'Red Widow' Gets The Axe
Comedienne's Second TV Show Canceled This Year
Short-Lived Shows: Day By Day - VIDEO
This must be Short-Lived Sitcom week. Yesterday I told you about Married People, and today it's Day By Day.
This was a short-lived show on NBC (ran for 33 episodes in 1988-89). It was about Brian and Kate Harper, a professional couple (Doug Sheehan from Knot's Landing played stockbroker Brian, and Linda Kelsey from Lou Grant played lawyer Kate) who decided to open an in-home day care center. Their teen son Ross was played by C.B. Barnes, who played Greg in the Brady Bunch movies and starred in the Starman TV series and Malcolm and Eddie.
But I'd like to talk to you about the two other females in the cast. Two that went on to much bigger things later in their careers.
Courtney Thorne-Smith, who can currently be seen in According To Jim, played the Harpers' assistant Kristin. She always teased Ross, who was always trying to get into her pants woo her romantically. I developed an incredible crush on Ms. Thorne-Smith when this show debuted. A crush that has matched since only by the likes of Amy Sedaris and Tina Fey.
And who played Eileen Swift, the Harpers' driven, sarcastic, career-oriented friend who didn't do too well with kids? Julia Louis-Dreyfus! This was a couple of years before the Seinfeld pilot was shot. You can see bits of Elaine in the Eileen character (wow, just noticed how similar the names are).
This was truly a funny, pleasant show, well-written and well done all around. I didn't realize that the show was created by Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties, Brooklyn Bridge, many other shows) and Andy Borowitz, who used to write for The Facts of Life and now is a New Yorker writer and TV commentator. He was also in a humor group I used to belong to way back in the dark ages of the web. I had no idea he co-created this.
This is, unfortunately, one of those shows that will probably be lost to time. It will probably not be released on DVD (despite the later successes of Louis-Dreyfus and Thorne-Smith), and you can't even find it on AOL Video or Hulu.
Below is the opening for the show (thank God for YouTubers who put this stuff online). Notice how Elaine-esque Julia Louis-Dreyfus is. WARNING: IF YOU LISTEN TO THE THEME SONG YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF INEXPLICABLY SINGING IT LATER TODAY, PERHAPS WHEN YOU'RE MAKING DINNER OR DOING LAUNDRY. CLICK AT YOUR OWN RISK.
17 Comments