News

Network: ABC Family

Episodes: 104 (half-hour)

Seasons: Four

TV show dates: August 17, 2010 -- August 5, 2015

Series status: Cancelled

Performers include: Melissa Joan Hart, Joey Lawrence, Taylor Spreitler, and Nick Robinson.

TV show description:      

Following the success of the My Fake Fiance TV movie, Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence star in this series about a local politician who hires a former commodities trader to be the family's new male nanny.

Mel Burke (Melissa Joan Hart) was born and bred into a political family. After a wild childhood, she's now grown up and forging her own path through city politics. Her sister lands in prison, leaving her brother-in-law to go on the run after his company is rocked by a scandal. Mel takes in her sister's two teenaged kids, Lennox and Ryder,...

Exclusive: ABC Family has put in development Maid In Miami, a half-hour comedy project from Rita Rocks creators Stan Zimmerman and James Berg and Glee‘s executive music producer Adam Anders. Singer-actress Christina Millian is in negotiations to star in the project, about a young maid who is an aspiring singer. Zimmerman and Berg are writing the script and will executive produce with Anders, often dubbed Glee‘s music man. Millian has an existing relationship with ABC Family — she has starred in two holiday original movies for the channel, Snowglobe and last year’s Christmas Cupid. ABC Family has a successful track record segueing the stars of ABC Family movies to series — it recently did it with Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence, who took on their own comedy series, Melissa & Joey, after topping the 2009 ABC Family film My Fake Fiance. Berg and Zimmerman, whose credits also include Gilmore Girls and Roseanne,...

When '90s sitcom stars Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence teamed up for the ABC Family movie My Fake Fiance, they never expected that fans would fall so in love with the duo that it would prompt the network to create a series just for them. Why are the stars of Melissa & Joey so popular? "We've got nostalgia behind us. We've each had two successful series and the audience, more so than Hollywood, likes to see a reincarnation," Hart tells TVGuide.com.

Melissa Joan Hart returns to Dancing on Melissa & Joey

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Joey Lawrence Talks Melissa & JoeyJoey Lawrence blossomed into a star on the hit series Blossom and now the 34-year-old actor is starring in the new ABC Family series Melissa & Joey with Melissa Joan Hart, which currently airs on Tuesday nights at 8 Pm Et. Joey Lawrence recently held a conference call to discuss the series and you can read what he had to say below:

You and Melissa have known each other for quite some time. How do you guys maintain chemistry onscreen? You're friends in real life, but you have to have a bit of spark onscreen, too.

Joey Lawrence: Right. Well, you know that's why we get paid the big bucks there. [Laughs] It's just all part of the job when you have to play certain characters. There are areas that you have to tap into and you've got to pull from personal things in your life and try...

The former Sabrina, the Teenage Witch star returns with an all-new ABC Family series

Melissa Joan Hart was thrust into the national spotlight with her hit 1990s series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. She returns to the small screen with the brand new ABC Family series Melissa & Joey, which she stars in alongside Joey Lawrence, with new episodes airing on Tuesday nights at 8 Pm Et. Melissa Joan Hart recently held a conference call to discuss the new series and here's what she had to say:

You and Joey have been friends for quite some time and you appeared onscreen before. How do you guys continue to maintain the chemistry between each other?

Melissa Joan Hart:Joey and I have a great relationship. We've known each other, like you said, for a really long time and we grew up in a very similar sort of environment, working since we were four years old,...

If you caught either episode of Melissa & Joey last night, you may have thought that ABC Family was running reruns of failed sitcoms during it’s 8 o’clock hour. Melissa & Joey is by no means offensive, and I wouldn’t even call it awful — it’s fine to have on in the background, or on mute — but it’s not good, and is a really strange programming choice for a cable network in 2010. Aside from a few stray jokes about texting and a brief shot of what looked like a Twitter account, it’s easy to think this show was made 10 years ago,...

ABC Family is introducing a new sitcom, "Melissa & Joey" to their line-up -- a "Who's the Boss?" for 2010.

It centers around a city councilwoman named Mel Burke (Melissa Joan Hart), who becomes the legal guardian of her teenage niece and nephew in the wake of her sister and brother-in-law going to jail for white collar crimes.

Joe Longo (Joey Lawrence) is one of the victims of said crimes. He loses his job, condo and car and instead ends up as Mel's nanny. Wacky hijinks ensue. Or at least that's what the laugh track would have us think.

The main points of our amusement in the first episode come in the form of Mel's interactions with her colleague Rhonda (Elizabeth Ho) -- they have a dueling phone conversations scene that is particularly delightful -- but overall the laughs are few and far between.

What the show is lacking is a sexual tension between the leads,...

Following the success of ABC Family‘s original movie My Fake Fiance (nope, totally serious), the dripping with nostalgic cuteness couple of Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence are back together for a new series. Melissa & Joey finds the pair, after a rather weak excuse for coming together, in a Who’s the Boss? arrangement, complete with more or less appropriately-aged kids, except that they aren’t Melissa’s… or Joey’s.

I’ll let you check out the official synopsis.

In the new ABC Family original comedy series, “Melissa & Joey,” Melissa Joan Hart portrays Mel, the grown-up former wild child of a political family who is now a local politician herself. When her sister ends up in prison and brother-in-law flees after a scandal hits, Mel must take responsibility for her teenaged niece Lennox and adolescent nephew Ryder.

Spread too thin to manage by herself, help comes in the...

By Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smit

Hollywoodnews.com:Joey Lawrence reports that with a nine-week-old and a four-year-old at home, “I’m lucky if I get four hours of sleep a night” – but he’s not complaining. “Life is great, man,” he wants us to know.

Joey and wife Chandie went through a harrowing experience with their baby daughter Liberty Grace – “Libby” – who had to be delivered prematurely and kept in intensive care for five days due to complications with Chandie’s Rh disease, a blood condition of which they were unaware until she was already pregnant.

Now he’s happy to have moved on to the normal stresses of parenthood, as Libby and big sister Charli are just fine. “It’s weird being a dad. It’s really amazing. It feels like an out-of-body experience at times,” the one-time teen heartthrob says with a smile.

Joey is also...

This week sees the release of several new movies and TV shows, some for the first time ever on Blu-ray. Of the ones coming out this week, we’re excited for a few of them in particular.

These esteemed examples of entertainment include Crazy Heart, Batman, Batman Returns, Fist of Legend, the first season of Merlin, the DVD release of the classic Battleship Potemkin and an obscure direct t0 dvd movie called Crimes of Fashion featuring Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco and Megan Fox. And, of course, the non-3D Blu-ray release of Avatar hits stores this Thursday (pictured above with Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana).

Movies

Avatar ~ Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver (Blu-ray and DVD)

Battleship Potemkin ~ Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky (Blu-ray)

Batman ~ Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson (Blu-ray)

Batman Returns ~ Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken (Blu-ray)

Cheech & Chong’s Hey Watch This! ~ Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong...

Fallen U.S. TV regulars Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence are heading back to the small screen as the stars of a new sitcom.

The Sabrina The Teenage Witch actress and Blossom's Lawrence will team up for new show, Melissa & Joey, which has already been declared a hit by ABC network bosses before its debut later this year.

The two stars share much in common, apart from the fact they both starred in TV hits - they competed on Dancing with the Stars and appeared as a TV couple in record-breaking 2009 television movie My Fake Fiance.

The new sitcom, which revolves around a woman (Hart) who hires a male nanny (Lawrence) to help her take care of her incarcerated sister's kids, was written for the pair.

ABC Family continued its series pickup streak this week with a 10-episode order to comedy pilot "Melissa & Joey."

It follows the 10-episode pickups of new dramas "Pretty Little Liars" and "Huge" earlier in the week.

The multicamera "Melissa & Joey," starring and executive produced by Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence, centers on a political dynasty wild child-turned-politician (Hart) who takes in her teenage niece and pre-adolescent nephew when her sister goes to prison and her brother-in-law flees. She turns for help to a guy (Lawrence), who, desperate for a job, moves in and becomes the family's "manny."

David Kendall and Bob Young wrote the project and are also executive produing, as is Paula Hart.

"Melissa & Joey," which reunites Hart and Lawrence who toplined ABC Family's hit original movie "My Fake Fiance," is slated to premiere in 2010.

"Melissa & Joey" was one of two comedy pilots ordered by ABC Family last fall.

In this series, we will study the 16 couples on Dancing with the Stars season 9 and predict who has the best chances for success, and who is doomed to humiliation.

Who is Melissa Joan Hart?

Melissa Joan Hart is now 33, but most people know her as the pre-teen Clarissa on the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All and as the witty and adorable Sabrina on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Hart got on the business quite early. At age 4, he was doing television commercials and appearances. Her screen credits include the film Drive Me Crazy, where she co-starred with would-be Entourage main man Adrian Grenier, and the ABC Family original movie Holiday in the Handcuffs, opposite Dwts alum Mario Lopez. Her other credits include another ABC Family original movie My Fake Fiance. The mother of two also has her own production company called Hartbreak Films.

ABC Family is teaming with Hilary Duff for "The Business of Falling in Love," a romantic comedy based on the book "Diary of a Working Girl," by Daniella Brodsky.

Gil Junger has signed to direct the two-hour original movie, which will star Duff as a fashion reporter who goes undercover in the business world in the hopes of finding love while writing an article about dating men in suits.

In addition to starring, Duff will executive produce the film alongside Frank Von Zerneck, Robert Sertner, Ira Pincus and Jessica Horowitz.

The book was adapted for the small screen by writer Mike Horowitz ("Burn Notice").

Junger is a familiar face at ABC Family. The director of the 1999 movie "10 Things I Hate About You" also is helming the ABC Family series of the same name that launched this summer.

Additionally, he directed one of ABC Family's highest-rated original movies this year,...

Actress Melissa Joan Hart has asked fans to pray for her ailing mum in a heartfelt blog post.

The former Sabrina, The Teenage Witch star's mother Paula underwent an eight-hour operation to remove a brain tumour earlier last month and the star has taken to her MySpace.com blog to ask fans for their help.

She writes, "All of my 6 siblings and I gathered at my house and the hospital for the entire week to be strong for each other. She is out of the woods and on her way to recovery, luckily she is a good healer and has 7 children to lend a hand in times like these.

"Prayer is a big part of my life and it was very crucial last week for my mommy. I ask that you keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she fights her way to a full and wonderful recovery."

Hart's mother was the executive producer on the actress' hit show. She also produced her daughter's recent U.S. TV movie My Fake Fiance, according to People.com.