Kate & Allie
Learn more about Kate & Allie
Kate & Allie was a television situation comedy, airing on CBS from March 19, 1984 to May 22, 1989.
The show starred Susan Saint James as Kate McArdle and Jane Curtin as Allie Lowell, childhood friends who decided to share a brownstone in New York City's Greenwich Village after their respective divorces. The show also starred Ari Meyers as Kate's daughter Emma, and Frederick Koehler and Allison Smith as Allie's children Chip and Jennie. Kate & Allie was taped on soundstages constructed at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.
Kate & Allie first aired on CBS in March 1984 as a midseason replacement series. At first, only six episodes were commissioned into production, but the show's favorable response from critics and viewers alike (its first episode ranked #4 out of all the television shows airing that week) easily convinced CBS to green-light a full season in the fall of 1984.
The show's comedic depiction of two single women was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed sitcoms of the 1980s. Curtin won two Emmy Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Allie. Saint James was nominated in the same category three times.
Both Kate and Allie dated regularly, but were portrayed as strong, independent women, which was still a relative novelty on television at the time. Unlike other successful career women portrayed before them, Kate and Allie were shown to be wiser to the games men play, but if the opportunity presented itself, they would not be against remarrying.
At the beginning of the series, Kate made money for the two families by working as a travel agent. Allie stayed home and took care of domestic duties. In the show's fifth season, Kate quit her job and teamed up with Allie, and together the started their own catering service.
Feeling pressure from higher-ups at CBS to quash what they thought would lead to viewer insinuations that Kate and Allie were lesbians, the producers were instructed to show Kate and Allie entering separate bedrooms to sleep in separate beds at the end of each episode. [1]
In the show's final seasons, Allie dated and got engaged to Bob Barsky (Sam Freed), a television sportscaster. By the show's 100th episode in May 1988, Bill Persky, who directed Kate & Allie, felt that it had reached its utmost potential and left the series, hoping CBS would follow suit and cancel the show. However, CBS wanted to pursue showcasing Allie as a married woman, and renewed the series for a sixth season, putting the most creative charge of the show in the hands of Linda Day, who became the new director. Another blow to the series came with the television scriptwriters' strike of 1988; with the change in guard, Kate & Allie was left off the fall 1988 schedule altogether and did not premiere with new episodes until December 1988. The show lost a fraction of its audience, who were fed up with the long wait.
Following their marriage, Allie and Bob moved into a new apartment; Bob simultaneously took a job which involved regular travel, and consequently Kate moved into the new apartment as well. This plot development, frequently cited as one of the canonical examples of a television show jumping the shark, caused more viewers to defect and led to CBS to choose not to renew Kate & Allie for a seventh season.
[edit] DVD release
Season 1 of Kate & Allie was released on Region 1 DVD on May 2, 2006 by Universal in a US exclusive DVD. Canadian VEI Entertainment plans to release a Season 1 and 2 set on June 6 exclusive to that country.
[edit] Trivia
- Prior to collaborating on Kate & Allie, Curtin and Saint James had worked together in the 1979 movie How to Beat the High Cost of Living.
- Saint James' niece, Christa Miller, who later played Kate on The Drew Carey Show and Jordan Sullivan on Scrubs, started her acting career on Kate & Allie.
- The American syndication rights are held by Universal Pictures. Fremantle Media owns the international rights, as they own Thames Television and have access to Alan Landsburg Productions and Reeves Entertainment Group product.
