Steven Levitan makes busy ensemble comedies feel welcoming without giving up on sharp jokes. We rate the early Modern Family highly, but its later seasons show his weakness for letting familiar routines outlast their usefulness.
Fi1m perspective
In Modern Family (2009), a character can address the camera while the episode keeps three households in play. Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd use that arrangement to let the family members explain themselves, then tie their stories together within a half-hour. At its best, the writing makes this crowded structure easy to follow and gives the actors plenty to do. His strengths are clearest here, where broad comedy has distinct characters and close family ties to keep it in check.
His earlier writing credits include The Larry Sanders Show (1992) and Frasier (1993), two comedies we recommend with little hesitation. The former makes the effort of keeping a needy chat-show host happy painfully funny; the latter depends on precisely written misunderstandings and patient actors. The timing matters as much as the line. We would not hand Levitan sole credit for Garry Shandling’s performance, or for Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce’s timing. On Modern Family, he is also a co-creator and director, so there is more of his work to judge.
The first three seasons make the strongest case for him. We were surprised by how attached we became to the family: moving between the three households lets the programme give each of them attention without exhausting any one story. Ty Burrell’s Phil Dunphy is a particular pleasure, and the cast as a whole is almost without a weak link. Levitan’s habit of drawing on family life helps explain the warmth, while the direct-to-camera passages give those different perspectives space within a busy half-hour. The family feeling works because there are still proper jokes.
Eleven seasons expose the limit of that approach. After the early run, Modern Family mostly repeats its jokes, and the familiarity stops being much of a pleasure. With Reboot (2022), Levitan returned to series creation with a comedy about bringing back a 1990s sitcom. Start with the first three seasons of Modern Family; there is no obligation to make it a long-term arrangement.
Biography
Steven Levitan is an American television writer, producer and director. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a degree in journalism in 1984 and worked as a news reporter and anchor before moving into advertising and then television writing in Hollywood from 1989.
He wrote episodes for series including Wings (1990–1995) and Frasier (1993–2004), for which he received an Emmy Award as co-executive producer in 1996 and a Humanitas Prize for the episode "Breaking the Ice". Levitan created Just Shoot Me! (1997–2003) and co-created Modern Family (2009–2020) with Christopher Lloyd, earning multiple Emmys for the latter. His other credits include The Larry Sanders Show, The Critic and Reboot (2022).
