Too Close for Comfort (TV series)

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Too Close for Comfort was a television series which ran on the ABC network and in syndication from 1980 to 1986. It was modeled after the British series Keep it in the Family.

1 Background
2 Second and Third Seasons
3 The Ted Knight Show
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] Background

The show starred Ted Knight and Nancy Dussault as Henry and Muriel Rush, owners of a duplex in San Francisco. Knight played a cartoonist, who was the author of a comic strip called Cosmic Cow. Their grown daughters, Jackie (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) and Sara (Lydia Cornell), had lived with them in their old residence but moved downstairs when the transvestite named Rafkin died suddenly in the first episode. Despite the daughters' minor push for independence, Henry proved to be a very protective father and meddled in their affairs constantly. Also seen was Sara's friend Monroe Ficus, played by homosexual actorJM J. Bullock. It was the dynamics between Henry and Monroe that would eventually become the core of the show.

[edit] Second and Third Seasons

In the show's second year, Henry's wife Muriel (who on the show as in her 40s) announced she was pregnant. At the beginning of the third year, Muriel would give birth to Andrew - the son that Henry always wanted.

It was also in the second year that Henry's niece, April (Deena Freeman) came to live with the Rush family. April was written out of the show for the third year.

There were many references to Henry's mother-in-law on the show. That role of Iris Martin would eventually be played by Audrey Meadows, who would move in with the Rushes after Andrew's birth.

[edit] The Ted Knight Show

In 1986, a major change happened to the show. Henry quit his job as a cartoonist and became co-owner and editor of a newspaper in Marin County north of San Francisco. Muriel took a job as a photographer for the paper and Monroe went to work there, too. Jackie and Sara were written out of the show. Additionally, the other owner of the paper, Hope Stinson (Pat Carroll) and the Rush's maid, Lisa (Lisa Antille) were added. The show was retitled The Ted Knight Show. This show would be syndicated for one year, until Ted Knight announced that he had cancer. He died August 26, 1986, aged 62.

[edit] Trivia

Ted Knight's character of Henry became famous for wearing sweatshirts of colleges and universities. Eventually fans would send in sweatshirts from universities around the country hoping to get Henry to wear them.

The first two seasons of Too Close for Comfort have been released on Region 1 DVD.

ABC aired reruns of the show in daytime at 11:00 a.m. (EST) from June to September 1983.

In the first episode that featured "Monroe Ficus", it was actually Lydia Cornell (Sara Rush) who first suggested the famous "meatball" catch, where Ted Knight knocks one of Monroe's meatballs loose from the ceiling that had been stuck to it when the spagetti sauce he had been making exploded.