We Got It Made
The role model for We Got It Made was the British hit Man
About The House or, to be more accurate, Three's Company
the broader US adaptation of that series. Three's Company
had been a ratings phenomenon in the USA at its height in the late
1970s, and it was an obvious target for cloning.
In We Got It Made, instead of having one man live with
two women, as in the original series, we had one stunning woman
(the Marilyn Monroe-like Teri Copley) move in with two
full-blooded men.
The premise was that sloppy bachelor boys Jay
and David - an importer and a lawyer respectively - advertised for
a live-in maid, and instead of getting the expected
fifty-something Gorgon, got living-doll Mickey (much to the
distress of their girlfriends, Beth and Claudia).
Throughout the series the boys lusted after their busty Mrs
Mop, but being a simple 'jiggle' show (US TV industry slang for
teasing fare featuring well-developed women bouncing around
suggestively) their dreams were never realised.
With all the vulgarity but none of the charm of Three's
Company, We Got It Made was cancelled by ABC after its
first season but was unexpectedly revived for one further season
in 1987.
Teri Copley once again starred as the dream cleaner and Tom
Villard appeared as sloppy Jay, but John Hillner was installed as
the new David and the girlfriends were absent.
This should have
meant that the boys had a clear field to dally with the daily, but
once again tele-morality prevailed and sex remained a subject
heard but never seen.
Among US media watchers, this series vies with My Mother The
Car for the Worst Ever Sitcom 'honour', no mean feat in a
country that has produced hundreds of humour-free comedies over
the years.
This is not to say that the USA is bad at producing
sitcoms - far from it, for since the late 1970s they have proved
to be masters of the genre, generating arguably the best examples
in the world.
The truth, however, is that American TV churns out a huge
amount of product, and to counterbalance the diamonds at one end
of the scale are shows like We Got It Made.
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