‘Leanne’ (2025) Netflix Series Review - The Sitcom that Sips Sweet Tea While Running in Circles

Leanne Morgan has the kind of voice that makes you feel like you’re sitting in a church basement, being offered banana pudding while someone unpacks a family secret. That’s essentially what her new Netflix sitcom, Leanne, feels like: warm, familiar, slightly chaotic, and laced with commentary that tiptoes between relatable and painfully outdated. It’s the kind of show that wants you to laugh because you’ve been there, only sometimes it forgets to actually be funny.

The show kicks off with Leanne being blindsided by her husband’s sudden exit. Thirty-three years of marriage, and he just walks out like she over-salted the meatloaf. What follows is a whirlwind of scenes where Leanne, now single, must figure out what it means to live without being someone’s wife. She’s a grandmother, she’s menopausal, and she’s vaguely tired but refuses to sit down. The plot sells itself on reinvention, but the delivery often feels like it’s been microwaved twice and served on a paper plate. There’s charm here, but it’s often buried beneath sitcom tropes that should’ve retired with the flip phone.

Let’s start with the good news. Leanne Morgan is magnetic. She’s not trying to be young, cool, or even overly clever. She’s comfortable in her skin and carries herself with an earnestness that doesn’t feel performative. Even when a punchline feels like it wandered in from a 2002 King of Queens rerun, she sells it with conviction. That commitment counts for something. She’s surrounded by a cast that’s clearly there to support her rise into the acting world. Kristen Johnston, who plays Leanne’s bold, slightly over-the-top sister Carol, is a walking cocktail of sarcasm, disaster, and heart. She’s the kind of character who storms into a room, insults everyone lovingly, and still manages to be the glue holding half the scenes together. The two sisters' dynamic is often the highlight of the series—when it’s not veering into cartoonish spats or unresolved emotional whiplash.

Then we have the parents. Leanne’s mom is the archetype of every slightly judgmental Southern matriarch who loves Jesus and casseroles in equal measure. Her father, largely quiet but occasionally dropping in with grandpa wisdom, floats somewhere between comic relief and set decoration. The rest of the family—the kids, the ex-husband, a couple of peripheral neighbors—come and go with varying degrees of interest. Sometimes they get great one-liners. Other times, they’re walking cue cards.

Now for the real talk. The show wants desperately to be the next comfort sitcom, something you put on while folding laundry or escaping a rough day. But unlike the classics it tries to emulate, Leanne is stuck in a half-sleep. Most of the episodes follow the same three-step routine: Leanne tries something new, it goes mildly wrong, she has a heart-to-heart with her sister or father, and ends the day on the porch with a half-smile and a sigh. It’s the kind of repetition that makes you wonder if the writers put the script through a Southern cliché generator.

The humor is where things start to crack. The laugh track doesn’t so much accompany the jokes as it tries to resuscitate them. You can almost hear the producer backstage yelling “Cue laughter!” before every fourth sentence. Some lines feel fresh, especially when Leanne leans into her stand-up roots with observational quips about aging or parenting. But a good portion of the jokes are just... old. Not vintage. Not timeless. Just tired. A punchline about TikTok from a grandma character might have felt edgy five years ago, but now it’s just clinging to relevance.

Another issue is the pacing. For a show with such a rich emotional premise, abandonment, rediscovery, adult children, and menopause, it spends surprisingly little time mining anything real. There are brief moments when the facade drops and you get a raw, honest moment from Leanne or Carol, and those are electric. But just as quickly, the scene gets hijacked by an awkward joke or plot detour about online dating that feels written by someone who’s never opened an app. It’s as if the show is scared of sitting in its own sincerity for too long, so it tosses in a chicken salad anecdote to avoid depth.

Leanne Morgan is clearly a talent. Her presence, her story, and her humor are all worth celebrating. But this show feels like a soft launch, not a breakout. It gives her the stage, but not the script. The show plays it safe—too safe. Every time it nudges at something bold or original, it quickly backtracks into familiar sitcom rhythm. It wants to be edgy without scaring anyone. The result is a show that’s occasionally sweet, occasionally funny, but mostly flatlining in the middle.

And for all its focus on Leanne’s journey of self-discovery, the actual discovery part seems to get skipped. We’re told she’s changing, growing, healing. But all we see are new hairstyles, a brief flirtation with a man from her past, and a whole lot of casseroles. There’s a lingering sense that the show was built to sell relatability rather than actually explore it. At times, it feels like a self-help Instagram post dressed up as a sitcom.

Still, it’s hard to be mad at Leanne. It’s not offensive. It’s not trashy. It’s not even particularly annoying. It’s just… underwhelming. A friendly shrug of a show. You won’t hate watching it, but you probably won’t remember it a week later either. And maybe that’s what Netflix wanted: easy, forgettable background noise with a comforting face attached.

Leanne Morgan deserves a platform that takes more risks with her talent. This one feels like the training wheels version. Maybe season two will sharpen the writing, give the cast more meat to work with, and stop being scared of its own emotional core. Until then, Leanne is fine, but in the same way saltine crackers are fine. You’ll eat them. You just won’t crave them.

Final Score- [5.5/10]
Reviewed by - Anjali Sharma
Follow @AnjaliS54769166 on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times