Mulligan's Stew is an NBC drama/comedy that was on the air in 1977. It focused on the lives of the Mulligan family. Lawrence Pressman starred as Michael Mulligan, a high school teacher and football coach, and Elinor Donahue played his wife, Jane, who works as a school nurse. The series was set in the fictitious Southern California community of Birchfield]].[1]
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Michael and Jane had three children, Mark, Melinda and Jimmy, and found it difficult to make ends meet. Things grew tighter financially and in terms of space when the Mulligans took in their nephew and nieces Adam (nicknamed Moose), Polaris (nicknamed Polly), and Starshine (nicknamed Stevie), after their parents were killed in a plane crash. The Freedmans had already been in the process of adopting another child, the Vietnamese-born Kimmy, leaving the Mulligans to finalize the adoption.
The oldest niece, Stevie Freedman, was played by former Partridge Family cast member Suzanne Crough, who had appeared as the youngest Partridge, Tracy. Julie Anne Haddock, who played Stevie's cousin, Melinda Mulligan, went on to appear as "Cindy Webster" in the first season of The Facts of Life.
Mulligan's Stew was scheduled opposite four Top 20 hits: Three's Company and Soap on ABC, and M*A*S*H and One Day at a Time on CBS. It suffered in the ratings, and it was cancelled before the end of the season.