BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — From “I Love Lucy” through “Roseanne” and “Seinfeld,” the sitcom has found inspiration in the lives of its creators.But few sitcoms have been more autobiographical than “The Goldbergs,” which draws on the childhood and high-decibel domestic life of Adam Goldberg, who grew up to be an actor, director and producer. But before that, as this show reveals amusingly, he was a pint-sized videographer, capturing the hijinks of his home life as a preteen with his family’s shoebox-sized VHS camcorder.
This was the 1980s, a simpler time when “there were no parenting blogs or peanut allergies,” as the show notes wistfully, “just a whole lot of crazy” — at least within the Goldberg household. Now the archive of tapes young Adam recorded (along with vivid memories he retains as an adult) propel “The Goldbergs,” a full-throated, funny and oddly charming comedy.
“This is how you communicate: You scream and yell and a minute later everything is fine,” says Goldberg, summing up his family. “Then you move on.”
And since there are more than 100 tapes reaching all the way into Goldberg’s college years, there’ll be no shortage of source material if the show catches on.
Goldberg says he nursed the idea for the show for years. “For a long time I just wasn’t ready to write something so personal about my family,” he says. “Then I had kids of my own, and I was able to look at how my parents raised me with some perspective.”
Goldberg, now 42 and the father of a 5-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl, is ably portrayed as a precocious, camera-wielding 11-year-old by newcomer Sean Giambrone. Adam’s overbearing mother, Beverly, and gruff, excitable dad, Murray, are played by Wendi McLendon-Covey (“Bridesmaids”) and Jeff Garlin (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”).
Troy Gentile (“Good Luck Chuck”) plays volatile middle child Barry, and Hayley Orrantia (“The X Factor”) is 17-year-old Erica (the lone invention; the real-life Goldberg brood consists of three brothers).
George Segal (“Just Shoot Me”) is 80-year-old grandfather Pops Solomon, a Trans-Am-driving rascal with a Don Juan complex.
Viewers who wonder just how true-to-life the series is will have their doubts eased at the end of the first episode, when snippets from the show unfold alongside clips from Goldberg’s tapes, which mirror the scripted words and actions.
Goldberg says it was a two-minute sampler of the tapes that helped sell the show to the network, as well as selling certain of the actors on coming aboard.
Wendi McLendon-Covey recalls how she saw a vintage Beverly Goldberg ranting at one of the kids, f-words flying, before abruptly cooing, “Oh, that’s a nice sweater!”
“The way she turned things on a dime seemed insane,” McLendon-Covey laughs.
Goldberg says McLendon-Covey was his only choice to play his mom, and he marvels at how George Segal is a dead ringer for his grandfather.
“Casting me was really fun,” adds Goldberg gleefully, “and I think Sean has the perfect balance. What we wanted is a devilish little kid: someone you love but who was also a little sneak.
“My brothers were 7 and 9 years older, and I was overlooked and ignored,” Goldberg says, explaining his early foray into cinema verite in his hometown of Jenkinstown, Pa. “So I was an observer anyway. But I was obsessed with movies, and when we got this video camera it blended into everything I loved.”
The real-life Goldbergs (who, other than Adam’s deceased father and grandfather, are alive and well) haven’t seen the show, nor have they met their TV doppelgangers.
“It must be difficult for them,” says Garlin — “or it WILL be, if the show’s a success.”
But he says he feels no pressure to win the Goldbergs’ approval, “and if the family visited the set and they were starting to freak me out, I’d just walk away.”
Goldberg says the family members were initially “wary and nervous” at the notion of a sitcom about them, “but when they took another look at those old tapes, they were very touched: We yelled a lot, but at the end of the day we really loved each other.
