Neal Marlens takes ordinary family troubles seriously enough to make them funny and touching. His work with Carol Black on The Wonder Years earns our affection, though the narration sometimes explains feelings the actors have already conveyed.
Fi1m perspective
Kevin Arnold can look uncertain in The Wonder Years (1988) without becoming the person we are invited to laugh at. Creators Neal Marlens and Carol Black take his adolescent worries seriously, even when an adult might be tempted to dismiss them. Fred Savage makes that sympathy worth watching: his performance is funny and touching without suggesting that growing up is easy. We were moved by Kevin's uncertainty because the programme lets it matter, however foolish it might seem in retrospect. This is family comedy we recommend warmly, with a reservation about how insistently it sometimes explains itself.
Marlens's early-1980s television writing led to Growing Pains (1985), co-created with Black, and then to The Wonder Years. Their collaboration continued with Laurie Hill (1992) and Ellen (1994). Our interest is chiefly in Marlens as a writer and creator, rather than in a camera style. He directed only one episode of The Wonder Years, so attributing its every visual choice to him would be a stretch.
The useful complication in The Wonder Years is Daniel Stern's narration, which lets an adult look back kindly on mistakes that still felt serious to the child. Marlens and Black use that distance to acknowledge foolishness without treating adolescence as something beneath their attention. But the voice-over sometimes repeats what Savage has already made clear, and the writing pushes the lesson too hard. We do not need every embarrassment explained after we have recognised it. The programme is more persuasive when it leaves us a little work to do, particularly when that work involves remembering something we would rather forget.
His later move into independent filmmaking brought another collaboration with Black: The Lost People of Mountain Village (2005), a mockumentary about real-estate development which they co-directed. Marlens also wrote, produced and edited it, a reminder that the directing credit describes only part of his work. For a starting point, choose The Wonder Years and forgive the occasional explanation of something Savage has already made plain.
Biography
Neal Marlens is an American television producer, writer and director. He created the series The Wonder Years (1988) with his wife and writing partner Carol Black, and served as writer and director on episodes of the show.
He previously created Growing Pains (1985) and co-created Ellen (1994), working on all three series with Black. Marlens won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for The Wonder Years in 1988, with further nominations in subsequent years.
Born on 8 November 1956 in Long Island City, New York, Marlens attended Swarthmore College.
