Almost Family (2019–2020)
8/10
Should I laugh? Or should I cry?
3 October 2019
Warning: Spoilers
To answer this question one will have to watch the entire first episode and most likely persevere through several additional episodes to assess whether this new TV series which is classified as a drama, is more serious rather than how it seems to initially lean towards being a comedy show.

Brittany Snow plays Julia Bechley who fully supported her egotistical father Doctor Leon Bechley (played by Timothy Hutton) who is a renowned fertility doctor until one day his long kept secret is revealed that he used his own sperm to impregnate multiple parents who as a last resort, came to his miracle clinic to try and become pregnant.

Why I am unclear if this is supposed to be a comedy, a drama, (or maybe it is a dramedy?) is because as the adult children of Dr. Bechley begin to meet each other and interact with one another they realize that they were all born with some common traits although their physical makeups are all quite different. There are some moments of empathy for the characters as they realize that their father(s) who raised them are not genetically attached to them and their real father is a despicable doctor with a huge ego who chose to play God himself.

In real life there actually is in Canada a fertility doctor named Norman Barwin whose claims against the physician date as far back as the 1970s and include patients from at least two fertility clinics in Ontario. The regulator launched the most recent investigation when a lawsuit was filed that alleged that 50 to 100 children were conceived after their mothers received the wrong semen from Dr Barwin and that 11 were genetically matched to the fertility doctor.

There is nothing to laugh about the above real case(s) but in this new TV series I will watch a few more episodes to assess if it takes a more serious turn as the civil suits are inevitable just like in real life.
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