'Murphy Brown' ready to venture once more into the political fray

"It's me every time," Jake McDorman says with an exasperated head shake. He's bounded into the "Murphy Brown" townhouse several times during a taping in front of a live studio audience and forgotten to turn on the lights.

McDorman, who plays the title character's son, Avery, can be forgiven a few missteps - it's only the third episode he's recorded in the townhouse. Star Candice Bergen spent a decade cracking jokes and having heart-to-hearts in a faux Georgetown abode just like this one, which was built to mimic the original.

After McDorman's goofs, Bergen leans in for a hug. It's an embrace that says: We've all been there. And we're so glad you're here.

The studio audience is glad they're here, too, watching the "FYI" gang reunited 20 years after "Murphy Brown" went off the air. In the reboot, which premieres Sept. 27 on CBS, Bergen's character is anchoring "Murphy in the Morning," which goes head to head with Avery's show on a competing network.

In the episode being filmed, Murphy and her fellow cast members debate whether to interview a Steve Bannon-like character. Yes, the show will again get topical. In 1992, a disheveled Murphy and her buddy Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) watched Vice President Dan Quayle's speech on TV calling out the fictional newscaster as glamorizing single mothers and "mocking the importance of fathers" by having a child out of wedlock. New-mother Murphy asked Frank, "Do I look glamorous to you?!" She most certainly did not.

"Murphy Brown" was ahead of its time for its sexual politics. But also rare was the way a sitcom became embroiled in a real-world political debate - and addressed it through its fictional characters. Murphy and Quayle's faceoff made the front page of The New York Times.

Today, the show is returning to a world in which the boundary between pop culture and politics has collapsed. Never has an occupant of the White House been so public with his strong opinions about entertainment. And the "Murphy Brown" reboot is capitalizing on this: The premiere begins on Election Day 2016, and there are episodes addressing white nationalists, Dreamers, the #MeToo movement and the 2018 midterm elections.

The show's creator, Diane English, isn't just wondering whether President Donald Trump will watch, she's betting on it - the writer's room has a pool going. "We think it might be difficult for him not to say something, and we welcome it," she says during an interview on the "Murphy" set in Astoria, Queens. "It's good for us."

When asked whether Trump supporters will get anything out of the new version, English responds quickly: "No. They'll just get mad." English's comment reflects not just the polarization of the country's politics, but of entertainment, as well.

Still, English says, "We're not really into Trump-bashing for the sake of it, because it gets tedious, and everybody else is doing it on a daily basis."

Laura Krafft, one of the show's co-producers and writers, notes that, for a show like "Murphy," she aims for humor that mocks the bigger picture rather than day-to-day minutiae. "You want something that can stand the test of time a little bit," says Krafft.

"Murphy Brown" was timely in a way that doesn't feel dated now. Murphy had very stern words for a colleague who sexual harassed her colleague Corky Sherwood (played by Faith Ford). The show portrayed male and female co-workers who treated each other not as potential paramours, but as friends with the closeness of family. When Murphy gave birth to Avery, her colleagues were in the hospital with her. Later, when Murphy's breast cancer was diagnosed, Frank offered to quit his job to take care of her. (No, they never slept together. And she would take care of herself, thankyouverymuch, although she did let him tag along to a doctor's appointment.)

The reboot picks up some of these threads. It also reflects how much journalism has changed since "Murphy" was last on the air. In the show's first incarnation, Murphy Brown idolized Walter Cronkite. In today's version, she's more an MSNBC-style host than a down-the-middle network news anchor, positioning the show as resistance entertainment.

In a joint interview with English, Bergen sits on the couch in that Georgetown townhouse, where not much has changed. The same artwork hangs on the wall. But the bookshelves have been updated: Doris Kearns Goodwin's historical biographies now sit near Rachel Maddow's critique of U.S. military power.

Plus, there are lacrosse sticks by the front door. Yes, like a good millennial, Avery Brown has moved back in with his mother. "For a woman who's never excelled at relationships, just seeing her at home with anyone is a big deal," Bergen says.

In the two decades since the original show, Bergen says, she's often approached by women who say Murphy Brown inspired them to be ambitious in their careers. And for those who watched with their mothers who struggled with cancer, the sitcom could be "very emotional," she says.

Just seeing the set for the first time was so powerful for Bergen and Faith Ford (who reprises her role as Corky Sherwood) that they burst into tears. "We're all so close, we just couldn't believe it," Bergen says of working again with her old cast members. "We just kept looking at each other and saying, 'I'm so glad to be working with you again.'" At the taping, the audience especially lighted up to see 82-year-old Charles Kimbrough's Jim Dial (who returns for three episodes) speak up against the dangers of false equivalency when his colleagues face a journalistic dilemma.

In Murphy Brown's original run, freedom of the press was often threatened, in ways that have felt eerily resonant since. Murphy was subpoenaed and asked to reveal her sources on an explosive story, but she wouldn't budge, even spending some time in jail because of it. In the show's second episode, which aired in 1988, the "FYI" team dealt with a live shooter, which was a tragic reality for a newspaper in Annapolis this summer.

In a time when the president calls the press the "enemy of the people," Ford hopes the reboot will humanize reporters. "We're getting to have the emotions that they can't really have" in public, she says.

Regalbuto sees the reboot as the chance for these fictional characters to say the things "that people want to say and haven't been."

Murphy Brown, especially, was never one to stand by and stay quiet. "She's somebody who's never going to be comfortable in retirement or being irrelevant," English says. "What's great is that this character is not a spring chicken anymore and to still be in that game and be taken really seriously is, I hope, inspirational to women our age that you don't wrap it up. There's still a lot left to be done."