the Prairie rides onto screens on July 26. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the much-anticipated new adaptation as it draws ever closer.
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