Family (TV series)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. (November 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
| Family | |
|---|---|
| Format | Drama/Family |
| Starring | James Broderick Sada Thompson Gary Frank Kristy McNichol Elayne Heilveil Meredith Baxter Quinn Cummings |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of seasons | 5 |
| No. of episodes | 86 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
Leonard Goldberg Mike Nichols Aaron Spelling |
| Running time | 60 min. |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | ABC |
| Original run | March 9, 1976 – June 25, 1980 |
| External links | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
Family is a television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols. A total of 86 episodes were produced.
Contents |
[edit] Premise
The show featured James Broderick and Sada Thompson as Doug and Kate Lawrence, a happily married middle-class couple living in Pasadena, California. Doug was an independent lawyer, and Kate was a housewife. They had three children: Nancy (portrayed by Elayne Heilveil in the original mini-series and later by Meredith Baxter), Willie (Gary Frank), and Letitia, nicknamed "Buddy" (Kristy McNichol). The show raised the profile of all of its featured actors during its run and, in particular, catapulted McNichol to stardom.
The show attempted to depict the "average" family, warts and all. Storylines were very topical, and the show was one of the first to feature shows that have recently been termed as "very special episodes." In the first episode, Nancy, who was pregnant, walked in on her husband Jeff making love to one of her friends. Other topical storylines included Kate having to deal with the possibility that she had breast cancer, as well as Buddy dealing with advances from boys. In the later seasons, there were instances in which Buddy had to decide whether or not to have sex; she always chose to wait, most notably in an episode with guest star Leif Garrett, who was a teen idol at the time. Family also dealt with alcoholism (Doug's sister; Buddy's old friend) as well as adoption, when the family adopted a girl named Annie Cooper (Quinn Cummings). One episode in 1979 guest-starred Henry Fonda as a visiting elderly relative who was beginning to experience senility / memory loss.
The rights to Family are currently owned by Sony Pictures Television. The first two seasons of Family were released on DVD in September 2006.
[edit] Legal dispute
Family became the subject of one of the longest running legal disputes in television history when writer Jeri Emmet Laird filed a lawsuit against Spelling Television in 1977, claiming Spelling had stolen the idea for the show from a script she had submitted entitled, The Best Years.
Spelling stated that he came up with the idea in his kitchen with then-partner Leonard Goldberg, and passed it on to Jay Presson Allen to write the pilot script. Allen, who died in May 2006, had just completed the screenplay for the film Funny Lady starring Barbra Streisand and directed by Herbert Ross.
After over a decade in court, a jury awarded Laird $1.69 million against Spelling, which she then lost on appeal (see Laird v. Blacker, 2 Cal.4th 606 (1992)).
Laird sued Spelling again in 1996 after he published his memoirs, claiming that he defamed her in his book by not crediting her with the original idea for Family, but again she lost on appeal in 2001 when the court stated, "you can't steal the same idea twice!" The litigation finally concluded some 25 years after the show first aired on television, with Jay Presson Allen retaining her "created by" credit on the series.
