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Oh Madeline aired from September 1983 until May 1984 on ABC.
After nine years of marriage, Madeline ( Madeline Kahn) was bored. Not with husband Charlie ( James Sloyan), a sweet but square guy who made his living writing steamy romance novels under the name Crystal Love. Not with best friend Doris( Jesse Welles), a timid divorcee formerly married to Charlie's best friend, a middle-aged swinger named Bob ( Louis Giambalvo). Just with her sedate , predictable existance in a middle-class suburb. Wanting to put some zip in her life, Madeline decided to try every trendy diversion that came along, whether it was health foods made of seaweed, exercise clubs that seemed intent on bodily distruction, or " ladies only" clubs featuring male strippers. There was plenty of slapstick comedy in this series, along with marital -misunderstanding plots reminiscent of I Love Lucy. Annie ( Francine Tacker) was Charlie's amorous editor, who seemed to want more than just his manuscripts.
This was the first sitcom from mega producers Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey who would create The Cosby Show, Roseanne, A Different World, Cybill, That 70's Show, Grounded For Life, Grace Under Fire, and 3rd Rock From The Sun just to name a few. The series was based on the British television series , Pig in the Middle.
A Review from TV Guide ( Nov. 5-11, 1983 Ed.)
Review
By Robert MacKenzie
At a press conference years ago someone asked Mel Brooks about TV situation comedies. " Gentiles in club chairs," he sniffed, and got a big laugh. Fortunately he wasn't Secretary of the Interior at the time. Anyway, I knew what he meant. Situation comedy was all sofas and talk. Brooks preferred wild comedy, oversized farce with extravagant talents like Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise and...Madeline Kahn.
Kahn could play the maddest female parts in movies like " Young Frankenstein" and " Blazing Saddles." She could do pretty near anything with her avid kittenish face , slightly crossed eyes and tomboyish body. She could be sexy, but always with a touch of dementia , and the crazier the part the better she was.
I couldn't have pictured her in a domestic television comedy, playing a housewife in one of those living-room-and-kitchen sets. Yet here she is with her own ABC sitcom, Oh Madeline, complete with husband and next-door neighbors. You'd sooner expect Jackie Onassis to turn up in a Tupperware party.
The writers have tried not to make the job too confining for her. This is one of the very few shows to try for some physical comedy and the occasional sight gag. And she does get some chances for real goofiness. One story had her squeezed into a tiger costume , every time she turned , she bopped a friend with her tail. Lucille Ball couldn't have done it better. In fact the scripts often play like sexed-up I Love Lucy plots. But it hurts to see this movie madcap reduced to slumping around in housedresses and feeding straight lines to James Sloyan as the husband Charlie. " It contains only natural ingredients," she says , handing Charlie a brackish homemade health drink. " Yea," he retorts, " I recognize a piece of the back yard."
Charlie, who is potbellied and cheerful, is a writer of romance novels. Their best friends are a divorced couple , Robert and Doris ( Louis Giambalvo and Jesse Welles) . Robert is a skirt chaser and general lowbrow who gets on Madeline's nerves. Doris is the kind of ninny who fills her diary with her sexual fantasies , which involve celebrities and sometimes entire football teams. Doris left her diary at Robert's house so Madeline sneaked in to rescue it. Hiding in the shower when Robert came in with a girl, Madeline was doused and came home in a towel. This caused Charlie to think that she and Robert had been hanky-pankying. " I really thought you meant it when you called him swamp bilge with legs."
In this Lucyesque episode, Madeline harassed Charlie into a health-food regimen and he sneaked off to a restaurant to pig out. Of course Madeline and Doris coincidentally showed up for lunch. Charlie scrambled to escape, bumping into a waiter who spilled chocolate sauce all over him.
Funny enough and Kahn gives the stuff all her flutterface expressions and eccentric moves. But I'm afraid this isn't her milieu; she thrives best in the lunatic atmosphere of Brooks' broad historical takeoffs , doing stops-out craziness. Even with the clowning and the visual gags, Oh Madeline is sitcom city, that town that only the occasional Taxi or Cheers transcends. But I guess there's something to be said for steady work.
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