Comedy
A Different World (2026)
Netflix’s ‘A Different World’ reboot gets some points for diversity and sweet themes, but the sentimentality of college years includes partying and sensuality.
When the Hollingsworth kids played cops and robbers, it must’ve been boring. Because, in a family like theirs, who was going to play the robber?
Dad Mike has been a Secret Service agent for decades now. Mom Jane is a U.S. Marshall. And now that the three Hollingsworth children are all grown up, they’ve followed in those same family footsteps.
Mike Junior—known to most everyone but his father as Micah—is a Secret Service agent, just like Pops. Clare is now an FBI agent. And the baby of the family, young Russell Hollingsworth, just got a job in the Department of Justice.
“What your dinner conversations must be like,” Russell’s new boss exclaims.
“We’d have to have dinner together to know,” Russell says.
Turns out, careers in law enforcement are just about the only thing that the Hollingsworth family shares. Mike and Jane are, in Micah’s words, “separated in perpetuity,” their split so complete that Jane’s boyfriend is moving in. (Never mind that Mike and Jane are still sleeping together—and keeping the fact a secret from their progeny. Does that mean that Jane’s cheating on the man she’s cheating on Mike with? It gets confusing.)
Meanwhile, Mike—who is Micah’s supervisor as well as his father—comes down on Micah for being unprofessional. Micah is, in fact, secretly sleeping with the president’s daughter (the woman he’s supposed to be protecting), and he doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that. Mike also interferes in Russell’s career, trying to wheedle out special favors from Russell at the DOJ. And then there’s Jane and Clare, metaphorically circling each other like a pair of boxers, taking jabs when the opportunity presents itself.
But there’s nothing like a crisis to bring a family together.
Clare’s boyfriend, Logan, gets stabbed in the Hollingsworth family home. Nia Wallace—another law enforcement official, this one from the Department of Homeland Security—believes that the target wasn’t Logan at all, but a Hollingsworth.
Which one? Who knows? But Nia is determined to find out, and she wants Hollingsworth help to do it.
But perhaps the Hollingsworths aren’t interested in helping. Jane found a telltale origami figure at the scene of the stabbing—a figure she knows far too well. Seems the attacker may be closer to the family than Nia might expect. Much closer.
In a television landscape littered with profanity and nudity, this NBC show feels, curiously, like a breath of fresh telegenic air.
Part crime procedural, part ongoing mystery, Line of Fire gives viewers a likable enough cast of characters—even if the characters don’t like each other that much. They’re all good at their jobs, too (Micah’s tryst with the president’s daughter notwithstanding), which means that many a crime will be solved in a scant hour-long episode.
Moreover, the show runs comparatively clean. While we see and hear plenty about intimate, out-of-marriage romances, we don’t see any explicit nudity or tawdry, turn-away sex scenes. Language concerns are relatively mild, too—filled with the sorts of words you might get away with in even a PG-rated film.
But the show can be violent, as most crime procedurals are. People are shot, stabbed and otherwise brutalized. Characters get injured and sometimes die. And the good guys in this story—the Hollingsworths themselves—often lie to and mislead each other. Sometimes it’s theoretically to protect others, but often it’s to save their own skins.
Line of Fire is a mixed bag, clearly. It’s engaging, sometimes clever, and you could certainly do a lot worse these days. But it comes with a few pesky issues for perhaps not a huge narrative payoff.
No one in the Hollingsworth family would ever play the robber; the show itself might do so. And this thief is after your time.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Clare has largely hidden her boyfriend, Logan, from her family for the last six months. But now, looking for a professional favor from her mother, she agrees to bring him to a family dinner. The results are predictably unpredictable. A handful of secrets spill across the dinner table, including the fact that Mike and Jane had another child—one who they say died five years ago. Elsewhere, Clare and Jane investigate a double homicide, Micah secretly canoodles with the woman he’s supposed to be safeguarding, and Russell debates whether to share secret Department of Justice information with his dad.
The episode opens with that double homicide: A deputy U.S. marshal and a man who we learned is an accountant for a Mexican cartel are both shot and killed by an assassin. We see blood and watch as the deputy gasps her last breaths. We later see their bloodied corpses in the woods. Someone gets stabbed in the gut. There’s quite a bit of blood, but we don’t know whether the victim dies or not. The Hollingsworths are told that someone is assassinating high-level law enforcement officials—and that someone in their family is likely on the assassin’s hit list. We hear about a past assassination attempt of the U.S. president: One suspect was apparently killed by the Secret Service, but Mike wants to investigate another.
Clare wakes up beside Logan, who lies shirtless and sleeping in bed, and kisses him lightly. They’re not living together, but Logan plans to ask Clare to move in with him. Micah and his secret girlfriend make out, with the dialogue suggesting they’re prepping to take a roll in the hay. The next time we see them, Micah is shirtless and getting dressed. (We see photos of the couple and another woman on a boat, all dressed in revealing swimwear.) Jane tells a coworker that she spent the night with her boyfriend. (We learn later that she was actually with her husband—which, in the context of the show, is apparently scandalous and worthy of keeping secret.) Couples kiss.
Jane and Mike keep secrets from their children and from law enforcement. Micah discovers what he believes to be a camera in the apartment where he and his secret girlfriend had sex. Because he’d be fired if anyone found out about their relationship, Micah bends and breaks rules to track down the video (and, of course, he hides the whole thing from Mike). Jane says that many people think that their family is doing the “Lord’s work,” saying it somewhat facetiously. We learn that Mike was married before he and Jane got hitched. The three Hollingsworth siblings leave a fractious family dinner and decide to get drunk together. (Clare and Russell insult the cheap alcohol that Micah buys them.)
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Netflix’s ‘A Different World’ reboot gets some points for diversity and sweet themes, but the sentimentality of college years includes partying and sensuality.
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