Kal Penn is an appealing actor whose airy, loose charisma has lately exceeded his luck: On TV in recent years, Penn has appeared on vexed series including “We Are Men,” “Battle Creek,” and “Designa…
is an appealing actor whose airy, loose charisma has lately exceeded his luck: On TV in recent years, Penn has appeared on vexed series including “We Are Men,” “Battle Creek,” and “Designated Survivor.” Happily, on his new sitcom, “,” Penn seems to be porting in experience from a different part of his career — the time he spent working in President Barack Obama’s administration, in the Office of Public Engagement.
Penn’s Garrett Modi is a former New York City Councilman — representing Sunnyside, an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Queens — drummed out of office after a scandal involving public drunkenness; if it hadn’t been for one bad night, though, he’d either have found himself rejected by voters or, worse for him and for them, slouched into long-term incumbency.
The group is well-drawn, including Joel Kim Booster and Poppy Liu as a pair of wealthy Asian immigrants who’d prefer to buy their way out of the situation; Moses Storm as a young man raised from early childhood in the U.S. who doesn’t know where his putative homeland of Moldova even is; and Diana-Maria Riva and Samba Schutte as working stiffs whose talents and resourcefulness plainly exceed the opportunities they’ve been given.
And yet there is some inspiration in the sitcom’s first installment; Modi does, if for less-than-admirable reasons, the right thing, and he finds in so doing a sort of political action vastly more interesting than had been his holding office. As a depiction of activism and making change, the promising “Sunnyside” pilot makes a strong case that it begins with one’s neighbors, and builds out a neighborhood well worth watching.
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