Robert Hays

Here’s a show that’s fairly well-known and well-remembered for something that only ran a season and a half. If you’ve never seen it, you may still be familiar with the theme song, which became a pop hit at the time (“Different Worlds,” written by Gimbel and Fox and sung by Maureen McGovern), and you’ll certainly be familiar with some of the stars: Donna Pescow (just after Saturday Night Fever), Robert Hays (just before Airplane) and Doris Roberts (in her first role as a full-time regular on a series). But the reason it’s better-known than most flops is that for half a season, when it arrived as a midseason replacement, it was actually a hit, and a pretty solid hit at that.