Sunday Dinner (TV series)
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| Sunday Dinner | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Starring | Robert Loggia Teri Hatcher Marian Mercer Patrick Breen Martha Gehman Kari Lizer Shiri Appleby |
| Opening theme | "Love Begins at Home" by Kim Carnes |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 mins. |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Original run | June 2, 1991 – July 7, 1991 |
Sunday Dinner was a short-lived 1991 CBS sitcom produced by Norman Lear, which marked his return to TV after an absence of several years. Lear's current wife Lyn Davis Lear served as co-producer on the series, which was the first official Lear show to be made under his latest production marquee Act III Productions.
[edit] Synopsis
The series starred Robert Loggia as Ben Benedict, a widowed 50-something businessman in Long Island who falls in love with a 26-year-old lawyer by the name of TT Fagori (Teri Hatcher). Being true to Lear fashion, the situation of Ben and TT's age difference was an issue in itself, but the show also tackled other environmental and social issues in the way that his earlier shows (All in the Family, Maude, etc) did, with a dose of spirituality. Ben's kids, who were all around TT's age, resented her involement with their father, except for beloved son Kenneth (Patrick Breen), a real estate agent on the fast track, who seemed to root them on.
Others in the cast included Marian Mercer as Ben's sister Martha Benedict, who had been living with Ben's family since the death of his wife. Ben's daughters were airheaded Diana (Kari Lizer) and forthright intellectual Vicky (Martha Gehman), who was back living at home after her divorce, along with her cute young daughter Rachel (Shiri Appleby).
In every episode, some stressful confrontation or incident between TT and the Benedicts would occur, usually as a result of Diana and Vicky's feeble attempts to undermine Ben and TT's romance and their refusal to get past the surface image of TT being "just another bimbo", in order to get to know her better. At every situation's climax TT would retreat to a private corner and address "The Chief" - which was her one-sided talk with God about her issues. Lear insisted on making TT a devout Catholic as well as an environmentalist, to further reflect the study of spirituality up against politics and American family values in the series. In fact, the format for Sunday Dinner was based upon Lear's marriage to his third wife Lyn, who was considerably younger than he.
[edit] Time slot
CBS was sure that Lear's comeback would be successful, and in the process preempted summer reruns of Murder, She Wrote in order to air Sunday Dinner on Sunday nights at 8/7c, alongside reruns of Lear's classic All in the Family (at 8:30/7:30c). After two weeks, however, both programs swapped time slots. Neither the press or scheduling helped; the show only lasted 6 weeks.
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