Fresh Air - Remembering musical theater historian Robert Kimball

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

Kimball, who died July 2, was artistic advisor to Ira Gershwin. He wrote books about the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, and helped unearth unknown songs and manuscripts by them and other early 20th-century songwriters. Kimball also rescued and rediscovered the music of the Black Broadway team of Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1994. David Bianculli reviews the remake of ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ and John Powers reviews the second season of ‘Sugar,’ starring Colin Farrell.  See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. in Cooley. Robert Kimball, the musical historian who rediscovered and rescued music and manuscripts by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and others, and who co-wrote important books about George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and U.B. Blake, died last week. He was 86 years old. Kimball, who was born in New York City in 1939, fell in love with Broadway musicals and musical composers when he was taken as a child to see Ethel Mervyn star as Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. Later in life, after publishing several books on popular songwriters, Kimball got a call from Irving Berlin himself, sparking a friendship that brought Kimball's life full circle.

Robert Kimball graduated from Yale in 1961. His undergraduate thesis was on Broadway musicals of the 1920s. But when he returned to Yale, it was for law school, from which he graduated in 1967. While a senior in law school, Kimball was asked to organize the collection donated to Yale by composer Cole Porter. Kimball did such a good job and enjoyed it so much that when he earned his law degree, he didn't become a lawyer. Instead, for the next four years, he curated Yale's musical theater collections and began writing books on the subject. And for Robert Kimball, following his passions, paid off, and he discovered a treasure trove of musical history gold. The Warner Brothers movie studio in the late 1920s had invested in the new sound era by buying several music publishing houses.

The sale included 80 crates of material that lay unopened and untouched for more than 50 years. Then, in 1982, Robert Kimball found the crates in a Warner Brothers warehouse in Sarko's New Jersey. Jersey and cataloged them. Inside were hundreds of unpublished songs by Jerome Kern, unknown songs by Cole Porter, and missing songs by George and Ira Gershwin. Eventually, Kimball became artistic advisor to the Ira Gershwin estate and edited a book collecting Ira Gershwin's complete lyrics, including many of the ones Kimball himself had rescued. Today, we'll remember Robert Kimball by listening back to some of his conversations with Terry gross. The first came in 1994 when Kimball's collection of Ira Gershwin lyrics had just been published.

Terry began by playing a Fred Astaire recording of a Georgian Ira Gershwin composition, Swonderful. S wonderful, it's marvelous that you should care for me. Oh, it's awful nice Sparadice It's what I love To see You've made My life so glamorous

You can't blame me for feeling amorous Oh, so wonderful marvelous that you should care for me Robert Kimball, welcome to fresh air. How well did you know Ira Gershwin and how did you get to know him? I knew Ira really quite well.

I started working with him in 1972 when my friend and partner, Alfred Simon, who had been rehearsal pianist in of the Issa, sing in 31, and I asked him if we could do a book about himself and his brother, and we went out to spend some time with him. We spent many days in the house, and the first day I met him, he took me aside and asked me very, well, I would describe it as somewhat haltingly, but insistently, to make the book entirely about his brother George and not about himself. He saw himself to a certain degree as the custodian of George's legacy. Now, when I worked with him,

And he would come downstairs to his pool room, billiard room, office about noon, and he would say to us, boys, am I disturbing you? And, of course, we were so happy to see him. And he would reminisce a lot because he knew we loved the old stories, and we would ask him questions. And on many wonderful occasions, he would ask Al Simon, who was a superb pianist and who knew, as I say, a lot of Gershwin work, if Al remembered particular songs. And one day he felt particularly lively. and asked Al if he would mind playing through the score of the I sing. And so we went up to their living room and at George Gershwin's own piano. Ira Gershwin sat, cigar in his hand with his eyes closed,

and Al began with the overture, and Ira sang the entire score all the way through, and it was certainly one of the most memorable experiences of my life, hearing Ira sing the wonderful, wonderful songs that he and George had written. And it made us all very happy. I'd like to go back to 1917 to the very first published lyric written by Ira Gershwin and you reprint this lyric in your new book

and this lyric was actually a parody, a satire the song was called You May Throw All the Rice You Desire I'm just going to read a little bit of the verse because Gershwin wrote this apparently as a spoof and it's I think a pretty funny spoof of a type of turn of the century song

The ceremony was over and all was happy and gay The blushing bride and her lover To the steps did wend their way Their young friends them had proceeded And had formed a merry plot Although the older folks pleaded them not And so on and so on

And then it goes to the refrain You may throw all the rice you desired But please friends throw no shoes For twill surely arouse my ire If you cause my wife one bruise What I find particularly amusing About this spoof is that Gershwin became so wonderful

about using colloquial colloquial lines and slang and writing lyrics the way people spoke, it's great that his first published lyric was a parody of lyrics written in the way people didn't speak, written in a stilted prose. Terry, that's a very interesting point that you made.

Indeed, if we think of Ira Gershwin's contributions as a lyricist, it's so much his ability to take cliches, shop-worn phrases, and the way, as you say, people actually spoke to one another in ordinary situations and to somehow bring those into lyrics and to mate them with this incredible music of George's to give them timeless expression. And George just loved the way Ira did that and he really responded very beautifully to it.

He could almost anticipate some of Ira's ideas and he would come up with playful thoughts of his own to give Ira to set. And I think that's one of Ira's great contributions to lyric writing is that it made it less formal. It had a kind of formal sort of idea that you're telling a story, a long verse in the old days, and then a very short refrain that was repeated. And the story, of course, was very much in the verse. And Ira worked to loosen things up a bit and to make them go easier for people who would sing them as well. I think maybe one of his most famous songs that uses colloquial speech is wonderful. Well, there, by eliminating the it's and bringing the S and the W together,

sort of a device that he had used earlier in a song called Sunny Disposish, where he shortened the words, Sunday disposition to Sadi Disposition, all the rhymes that occur. Again, by making it so wonderful, you get the feeling of the ecstasy without the formality of saying, gee, it's wonderful, which is fine, but not like swanourful. Ira Gershwin had wonderfully clever rhymes, but on the other hand, he was capable of a band, Brandon conventional rhymes, which he did on one of his most famous songs, I Got Rhythm. You want to tell the story about why he didn't use a rhyme on that? Well, he had a number of thoughts about that. He found that the phrases were very short, and he thought that to try to rhyme it just didn't work.

The song didn't work, and he had things like Roli-Poly rhyming with Ravioli and some of the dummy lyrics that he put together in a search to find the song, and he just finally came up with a pattern that tended to work better by not having these kinds of repetitions. So each phrase had a distinctive quality on its own. And certainly when Ethel Merman sang it, which was her Broadway debut in 1930,

and you had this fabulous pit band that included Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman and other greats, later, of course, great band leaders. In the pit, it was one of the most exciting numbers in the history of the American Musical Theater. Yeah, you said that he had written a dummy lyric just to try different rhyme schemes to see how they worked. And so the dummy lyric is just to try out certain rhyme schemes. And do you want to quote the dummy lyric that he had come up with,

which convinced him that this kind of rhyme scheme wasn't going to work in the song? If you can imagine the tune, we all know the tune, so it's sort of hard to forget the tune of I Got Rhythm, but it went roly-poly, eating solely, ravioli, better watch your diet or bust. Lunch or dinner, you're a sinner. Please get dinner, losing all that fat as a must. That didn't somehow work as a song. But it gave him the idea of the kind of thing he was trying for, short words.

But each phrase had to be really complete in itself. You know, I got rhythm, I got music. Who could ask for anything more, which is certainly one of the things. of the most famous lines in all of his songs, who could ask for anything more. You've brought a record with you of George Gershwin performing this song that he collaborated on with his brother. Would you introduce the record for us?

I'd be happy to, Terry. In 1934, when George had begun work on the opera Porgy and Bess, he really needed income. So he went on the radio, and he had a radio show which was sponsored by Phenamint, the laxative, for which he was. was teased constantly by many people and later said, well, if there hadn't been Fienemim, there would have been no Porgian bass.

But on the show, he would play his own music and introduce his songs as well as music of others. And we had a few acetates that survived that Ira Gershwin had, and one of them has a marvelous performance prefaced with an introduction. We hear George Gershwin speaking, mentioning the song, I Got Rhythm, mentioning his brother Ira. We hear it just an incredible inventive performance, which undoubtedly he did on the spur of the moment during the performance because he could do that so well and that song was so close to him. So for 1934 we hear George Gershwin playing I Got Rhythm. But right now I want to play for you

a composition of mine that brings up the pleasant of memories that I got rhythm from the show called Girl Crazy. Maybe you thought a few seasons ago. Again I had the pleasure of working with my brother Ira who supplied the lyrics. Let's try it. Too bad George didn't sing and couldn't sing his brother's lyric. Well, he did sing at times when he and Iro were trying to put things together. And Todd Duncan said laughingly when he heard them audition songs from Porgy and Best for him that they had the god-awfulest voices he'd ever heard the two of them.

But he said at the same time it was so incredible and so, real to hear how they presented their songs. Well, why don't we listen to Ira Gershwin singing one of his own songs and see what kind of voice he has? And you've brought something with you that he, with Ira Gershwin singing Harold Arlen at the piano, some that they wrote together. This is a song written in 1936 for Fred Astaire for Shall We Dance, and it's called Hi-Ho. And it had a very specific idea that Fred would kind of walk through the street, seeing this girl on a poster, and would then receive.

respond to it. The scene was never shot and the song was never obviously in the film. And over 30 years later, a number of friends of IRAs that said that really it should get published. It was such a wonderful song. But he occasionally would do it at parties. And I think this is from a party performance at Harold Arlen, a great composer and performer in his own right, is at the piano. And we hear Ira Gershwin singing, Hi-ho, a 1936 song written for Fred Astaire. At last it seems I found her. Now I won't be happy

till my arms are around her. I hope Oh, ha. If the kiss she'd only throw me, oh me, oh my. Her charm. Her smile so sweet and dimply. I want them or I'll simply die.

Ira Gershwin singing his lyric. The melody was written by George Gershwin. Harold Arlen is at the piano. You wouldn't say Ari Gershwin has a great voice, but he sings with gusto and can certainly put his lyric across. Terry, this song actually was, I think, the first song that George and Ira wrote during the last year of George's life. When they arrived in Hollywood,

I think they were still at one of the hotels before they found the house on Roxbury, where they lived. And 11 months was all that George Gershwin had left. And if we think about what they wrote during that 11-month period, you know, slap that base. I've got beginner's luck. They all laughed.

Let's call the whole thing off. They can't take that away from me. I can't be bothered now. Stiff upper lip. Things are looking up a foggy day. And then the last, even to the very end, George's last song. after Love walked in and others, he then, without completing the verse,

his last song was Love is Here to Stay. All those were written in less than a year, and they are among the greatest songs written in this century by any writers. Since we just heard Arlen accompanying Ira Gershwin, why don't we talk about a song that Arlen wrote with Ira Gershwin, and I'm thinking of the man that got away. Well, I think we should say that certainly to let people know that when George died, it took a long time for,

Ira to get back to work, and it was listening to some recordings that Fred Astaire made of their songs that made him believe that maybe he should try again. And then during the rest of his years, he worked with a number of great writers, including Jerome Kern, with whom he wrote long ago and far away, a great standard. And he wrote film scores with Harold Arlen, and one of the songs from Stars Born is one of the greatest songs that Judy Garland. I was saying, of course, the man that got away. And it is a fabulous song, and I probably should say nothing more. We should hear it. Why don't we hear Harold Arlen singing The Man That Got Away? The night is bitter.

The stars have lost that glitter. The winds grow colder. And suddenly you're older and all because of the man that got away. That's Harold Arlen singing a wonderful song with music by Arlen and a lyric by Ira Gershwin. It's so Ira Gershwin that he explains why the lyric became the man that got away, as opposed to the more grammatically correct, the man who got away. Do you want to explain his explanation for it?

The man that got away is, of course, an interesting title, and people always wanted to sing it the man who got away, but Ira didn't like that. that, and he said that the title had come as a paraphrase of something that he had heard and was often used. Fisherman's, you should have seen the one that got away. That meaning it's somewhat larger in scope, wasn't just a person, it was a whole world that left, not just an individual who departed from one's life.

You knew Ira Gershwin in the last years of his life. Was he still writing songs? Is he still listening to a lot of music? was his life like at the end? Well, Ira actually stopped writing in the mid-50s and really retired. He retired and then he wrote his book lyrics on several occasions, which had 104 of his lyrics. This book has 730. And he was really retired. I mean, it was amazing. In their early years, George and Ira moved every few months. Ira counted that in the first 16 years of his life, they moved 28 times.

That's really quite a lot of moving. Sure is. Free month's rent would take the Gershwin family from one part of New York to another. Ira really completely shut down in a sense. He didn't go out. And when I knew him, he rarely went beyond the backyard or the front walk for a walk. He basically found everything he needed inside with, you know, with a tell. He could watch sports events.

He could read. He could entertain his friends and people came to see him. He could write letters to young children. The thing I think he loved doing most, aside from reminiscing and really telling stories about the old days, which he did very, very well, was to receive a letter from a child asking a question, innocent question, well, how did you work with your brother or what a songwriting like? He would spend days formulating an answer to a letter like that.

Robert Kimball, speaking to Terry Gross in 1994. He died last week at age 86. After a break, we'll hear an excerpt from another of their conversations. Also, we'll have two TV reviews. Critic-at-Large John Powers reviews season two of the TV series Sugar, starring Colin Farrell, and I review the new remake of Little House on the Prairie. I'm David B. Goulde, and this is Fresher. You say either, and I say either.

You say neither, and I say neither. Either, either, neither, neither, neither, Let's call the whole thing off. You like potato and I like potato. You like tomato and I like tomato. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato, tomato. Let's call the whole thing off. But oh, if we call the whole thing off,

then we must part. And oh, we ever part, then that might break my heart. So if you like pajamas and I like pajamas, I'll wear pajamas and give up... This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David Being Cool. That's one of the best-known melodies composed by U.B. Blake. He was part of the pioneering black songwriting team of Noble Cicill and Ubi Blake. We're remembering musical theater historian Robert Kimball, who died last week at the age of 86. He helped rediscover the work of Cicill and Blake.

We're going to listen back to a portion of our 1998 show about U.B. Blake, and here are selections from Cicill and Blake's 1921 hit musical Shuffle Along, which changed Broadway. It was created by and starred African Americans, and it brought new syncopated rhythms and dances to Broadway. It even helped launch the Harlem Renaissance. Shuffle Along was revived on Broadway in 2016. To perform the music are actor-singer Vernel Bonneries, who co-created and starred in a Jelly Roll Morton Review and the New Orleans Music Review One Mo Time,

and at the piano, Dick Heiman, an expert in the piano styles of the 1910s, 20s and 30s. Some of the songs we'll be hearing today are from Shuffle Along, Euby Blake's 1921 musical written with Noble Cicill. And this is really a landmark musical in the history of the Broadway stage. Robert Kimball, what's so important about Shuffle Along musically? Shuffle Along described itself accurately as a musical Melange. It brought together so many diverse styles and influences.

You hear operetta and a song like Love will find a way. It's very important, and it was a very courageous decision for Cicill and Blake to have a beautiful ballad that could have come right out of a Jerome Kern show as part of their score. It also reflected the vaudeville acts of the four creators. Miller and Liles, who were the bookwriters of Shuffle Along, had these wonderful sketches that they did together, and it was their comic routines that provided the basis for the books that they wrote for Shuffalo Long and other musicals of that period.

And then you had Sissle and Blake's remarkable vaudeville act, which was really crucial. and it was an extended 15 or 20 minute sequence, which would involve a diversity of materials. And it was the coming together of all these different influences that made Shuffle Along special. Another part about Shuffle Along that has always struck me very forcefully is that because there were no other black musicals on Broadway,

when they gathered the talent together to bring Shuffle Along to Broadway, they were able to obtain the very best, talent in the black community. Who are some of the people who come out of Shuffle Along? We think of, certainly, well, one person who you don't think of was Paul Ropeson. He was a member of the cast of Shuffle Along. The most beloved of the black artists of the 20s Florence Mills was from Shuffle Along, many ways the most famous of performers from that period,

who later went on to achieve great renown in Europe, which Josephine Baker. She was from Shuffle Along. Two great figures in music were played in Ubi's orchestra, Hall Johnson, whose choir was world-renowned, and the extraordinary composer William Grant Still played the oboe in the Shuffle Along Orchestra. These are just some of the great people who were part of that show.

For now, Dick, I'm going to ask you to do a song from Shuffle Along. This is called I'm Craving for That Kind of Love. It was the showstopper of the musical. You want to do it for us? It'll be great. Great. I'm wishing and fishing and trying to hook someone sweet like you'd meet.

in a book I'll be her Romeo I won't be no phonio She may be the baby Of some other guy I'll take him

And make him say bye-bye And when I get her I will set her upon my knee And make my I plea to kiss me, kiss me, kiss me with her tempting lips, sweet as honey drips, press me, press me, press me to her loving breast, while I gently rest, breathe, love's tender sighs, while I gaze, let me gaze into a eyes

eyes that will just hypnotize then I know she'll whisper whisper to me soft and low something nice you know honey honey honey when there's no one near

my baby dear she'll say huddle me Cuddle me, cling to me, sing to me, spoon to me, croon to me, sigh to me, cry to me, I'm craving for that kind of love. With a tent than lips, sweeter than honey drips, whisper something soft and low, whisper something nice, you know. Huddle me, cuddle me, cling to me, sing to me, spoon to me, croon to me, sighed to me, cried to me. And I'm craving for that kind of love. That's a really fun song.

What influence did Shuffle Along have on other Broadway musicals? As we were saying, you know, it brings this kind of mix of an, of an, light opera sound and ragtime and syncopation? I would think musically, and knowing from what I've heard from Irving Berlin and others, that Mr. Berlin said that the impact of Shuffle Along was extraordinary and that there's no question that the kind of syncopated songs that he wrote after, like everybody's step and pack up your sins and go to the devil,

which were for the music box reviews, were influenced by songs like the Baltimore Buzz Craven for that kind of love, which he heard in Shuffler Long. It's hard to imagine Gershwin's fascinating rhythm without hearing what Sissle and Blake were doing before. Robert Kimball, you rediscovered Yubie Blake and Noble Sissle in the late 1960s.

How did you meet him? How did you find him? I would say that I was one of the people who helped rediscover Yubi It happened this way. I was at that time the curator of the Yale American Musical Theater Collection, and I was looking to build the archives in New Haven. And one day I was speaking to John Larr, the writer,

and he said, my father, his father, Bert Lahr, the great actor-comedian, suggested that the very first people you should contact me contact were Noble Sissell and U.B. Blake. So actually, it was Bert Larr who arranged for John, and myself to go up and meet noble Cicill, and this would have been, I'm sure, in the spring of 1967, and we had visited Cicill. He told us maybe just weeks before he was going to throw out all his old files and his old materials. He said no one is interested in them there's no reason to keep them. And by this miracle, we were able to get there in time. We didn't know how close.

We were to losing this extraordinary heritage. Well, he said, if this interest you, fellas, I'll call my old pal up and go out, visit him in Brooklyn. So he made a phone call, and he said, I have these two boys here who would like to meet you, and we could come out, so Cecil drove us out to 284A Stuyveson Avenue, where Ubi and Marion Blake lived, as Ubi said. When he married Marion, I got the coop with the chicken. It was her house that he was moving into. And we were greeted there by Uby, and the afternoon that I spent there was one of the most memorable

in my life. Robert Kimball, speaking to Terry Gross in 1998. In 2001, he spoke to Terry again about songwriter Irving Berlin, who wrote many classic American songs, including Blue Skies, Cheek to Cheek, There's No Business like Show Business, and White Christmas. Kimball had co-edited a collection of Berlin's lyrics with Berlin's daughter, Linda Emmett. Terry spoke to Robert Kimball shortly after the 9-11 attacks. Having put together the book of Irving-Burland lyrics, is there a lyric or two that particularly stands out to you, either in the rhyme scheme or in the sentiment it expresses or in the way it captures the moment that it was written in?

Terry, that's a very hard question, but I could think of a few, obviously, one of which I've thought about a lot, and recently, certainly in recent weeks, was a song that was introduced by, Fred Astaire. And the sentiments in the lyric are really, really, really timely. Lines like, there may be trouble ahead and there may be teardrops to shed. Of course, I'm speaking of a song, Well, Let's Face the Music and Dance, which was introduced in the 1936 film, Follow the Fleet, is certainly one of Mr. Berlin's greatest songs. There may be trouble ahead. But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance, let's face the music and dance

before the fiddlers have played before they ask us to pay the bills and while we still have the chance Let's face the music and dance. Soon we'll be without the moon, humming a different tune. And then there may be tear drops to shave. Robert Kimball spoke to Terry in 2001. The author and musical historian died,

last week. He was 86 years old. Coming up, I review the new remake of Little House on the Prairie, based on the popular series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David Bean Coley. Netflix is presenting a new version of Little House on the Prairie, based on the popular series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. All eight episodes of season one are now available to stream,

and Netflix already has ordered a season two. It's a story from our nation's early frontier history and has quite a history of its own, in print and even on television. When Laura Ingalls Wilder started writing her Little House on the Prairie book series in the early 1930s, it was as a fond salute to her own childhood memories. Laura was born shortly after the Civil War in 1867, in the very log cabin she describes in her first book, Little House in the Big Woods. That book and her later ones detailed the joys, the difficulties, and the hard work involved in pioneer life, as seen and told from the perspective of a precocious young girl.

Laura loved her ma and pa and her siblings, but she observed them all carefully and perceptively. She was to Little House on the Prairie what John Boy was to the Waltons, another nostalgic family TV series set during an earlier time. in that case the Depression. The characters of both John Boy and Laura displayed a gift for writing early on and narrated their family's stories. When Michael Landon, after spending years as Little Joe on Bonanza,

brought Little House on the Prairie to NBC in the 1970s, he cast himself as the patriarch, Paul Ingalls. But the storytelling, as in the books, belonged to Little Laura, played in that series by a young Melissa Gilbert. If I had a remembrance book, I would mark down how it was when we left our little house in the big woods to go west to Indian territory. That Little House series was very popular and ran from 1974 to 1983. Especially in the early episodes, it was faithful to the original books and characters.

When an Osage Indian chief came by the Ingalls cabin, Paw invited him in for a sit and a smoke. Ma was frightened, as was Laura's elder sister, and was relieved when he left. But Laura was charmed and sympathetic to his tribe's plight. What Laura says in that 1974 premiere may sound like liberal Hollywood rewriting, but the empathic dialogue, like much of the TV series, came straight from the original books. My goodness, he's gone. Why, I thought it was kind of nice. Born Indian.

Well, I wouldn't be upset about it. If you much from now, there won't be an Indian left in the territory. But why not, Paul? Government's going to make a move half-bindon. Move where? West, I guess. I'm glad. I'm not.

Does Dr. Shane have to go to, even though he's a chief? I'm afraid so. It's not fair. They were here first. The new incarnation of Little House on, on the prairie is created for TV by Rebecca Sonnonshine. Her writing credits include episodes of the TV series The Boys and the Vampire Diaries. She and the show's other writers, as well as the directors, take some liberties with their new version. They introduce an entire family of Osage

characters, for example, to present another set of family dynamics. One thing they don't mess with, though, is Laura as the central voice. She's played here by Alice Halsey, whom you may remember as the brilliant daughter on lessons in chemistry. And her performance is the show's very best, a show that starts, as before, with Laura's opening narration. Once upon a time, Paul and Ma and Mary and Laura left their house in the big woods of Wisconsin. Ma was sad to leave her life behind, but Paul said it was getting too crowded, and we needed a fresh start. In the West. Every day, the horses traveled as far as they could.

And Pa and Ma made camp in a new place. Warren Christie is another standout. He plays John Edwards, a Civil War veteran and sometimes drunken loner, who agrees to help the Ingalls build their log cabin before Winter sets in. Charles, that's Paw to Laura, likes him. But Caroline, that's Ma, fears him as much as she does the Osage. and sends him away. Luke Bracey plays Paugh,

and Crosby Fitzgerald plays Caroline. He's not coming back. He was drinking here at our home. He said he didn't do it while you work, but I didn't believe him. What did you say? I told him not to come back until he didn't need something to chase the sheep.

It doesn't work like that. You don't just snap your fingers and make it go away. His wife is gone. His girls are gone. He got chewed up and spit out by the God-forsaken war. You knew? You knew and you didn't say anything. Caroline, we are alone at sea.

We don't have room for this obsession with virtue. It's not virtue. I don't want to lose my family again. We can't finish this house without it. Their argument is intense. But as filmed, there's something off about it. Like many other scenes in this new little house on the prairie, it's shot by handheld cameras in extreme close-up

and calls too much attention to itself. Also, some of the dramatic plot points that works so well in the books than in the NBC series are less effective here, because they're not established or presented as well. The familiar title of Little House on the Prairie may bring lots of viewers to this new version, but I can't say it really resonates,

except for the performances of Alice Halsey as Laura and Warren Christie as Mr. Edwards. But I will say that the entire original series of Little House on the Prairie is available to stream on Peacock, And when I dove back in there to refresh my memory, that series really did resonate. Coming up, Critic at Large John Powers reviews the new season of Sugar, starring Colin Farrell as a private eye with a secret. Quite a secret. This is fresh air.

This is fresh air. The Apple TV series Sugar stars Colin Farrell as John Sugar, an LA private eye with the strangest of secrets. Its second season is currently being released and finds him seeking a missing person in areas of Los Angeles you won't find in the tourist brochures. Our critic at large, John Powers, says that Sugar has a strange, starry-eyed allure that he found irresistible. Aliens from outer space come in basically two kinds. The first are murderous invaders that need to be destroyed. Think alien or predator. In more complex stories like the man who fell to Earth or arrival, the ETs don't come to wreak havoc, but to engage with our world,

often discovering what it means to be human. The latter is what you get in sugar, the seductive Apple TV series whose second season is now unfolding. Here, the alien, played by a terrific Colin Farrell, doesn't merely travel between planets but between genres. He learns to be human by becoming a private eye in Los Angeles, or maybe a fantasy of a private eye, one who tools around L.A. in a vintage corvette stingray, sports immaculately tailored suits, and has a spirit so pure he makes Philip Marlowe seem sinister.

Wrapping noir inside science fiction, or maybe the other way around, sugar injects fresh feeling into storylines that have grown more than a little musty. Now, Sugar's first season was nearly impossible to review, because it's shocking reveal that Private Detective John Sugar is actually from another planet, didn't come until episode six. So late you couldn't intelligently discuss the series without spoiling it. In its final episode, we learned that Sugar is part of a team of aliens sent to Earth to monitor and observe. But they've been betrayed and must flee our planet to avoid being killed. Sugar stays behind. In season two, cut off from his home planet, he's back to detective work.

Where the first season's client was a Hollywood mogul, this new one moves us into the LA of the powerless. Sugar takes the case of aspiring boxer Danny Moon, played by Jin Ha, a Korean immigrant who wants him to find his missing brother, who has dangerous men on his tail. Sugar quickly finds himself faced with Latino street gangs and a dirty cop named Vega, played with menacingly placid amusement by Tony Dalton,

who you may know is the psycho Lalo Salamanca in Better Call Saul. Clearly needing help, Sugar hires a streetwise assistant. She's played by Sasha Kaye, and calls in favors from his scruffy police pal, slightly played by Shea Wigam. Naturally, there's also a mysterious woman, Charlotte, the wonderful Irish actress Laura Donnelly, who just as naturally has eyes for sugar.

Heck, he's Colin Farrell. As part of his interplanetary mission, sugar has been ordered not to assimilate. Eat no meat, have no sex, don't kill anybody. But as the story progresses, with the amoral Vega looking unstoppable, and Charlotte coming on pretty darn sexy, we wonder if you'll be corrupted into violating those taboos.

Here, you sense temptation coming, when he first meets Charlotte in a bar. Hello. Hi. I don't mean it is... Have we met before? Uh, I don't think so. Zorik, the Sustainability Conference, that wasn't you?

No, no. My mistake. Not at all. John Sugar. Sugar? Like what's sweet? Uh, I suppose. I'm Charlotte.

Like the web Like the spider's web The late great David Lynch said that what drew him into a story Was a mood A mental atmosphere he wanted to be inside I get that in sugar With its rifts on genres I love

It's under-toe of city lights melancholy And the way sugar's alienness puts a spin on everything From the heightened way L.A. is shot to his philosophical ruminations on existence. Sugar learned about Earth by watching old pictures like Casablanca. He's now a film buff, and one of the show's stylistic trademarks

is to cut in clips from black and white movies that echo what he's experiencing in the story. Even when this technique feels a bit mannered, these clips remind us that Sugar often approaches life through the mythologizing of the Hollywood Dream Machine. Rather like us, come to think of it. It's one of the best science fiction cliches that aliens often possess more humanity than human beings. The empathetic sugar certainly does, whether he's quietly washing the

dishes for the grandmother of a murder victim, believing villains would go straight if only they could, seeing himself in L.A.'s uprooted immigrants and unhoused people, or reacting in horror at how heartlessly the dispossessed or treated. This city breaks your heart, he tells us. While we might mock a human detective for being so unhard-boiled, Farrell wins us over with the subtl and charm we expect from his performances.

Deploying his charisma with great discretion, he gives us a sugar who may look like a perfectly cool detective, but whose interactions have an earnest, awkward, off-kilter honesty that gives every scene an offbeat twirl. In fact, one of the very best things about the show is that, like its hero, it isn't cynical.

Sugar lives in the elegant Hotel del Corazon, the Hotel of the Heart. And this seems just right. Far, far from home, John Sugar is a lonely soul, lost in space, but forever trying to do the right thing. John Powers reviewed Sugar, starring Colin Farrell, now in its second season on Apple TV.

In the new comedy film The Invite, an unhappily married couple invite the couple upstairs over for an uncomfortable and revelatory dinner party. On Monday's show, the film's screenwriters, Rashida Jones and Will McCormick, their long time writing and producing partners as well as actors. Hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with additional engineering support from Julian Hertzfeld and Charlie Kier. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Inc.