• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 21, 2025

Meet the least relatable family ever seen on a family docuseries on TV.

They are the Baldwins, whose lives have been filmed for television for their new series “The Baldwins” starting Sunday night on TLC.

While previewing the premiere episode provided by TLC this week, I came to the realization that I could better identify with a family of dwarfs than this Baldwin clan of two parents, four boys, three girls, two nannies, four dogs, four cats and two luxe homes.

Dwarf families abound on TLC, and so do families with above-average numbers of children, some with more than seven and some with less.

With seven kids, the Baldwin family, led by Alec Baldwin, 66, and Hilaria Baldwin, 41, falls somewhere in the middle of the pack.

While watching the show, I was reminded of the line attributed to Groucho Marx when he was interviewing a woman contestant on the old “You Bet Your Life” show who told him she and her husband had as many as 19 children (this number is in dispute).

Reacting to this news, Groucho supposedly said: “I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.” (Whether or not he ever actually said this has been debated for years. It has neither been satisfactorily confirmed, nor has it been fully debunked.)

Like Groucho and his famous cigars, Alec and Hilaria Baldwin do indeed seem to be in love. That is how they present themselves and their sprawling family on their show.

It is a loving and rambunctious household as the kids run amok (especially the boys) as if no one ever told them to stop. 

Among many other things, this includes throwing things on the floor whenever they feel like it, which is a problem for dad because, we learn from Hilaria, he is an obsessive-compulsive neatnik who fights a losing battle to keep his households tidy.

Ha, ha, ha, what a crazy family! Kids, dogs, cats -- we’re just like everybody else, insist Alec and Hilaria.

Well, not really. They live nine months of the year in the center of Greenwich Village in a five-bedroom, two-level apartment in a prewar building. With “only” five bedrooms, Alec complains that it is not big enough.

For three months in the summer, they all decamp to Easthampton, Long Island, for their other home, a Hamptons mansion with a pool and horses.

Luckily, the Baldwins own two large luxury automobiles in which to transport their kids, nannies and pets to the east end -- a Land Rover and a Cadillac Escalade.

How much it costs for them to park these behemoths in Manhattan is not disclosed.

There is nothing wrong with being movie-star rich, but the trappings of wealth that the Baldwin family enjoys seem far, far removed and alien from the lifestyles and preferences of the TLC audience who flock to shows such as “7 Little Johnstons,” “Little People, Big World,” “My 600-lb Life” and “Sister Wives.”

It is really something to realize that the lives of little people, women in a plural marriage and the morbidly obese are more relatable than the Baldwins, even if none of us fit into those categories either.

“The Baldwins” will likely draw some voyeuristic sampling in the early going. But at the same time, this family docuseries about an A-list movie star and his wife and kids seems off-brand for TLC.

“The Baldwins” premieres Sunday (February 23) at 10 p.m. Eastern on TLC.