Daddy’s Divas follows the day-to-day misadventures of Michael Hill (David Tittone, who also wrote, produced and directed the series), an overwhelmed widower and father to three young girls just trying to make it through his hectic life.
The youngest child is a baby, and Michael’s eldest daughters, Brooklyn (Kaitlyn Klinginsmith) and Jocelyn (Madelyn Klinginsmith), are precocious, trouble-making elementary schoolers who have dreams of being YouTube sensations — despite not having more than 10 followers between the two of them. Michael’s sister, Tiffany (Christie Courville), is a pageant queen with a husband, Bradley (Jeffrey Staab), who just wants to be a good dad himself. Without his wife around, Michael relies heavily on his mother, Carol (Dawn Linneman), a fitness obsessive who has developed a new look in her older years. Carol happens to be dating James (Sonny Gaitan), the little girls’ principal, which complicates things given their poor in-class behavior. It’s a messy, messy life, but Michael tries to make the most of it.
The first 10 episodes of the series — produced as a season with clear intentions for more — definitely feel like a homemade sitcom. Tittone cast his own family members in some roles and friends in others. The sets are usually just everyday rooms, dressed to look like new spaces for the characters. Don’t mistake that description for negative criticism: Daddy’s Divas works for what it’s designed to be — an indie sitcom with a family-friendly bent. The jokes, which range from carefully built character gags to wacky non sequiturs, avoid taking potshots at people or diving into unsavory subject matter. Some are even pretty funny. If anything could be said about the style of humor, the best jokes are actually the ones that lean into the dad-humor core of Daddy’s Divas — silly puns, goofy adults and just a good-natured approach.
Of course, I am myself a dad, and I’m probably willing to give Tittone credit for trying to make a sitcom that brims with genuine feelings about being a father, unable to quite keep up with the changing world around him. It’s an impressively written production. In keeping with the classic sitcom format, these 10 chapters are primarily episodic, but some character arcs continue between episodes. I enjoyed the relationship that builds between Michael and his daughters’ teacher, Carly (Kim Palmer), which is handled in a mature way that allows for chemistry between the two without forgetting Michael’s dead wife.
The entire series is available on Amazon Prime Video. It’s hard to say whether an independently produced sitcom is something most viewers would be inclined to take a gander at, given the amount of entertainment competition available on Prime alone. The most I can tell you is that it’s worth sticking through the first episode; by the end of the second or third chapter, the raw enthusiasm of everyone involved starts to carry the day, and it even has a few really great gags. This is a simple sitcom with a lot of heart that grows throughout its season.