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Friends and Lovers (TV series)

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Friends and Lovers
Title card with text "Friends & Lovers." A card with the text "Paul Sand in" immediately preceded it in the opening credits.
GenreSitcom
Created byJames L. Brooks
Mary Tyler Moore
Allan Burns
Directed byJames Burrows
StarringPaul Sand
Michael Pataki
Penny Marshall
Dick Wesson
Steve Landesberg
Craig Richard Nelson
Jack Gilford
Jan Miner[citation needed]
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes15 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producersJames L. Brooks
Allan Burns
Mary Tyler Moore
James Burrows
ProducerPaul Sand
Running time30 minutes
Production companyMTM Enterprises
Original release
NetworkCBS
ReleaseSeptember 14, 1974 (1974-09-14) –
January 4, 1975 (1975-01-04)

Friends and Lovers (also known as Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers) is an American sitcom starring Paul Sand, which centers on a musician in Boston, Massachusetts, and his relationships. It was Sand's only starring role in a television series. The show aired from September 14, 1974, to January 4, 1975.[1][2]

Cast

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Synopsis

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Robert Dreyfuss is a young bachelor and double-bass player who returns to Boston after living in Denver, Colorado, for three years and wins a job playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is a romantic who falls in love easily with the women he meets but has little luck with them because he is shy, passive, dour-faced, and tends to say the wrong things at the wrong time. In sharp contrast, his older brother Charlie is aggressive, loud, physically fit, and athletic. Charlie is protective of Robert, while Charlie's affection-starved wife Janice constantly mocks Robert for his romantic failures.

Robert often gets caught in the middle of the arguments to which Charlie and Janice are prone. Charlie and Janice have a three-year-old son named Brendan, who is mentioned in the first episode, but Brendan never appears in the show and is never discussed in any other episode. Ben and Marge are Robert and Charlie's parents.[1][2][3] In the orchestra, Robert makes friends with an Austrian violinist, Fred Meyerbach, who has a strained relationship with his father. They must deal with the young, sarcastic, and overweight conductor, Mason Woodruff, and the antagonistic orchestra manager, Jack Riordan.[1][2][3]

Production

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Paul Sand was a rising star – he had won a Tony Award on Broadway and received good reviews for his appearances on The Carol Burnett Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show – when MTM Enterprises decided to give him his situation comedy in 1974. In order to provide the show with the maximum possible exposure to new viewers, CBS aired Friends and Lovers on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. between two blockbuster hit situation comedies, All in the Family at 8:00 p.m. and The Mary Tyler Moore Show at 9:00 p.m. – arguably the best time slot for a new series in the autumn of 1974.[citation needed] The show also received much publicity, touted as the "sleeper" hit of the fall 1974 season.[citation needed]

James L. Brooks and Allan Burns created and were the executive producers of the show. Writers included Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, Gordon Farr, Lowell Ganz, Steve Gordon, Andrew Johnson, Monica Mcgowan Johnson, Arnold Kane, Allan Leicht, Coleman Mitchell, Phil Mishkin, Geoffrey Neigher, Mary Kay Place, Steve Pritzker, and Bud Wiser. Episode directors were Peter Bonerz, Bob Claver, Tim Kiley, Robert Moore, Alan Rafkin, and Jay Sandrich.[citation needed]

The show was filmed in color before a studio audience.[3]

Episodes

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No.TitleOriginal air date
1"Getting to First Bass"September 14, 1974 (1974-09-14)
Robert returns to Boston from Denver, auditions for the orchestra, lands a job with it, meets Fred, reconnects with his ex-girlfriend, and falls for an untalented new student. Henry Winkler guest-stars as an egotistical cellist;[1][3] Bo Hopkins and Lynne Lipton also guest-star.
2"The Big Fight"September 21, 1974 (1974-09-21)
Robert shushes a muscled loudmouth and gets egged into a fight with him. Max Gail guest-stars.
3"Love Thy Neighbor"September 28, 1974 (1974-09-28)
Robert wants romance with a neighbor who broke up with her husband.
4"Fiddler in the House"October 5, 1974 (1974-10-05)
Robert's life is disrupted when Fred's father, a violin virtuoso who is affable but feels superior to those around him, comes to visit.[citation needed] Teri Garr and Leon Askin guest-star.[citation needed]
5"The Cinderella Story"October 12, 1974 (1974-10-12)
Robert falls for a ballerina dancing the part of Cinderella. Andrea Marcovicci guest-stars.[citation needed]
6"Ben and Marge Are Back"October 19, 1974 (1974-10-19)
Robert and Charlie's parents Ben and Marge return from Arizona and reveal that they have lost all of their money and will be staying in Boston.[citation needed]
7"Moran's the Man"October 26, 1974 (1974-10-26)
A friend invites Robert to date the same woman he has been dating, creating a romantic triangle.[citation needed] Robert Klein, Mariette Hartley, and Pamela Bellwood guest-star.[citation needed]
8"A Date with Robert"November 2, 1974 (1974-11-02)
Attempting to find a classy date to take to an important dinner, Robert can do no better than a woman who works as a part-time bus driver.[citation needed] Beverly Sanders and Dena Dietrich guest-star.[citation needed]
9"Dreyfuss and Dreyfuss, Associates"9 November 1974 (1974-11-09)
Charlie designs a gas station and enters an architectural competition. Gordon Jump guest stars.[4][better source needed]
10"Smart Move"16 November 1974 (1974-11-16)
Robert feels that everyone around him is pressuring him to get married and buy a house.[citation needed] Sharon Spelman guest-stars.[4]
11"Maid in the Snow"23 November 1974 (1974-11-23)
Janice plans a romantic Thanksgiving holiday with Charlie at a ski resort, but Charlie ruins it by inviting Robert, Fred, and Fred's girlfriend Trudy – then Robert comes down with a cold and hurts his back and Janice must care for him in the cabin while the others are out skiing.[3] Karen Morrow guest-stars.[citation needed]
12"All's Well That Ends"30 November 1974 (1974-11-30)
Robert plays coach in a romance between a baseball player and a stewardess.
13"Just the Ticket"7 December 1974 (1974-12-07)
Robert gets his father Ben a job at the orchestra's ticket office.
14"The Groupie"14 December 1974 (1974-12-14)
A determined 14-year-old flutist announces to Robert that she is his groupie and pursues him both at work and at home.[citation needed] Susan Neher and Robin Strasser guest-star.[citation needed]
15"From Russia with Lust"4 January 1975 (1975-01-04)
A girl-crazy Soviet pianist moves in with Robert.

Cancellation

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Some critics expressed disappointment in Friends and Lovers – the Boston Herald American's Anthony La Camera called it "a downright disappointment", and the Boston Globe's Percy Shain said it was "mundane and average, with few laughs"[citation needed] – but others gave it more favorable reviews. The premiere episode, which aired on September 14, 1974, was the 14th-most-watched show of the week, and during its run, the show had good ratings – for example, a 36 share in early October 1974 – and was the 25th most-viewed television show of the season. However, its ratings paled in comparison to those of the shows before and after it; it lost viewers from All in the Family, which had a 51 share in early October 1974, and network executives believed that it did not provide a good lead-in audience for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, viewership of which fell from previous seasons to a 39 share by early October 1974.[citation needed] Especially given the high hopes the network had had for the show, it was considered a ratings disappointment for its highly advantageous time slot and, in fact, one of the bigger disappointments of the fall 1974 season.

CBS cancelled the show after only 15 episodes, the last of which was broadcast on January 4, 1975. Along with The Texas Wheelers (which ABC yanked from its schedule after just four episodes), Friends and Lovers was one of the first two MTM Enterprises shows ever to be cancelled.

In January 1975, two weeks after it last aired, Friends and Lovers was replaced in its time slot by a new show, The Jeffersons. A better fit for CBS's Saturday evening line-up, with an average Nielsen rating of 27.6 in its first season compared to the 20.7 average for Friends and Lovers,[citation needed] The Jeffersons was a major hit which aired in first-run production for the next ten years.[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d McNeil, Alex, Total Television: The Comprehensive Guide to Programming From 1948 to the Present, New York: Penguin Books, 1996, pp. 305–306.
  2. ^ a b c d Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime-Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946–Present, Sixth Edition, New York: Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN 0-345-39736-3, p. 804.
  3. ^ a b c d e Leszczak, Bob, Single Season Sitcoms, 1948–1979, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Publishers, Inc., 2012. ISBN 978-0-7864-6812-6.
  4. ^ a b "Platotv.tv". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-04-26. platotv.com Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers
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