Melrose Place: Supersoap 2.0

Photo: Fox The show that started out as a lame copy of producer Darren Star’s Beverly Hills 90210 became the hottest primetime soap on U.S. television in the 1990s. Who…

3rd Rock From the Sun 

This sitcom became an opportunity for the versatile actor John Lithgow to tickle our funny bone – and he was good at it. The show featured four aliens that came…

Frasier: The Finer Things in Life

Photo: NBC I have a special love for this show. There are certain traits in the character of Frasier Crane that reminds me of myself. The close but competitive relationship…

‘Allo, ‘Allo: Getting Along in Nouvion

Carmen Silvera and Gorden Kaye. Photo: BBC Throughout the 1970s, David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd were reaping the rewards of having created one of the most successful British sitcoms of…

Boston Public 

David E. Kelley paused his attorneys for a while and created a show about Winslow High School in Boston, a fictional inner-city school that was always short on cash but…

Cheers: Always Glad You Came

Photo: NBC When I became old enough not to be thrown out of bars, I had this silly idea that I might find my own “Cheers”. You know, a place…

Falcon Crest: Wine, Women and Power

Photo: CBS At first they all seem to have had realism in mind, the primetime soaps of the 1980s. The first episodes of Falcon Crest showed a middle-class family moving…

Friends: Could It Be More Beloved?

Photo: NBC 3rd Rock From the Sun was funnier. Mad About You sweeter. Will & Grace was smarter. Seinfeld was funnier, smarter and… well, not so much sweeter. But Friends…