Grace Valentine (Jaime Murray) lives in the Mt. Olympus neighborhood of Los Angeles with her three adult children, Danny (Kristoffer Polaha), Leo (Robert Baker), and Phoebe (Autumn Reeser). Their family business, Valentine Inc., seems to be widely diversified -- we see business cards for plumbing, construction, electricians, and so on. But the real business of the Valentine family is love, because the Valentine family are Greek gods. Grace, Danny, and Leo are actually Aphrodite, Eros, and Hercules; Phoebe reads the Oracle of Delphi in the family's backyard pool.
When two soulmates find themselves on the verge of separation, the Fates may bring the Valentines into their lives, and the family works to bring the couple back together. It seems, though, that the fates are bringing them fewer and fewer clients; in a world where romantic love grows less relevant every day, the Valentines are at risk of becoming obsolete, and thus becoming mortal.
Grace's idea to help the family stay in business is to bring in a mortal to assist them, someone who understands love in the modern era better than they do. She turns to romance novelist Kate Providence (Christine Lakin); the scene in which Grace convinces Kate that she really is a god is one of the funniest in the first episode.
Valentine surprised me; I didn't have particularly high expectations, and the show turned out to be a light, breezy charmer. Polaha stands out as Danny/Eros, whose vanity tends to get in the way of his good intentions, and Baker is effective as Leo/Hercules, who is often forced to act as Danny's conscience, a giant lummox of a Jiminy Cricket. Murray has the rare combination of elegant grace and crisp comic timing, and Reeser is appealing as the ditz of the family.
The show's lighter than air, and maintaining that tone can be difficult. It's easy to imagine that the formula of saving a romance every week could get dull, and the show's entertainment value will depend greatly on its guest actors (the female half of the couple in the first episode, for instance, didn't quite pull off the big reconciliation scene at the end). But the cast is immensely appealing, and at least in the first episode, the writing is lively and funny. In what has been a remarkably weak season of new shows, this is one of the few bright spots.
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