• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 31, 2025

A regional comedian with a growing following was lucky enough to connect with Chuck Lorre and the result is a country comedy with a great deal of love and heart.

What’s a country comedy? I either just made up the category or maybe it’s been around awhile, but in the case of this new sitcom -- “Leanne,” starting Thursday on Netflix -- it signifies a family sitcom with a southern twang and all the earmarks of a traditional comedy series on a legacy network.

The star of “Leanne” is Leanne Morgan, 59, now residing in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is hardly an unknown at this point in her career, although her current tour is titled “Just Getting Started.”

The tour schedule is heavy with southern dates -- Shreveport, Louisiana; Asheville, North Carolina; Athens and Rome, Georgia; Corbin, Kentucky; and North Little Rock, Arkansas, to name a few.

But her fame and ticket sales are spreading to other regions and bigger cities, including Dallas, Philadelphia, Boston and Las Vegas.

She has had a stand-up special on Netflix since 2023 -- “Leanne Morgan: I’m Every Woman.” 

The title reflects the way she positions herself as a wife and mother of a certain age dealing with aspects of everyday life to which other women can relate.

The lengthy title of her 2024 book says it all -- What in The World?! A Southern Woman’s Guide to Laughing at Life’s Unexpected Curveballs and Beautiful Blessings.

In her new Netflix show, “Leanne,” Morgan (above photo, right) stars as a woman dealing with an unexpected curveball when her husband of 33 years (Ryan Stiles) suddenly leaves her for a younger woman. 

Episode One of “Leanne” has her doing a lot of crying and accepting solace from her sassy, worldly-wise sister (Kristen Johnston, above photo, left), whose marital history includes two divorces.

The episode also has Leanne delicately trying to break the news of this sudden separation to her addle-brained daughter and aging parents,

The only other personality in the country comedy space that I can think of right now is Reba McEntire, who once starred in her own first-name sitcom, “Reba” (2001-07, WB and CW), and now stars in the tavern-based sitcom “Happy’s Place” on NBC.

In one of his famous “vanity card” messages that he posts at the conclusion of his TV sitcoms, Chuck Lorre explains at the end of Episode One of “Leanne” that he watched one of her performances (possibly the Netflix special) and felt she was “a step beyond funny” and “entirely original.”

“She had a voice all her own, a voice that could only have been found after years of hard work, trial and error, and perseverance,” wrote the producer of megahit comedies such as “The Big Bang Theory,” “Young Sheldon,” “Two and a Half Men” and others.

He set up a meeting -- not in California, but at her home in Knoxville, “which is where I saw the sources of her genius, a loving family.”

From such chance encounters and serendipitous meetings are successful sitcoms sometimes made.

Like Leanne Morgan herself and her growing fame, there is no reason on earth why her new sitcom won’t draw the same kind of attention. 

“Leanne” starts streaming on Thursday (July 31) on Netflix.