When she goes to read everyone a bedtime story she finds her book is missing. The story follows Julia camping with her forest friends. They are so bright, whimsical, and have beautiful details. Julia’s real-life producer Russ Morash (played by Fran Kranz) receives less attention on Julia than an associate producer named Alice Maran (played by Brittany Bradford), a young Black woman who sees Julia’s potential long before Russ does.I absolutely am obsessed with the illustrations in this book. Other storylines center on Julia’s book editor Judith Jordan (played by Fiona Glascott) and the staff at WGBH, none of whom are prepared for this 6-foot-tall woman with the funny voice to become a major star. She is as devoted to Julia as Paul is, and their mutual affection gives this show much of its appeal. The other Frasier star, Bebe Neuwirth, plays Julia’s next-door neighbor and best friend Avis DeVoto. And when you take a veteran British actress and flank her with two stars of Frasier, the rapport can be, and often is, witty, incisive and, at its best moments, emotionally satisfying. But what characters! Even a cartoon version of Julia Child is better than almost anything else on TV.

Or is it? Actually, no, Julia takes quite a few liberties with the truth and its characters are drawn just to sitcom depth.

The book she’s been toiling over for years, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is published to wide acclaim, and she parlays an author appearance on local station WGBH into a show of her own.

In the opening episode, Paul Child, a career foreign diplomat (played by David Hyde Pierce), is forced into retirement, so he and Julia (played by Sarah Lancashire) settle in Cambridge, Mass., whereupon her career takes off. HBO’s publicity informs us that Julia is a show about the “shifting power dynamic” in a traditional marriage. Julia revolves around an ambitious woman at the dawn of the feminist movement, and it comes to us from Daniel Goldfarb, who was a writer and director on The Marvelous Mrs.

Julia among the stars review