NBC’s ‘Council of Dads’ follows weepy TV tradition

The history of television can be written by its copycats. The hot show of the moment — whether it’s “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos,” “24” or “Game of Thrones” — invariably generates pale imitations, which can either enrage or entice viewers of the original. The huge success of NBC’s “This Is Us” gave us …

The history of television can be written by its copycats.

The hot show of the moment — whether it’s “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos,” “24” or “Game of Thrones” — invariably generates pale imitations, which can either enrage or entice viewers of the original. The huge success of NBC’s “This Is Us” gave us “A Million Little Things” on ABC — and now “Council of Dads,” premiering Tuesday night after the season finale of the Emmy-winning tearjerker.

It’s a safe bet to say bathos is here to stay.

Death is like a Facebook friend on “Council of Dads,” sending DMs, memories of happier times and suggesting other people to befriend. Fortunately, the dead man is not a suicide like “A Million Little Things” or, as in “This Is Us,” a beloved father whose passing so derails his children that they can barely function in the world decades later. He’s Scott Perry (Tom Everett Scott), the happily married father of four and an unlucky soul who gets sick. His wife Robin (Sarah Wayne Callies) is a doctor, and his dear friend Oliver (J. August Richards) sees him through his rounds of chemo and prosthetic leg replacement. The kids range in ages from first grade to late teens and have good coping skills, but somewhere along the line Scott comes up with the idea to appoint some of his male friends to serve as surrogates in case his cancer returns. “This Is Us” fans will quickly determine where this story is going and, to its credit, “Council of Dads” does not belabor the point. The premiere episode is divided into four seasons and at the end of that year, Scott is gone.

The cast of “Council of Dads.”Jeff Lipsky/NBC

The future success of the show depends entirely on the dads. Larry (Michael O’Neill) is the gruff, laconic friend who drops off a Fraser fir at Christmas and teaches Theo (Emjay Anthony), the eldest Perry boy, to drive. Oliver is the sensitive doc who can coax the Perry’s adopted Asian child out of her hiding place on the day of his funeral. Dashing chef Anthony (Clive Standen) feeds the family and ultimately gives away Perry’s eldest child, Lulu (Michele Weaver), at her wedding. The guys make a likable trio that neatly checks Hollywood’s identity politics boxes (Larry is a recovering alcoholic; Oliver is gay AND black AND married) but something seems off. Where’s the conflict? The writers come up with some cheesy coincidences to build momentum, as when Robin Perry goes into labor with a fifth, unexpected child on the same day that Scott is having his checkup to see if his cancer has come back, but all you get out of that alignment is the reminder — as on “This Is Us” and especially the lachrymose “A Million Little Things” — that there will not be a single happy moment for anyone. That’s life.

With only one episode to review, it’s impossible to say how any potential conflicts will play out. But you can almost bet that Robin won’t be a widow for long if Anthony keeps showing up to cook for the family. Or that truculent Theo Perry will chafe against “Major Dad”-type Larry’s rules. The writers exceed their reach when they attempt a transgender storyline with one of the youngest members of the family and one of the Dads has to ‘splain to Grandma that poor dead Scott wouldn’t mind seeing his son in a velvet dress with a lace hem on the morning of his funeral. Hollywood, give it a rest already. You don’t have to pack every show with every hot-button identity politics issue to seem relevant.

That said, the cast, especially Callies as the mom and O’Neill as Larry, is good and the series is gorgeously filmed in and around Savannah, Ga. and Tybee Island. Those marshy sunsets have a way of drawing you in and making you want to hang out with these characters for a while. Even if everyone’s happy, then sad, then happy.

They’ll get through it. And so will you.