Nick & Hillary( A.K.A. Tattingers):Cast Photo - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

Nick & Hillary which began life under the name Tattingers aired from October 1988 until April 1989 on NBC.

Tattingers was an unsuccessful hour comedy-drama from the St. Elsewhere creative crew. Set at an elegant Manhattan restaurant, it told the story of Nick Tattinger ( Stephen Collins) who had sold his swank Manhattan eatery and moved to Paris after being shot on the street by crazed drug dealer Sonny ( Zach Grenier), but he couldn't stay away. Reclaiming the place from his inept successors, he installed a new chef, Sheila ( Mary Beth Hurt) and with the help of loyal maitre d' Sid ( Jerry Stiller), headwaitor Lou ( Roderick Cook), bartender Marco ( Rob Morrow) and pianist Billy ( Sue Francis Pai), set about restoring it to it's former glory. There was constant banter with his elegant ex-wife Hillary ( Blythe Danner), now having an affair with boring Norman ( Simon Jones), as well as fatherly doting over his spoiled teenage daughters, Nina and Winnifred ( Patrice Colihan, Chay Lentin( Jessica Prunell played Winnifred when the series was revampted)). Tattingers was an odd mix of somber story lines ( Sonny lurked in the shadows determined for some reason to kill Nick) juxtaposed with comic ones ( an elderly gent died at his table in an episodde entitled " Rest In Peas"), New York celebrities frequently came by, among them actress Arlene Francis, Basketball's Patrick Ewing, Broadway Producer George Abbott, and pianist Bobby Short.

In an unusual move, NBC canceled the show in January but then brought it back in April, completely retooled as a half-hour sitcom called Nick & Hillary, with most of the cast intact. Flighty Hillary had taken over the restaurant while Nick was in Brazil and again, almost destroyed it. Careening on the edge of bankruptcy, they were now partners. Chris Elliott joined the cast at this time as Spin, the ulta-hip maitre d' hired by Hillary to ensure the proper atmosphere for the new venture. After only 2 episodes in this new format, they beamed off into permanent TV hiatus together.

Tattingers was NBC's first drama to be filned in New York since the 1950's.

A Review from The New York Times

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: October 26, 1988

NBC's ''Tattingers'' is being brought to you by those wonderful people who for years managed to convince millions of viewers that ''St. Elsewhere'' was far better than the evidence clearly indicated. The new series is produced by the Paltrow Group in association with MTM Productions. Bruce Paltrow, Tom Fontana and Mark Tinker are the executive producers. Mr. Paltrow, Mr. Fontana and John Masius wrote the premiere episode. The stars are Stephen Collins, a talented leading man still in search of the right author, and Blythe Danner, who is a wonderful actress and is married to Mr. Paltrow.

''Tattingers'' is a New York restaurant that, like this series, seems to be running rapidly to seed. The premiere opens with a barrage of just about every extant stereotype concerning New York City. Nick Tattinger (Mr. Collins) roughs up a street drug dealer and is promptly shot in the chest. Jump to a year or so later. Nick, divorced from his socialite wife, Hillary (Ms. Danner), is returning from Europe to attend his daughter's coming out party. At the airport, his luggage is missing. Taking a taxi to his suite in the Waldorf Towers, he falls victim to a hustler driver. Enough already! But wait. A young woman who refuses to sell her small store to a real-estate developer is suddenly seized by a thug and thrown though a plate-glass window. Ah, life in the Big Apple. It's a wonder any of us can live to tell the story.

Nick soon learns that the fellow who has tentatively agreed to buy Tattingers has been running the restaurant into the ground with his ''creative financing'' and outrageous skimping, which includes bringing a jug of wine to the table and passing it off as a Chateau Latour. In addition, that nasty real-estate developer, planning a dreadful new high-rise, wants not only the Tattingers property but the site occupied by a newsstand up the block. The news vendor is Shlomo (Jack Gilford), a Holocaust survivor who uses the tatooed number on his arm to play the New York State lottery. Ah, the characters in the Big Apple.

Well, this being a series, Nick will be taking over the restaurant again, presumably reducing the skimping to traditionally acceptable levels. And he will make an effort to pay more attention to his daughters. And, of course, he will continue to do battle with street thugs and real-estate moguls. ''This town,'' he sighs. ''It brings out the extremes in me.'' This series may bring out the extremes in television viewers.

An Article from The New York Times

Review/Television; NBC Series Is Changed From Soap Into Sitcom
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: April 20, 1989

Collectors of show-business disasters were understandably thrilled this season with Broadway's ''Legs Diamond.'' Now, as the frosting on the cupcake, they have television's ''Nick and Hillary.'' It can be seen tonight at 9:30 on NBC. Next week it will be shown on Wednesday night at 9:30. Future episodes, NBC swears, ''will be announced soon.'' Collectors be warned: time's a-wasting.

First, a bit of history. Way back at the beginning of the current season, NBC unveiled a series called ''Tattingers'' (later ''Tattinger's'') with considerable fanfare. Developed by the ''St. Elsewhere'' crowd - including the producers Tom Fontana, John Masius and Bruce Paltrow - the new show was made in New York on an expensive set with a stellar cast that included Blythe Danner (Mrs. Paltrow) and Stephen Collins as Hillary and Nick Tattinger. They are a divorced couple with two teen-age daughters. She is a Park Avenue socialite. He is a self-made bon vivant and owner of Tattinger's, a once posh restaurant struggling for survival in fiercely competitive Manhattan.

With or without the apostrophe, the series of hourlong romantic comedies quickly went nowhere in the ratings. How to salvage such an obviously enormous investment? Well the Paltrow Group NYLA, in association with MTM Productions, has transformed - transmogrified is the word tossed around in tonight's episode -''Tattinger's'' into a half-hour sitcom called ''Nick and Hillary.'' Swindled by their former manager, the Tattingers are facing a peculiar form of New York poverty. ''No, we're not poor,'' Hillary assures her pampered children, ''we have more than most -we're just broke.'' She adds, worriedly: ''Do you have your bus tokens. Do you know how to stand in lines?'' While Nick is out of town, Hillary turns Tattinger's into a desperately hip club, the kind that the city is now threatening to close at the ungodly early hour of 2:30 A.M. Nick discovers that his full-time partners are Hillary and Sidney (Jerry Stiller), who doubles as the bartender. The new manager, wearing a telephone headband, is named Spin (Chris Elliott), who spends much of his time in the kitchen feeding pepper steak to lugs in leather jackets. If Nick is the Chrysler Building, bourbon and ''The Treasure of Sierra Madre,'' Spin is strictly the Citicorp building, Gatorade and ''Blue Velvet.'' Get the picture?

All of which seems to have left the cast panic stricken. Mr. Stiller falls back on a brief impersonation of Sam Kinison. Once the snootiest of maitres d'hotel, Roderick Cook now wears a loud tie and confesses that ''I feel like Bozo.'' And Ms. Danner and Mr. Collins are reduced to shouting at each other, apparently hoping that someone will be reminded of William Powell and Myrna Loy or, at the very least, Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers. Says he, appalled at the changes in the restaurant, ''I asked you only to maintain, pro tem, like a lame duck.'' Says she, ''Quack, quack.'' At one point, she patiently explains that ''mersh'' means ''Mad Ave. for commercial - a hit.'' If nothing else, ''Nick and Hillary'' is not likely to be accused of being mersh.

A Review from USA TODAY
Published on April 20, 1989

TV PREVIEW/BY MONICA COLLINS

A dash of spice enlivens reborn 'Nick'

As an entree, NBC's Tattinger's was a bland , amorphous lump to swallow.

As an appitizer, Tatting's-reborn as a half-hour series called Nick & Hillary-is a much quicker bite and much tastier.

Tonight's return represents an extraordinary move in network TV. ( the revamped Nick & Hillary moves to 9:30 p.m. EDT/PDT Wednesday, and continues in that slot for two more weeks.) And, from this first episode, the gamble on unusual redemption just may be successful.

The original series, part of NBC's fall lineup, was trashed by critics and ignored by viewers, despite the fact that it was produced by the same team that created St. Elsewhere. The tattered Tattinger's -a New Tork City -based drama about restauranteur Nick Tattinger ( Stephen Collins) and his ex-wife Hillary ( Blythe Danner)-was taken off the air in January.

The Tattinger's writers admit they never found a way around the basic creative problem. " There's nothing inherently dramatic about a restaurant," says Tom Fontana, executive producer ( with Bruce Paltrow) of Tattinger's.

In the old series , the lead character of Nick had everything in hand at the undramatic restaurant. " Nick had too much under control," Fontana says. " That's not dramatic, nor is it funny."

But Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, saw possibilities that were nouvelle. Setting a precedent-no series had ever been cut in half during a single season-he ordered the revamp.

" From what Brandon said to us, ( NBC) loved the cast," Fontana says. " And obviously they believe in us."

" But they felt that the hour didn't work. They were disappointed. The audience had turned away from Tattinger's , the hour, and were never going to turn back."

In the first episode of Nick & Hillary, Nick returns from a trip abroad to discover that his ex-wife has turned Tattinger's into a raucous nightclub. Reflecting that new wave beat, Nick & Hillary is a much tonier, sprightlier show.

From the opening credits, the producers-known for their impish instincts-have fun with the reincarnation at their own expense.

As we see the old opening of Tattingers, the lavish Gershwin song dissolves into an atonal mess, the picture of the restaurant crumbles. Suddenly, a jumpy Nick & Hillary theme begins to play, with hip graphics of the principals.

Reflecting this hip stance, Chris Elliott, a regular on NBC's Late Night With David Letterman, joins the cast as Spin, the club's marvelously mad major-dono.

Nick Tattinger is properly bewildered in the wild scene that now unfolds in his formerly staid restaurant. And as a wry comic foil, actor Collins shows all the right instincts. As his partner in bewilderment, Danner is a throaty treat.

Nick & Hillary rises from the ashes of Tattinger's as a delightful surprise, a brilliantly bold swath of creative color in an otherwise pallid TV year.

A recipe for failure

From its very first outing Oct. 26, 1988, Tattinger's was in trouble. Scheduled against the season premiere of CBS' Wiseguy, the NBC drama won its hour-but not with much wallop. It placed only 27th for the week.

By its second outing, the series was running third behind Wiseguy and the special premiere of Murphy's Law, one of the season's most ridiculed shows. And it never picked up again.

Three preemptions for news and holiday specials between Nov. 23 and year's end probably didn't help the series build. Fixes were applied-Mary Beth Hurt joined the cast as an abrasive and eccentric head chef-but to no avail. Ratings continued to plummet.

By mid-January, Tattinger's was 86th, replaced by the Super Bowl-hyped Nightingales.

For more on Nick & Hillary go to http://www.poobala.com/nickandtattingers.html

For a website dedicated to Stephen Collins go to http://www.stephencollins.com/