Süß, aber ein bißchen verrückt

This is a charming, funny and lovely show. A pleasure to watch anytime. I didn't know about this show until it came out on DVD and now I love it. I'll buy every season. The main characters Ann and Donald (her boyfriend) have such chemistry. The show is basically about Ann Marie (an actress starting out) and her life in New York with work, friends and family. Marlo Thomas and her writers ensured the same consistent thread of quality in every show so the show has continuity. I find most shows that have stars as producers or in some power capacity are higher quality as they care about the show and characters. Marlo produced this show via her Daisy Production company as we learn in the first season booklet. I was disappointed to hear that everyone on the show wanted the show to continue but she didn't so she shut down after a few seasons. I think this show is a classic TV show. Ted Bessell as her boyfriend is perfect and they make a great on screen couple. Casting for this show was excellent.

If you are looking for sex in the city or Seinfeld this isn't it. This is a charming TV show that makes me long for the 1960's when life was a bit more simple and pleasurable and less rushed. I'd highly recommend this if you are looking for something just fun to watch but keep in mind it is from the 60's.

"That Girl" is one of those shows that I enjoyed during it's first run on ABC and in it's reruns over the years, but it's been many years since i saw this as it has not been on TV in a while. The re-discovery of this on DVD reveals that it is even better than I remember it. The cast in all instances is first-rate, and the scripts are crisp, funny, full of heart and do not date one bit. Marlo Thomas supposedly had a hand in most of the aspects of this classic series, and I say a great job well done. Like John Forsythe in "Bachelor Father", this show was her baby and no show could have had a better mother. ME-TV has just begun re-running this as of this writing, and my partner and I were laughing out loud at many of the antics on the marathon which launched the series on New Year's Day. The film quality of the show has been so beautifully preserved that it looks brand-new. The 1960s background makes the series a kind of time capsule back to those fashions and some of the early episodes especially feature some great location footage shot in N.Y.C. which add to the "theatrical" look of this series. Each episode has the look of a mini-movie, being shot with one camera. The laugh-track is present but not overdone or intrusive. The format of the single girl trying to make it on her own would be echoed a few years later in the super-classic "Mary Tyler Moore" show. "That Girl" had great writing throughout it's five seasons, and Ms. Thomas wisely opted out of the show before it became stale as so many other long-running shows of the period did. She also avoided knuckling under to the network by not having Ann and Donald marry. This was her personal decision and in retrospect, a wise one. Marlo Thomas herself, being the daughter of the great Danny Thomas, had to prove herself with this series and boy, did she ever. Having "Make Room For Daddy", one of the great shows of it's own era, and "That Girl", one of the greats of the 60s, one hopes that there will be another generation of the Thomas family to give us yet another great series to enjoy. If this review sounds like a love letter to Marlo Thomas, so be it. It is.

'That Girl' is a 60s sitcom that holds up much better than most when viewed almost 40 years later.

Altho Marlo Thomas provides most of the zaniness that sitcoms often seek to provide, my favorite role was actually Ted Bessel's Don Hollinger. The character of Don was, for the most part, a very calm, composed influence on the show. He seldom got flustered in the face of Ann's occasional hysterics or her father's often stern disapproval. Despite the 'character of his character', he was no straight man. Each episode has several intelligent witticisms or truly amusing wry comments from Don.

The series stayed remarkably consistent through the entire run, in my opinion never 'jumping the shark', as so many long running sitcoms are prone to.

Don and Ann set a good example for a mature and caring relationship, even in the face of comedy script episodes and antics.

Highly recommended.

... or if not that, Ted Bessell as one of the most sexually frustrated men of 1960's New York City. If the Mary Tyler Moore show had first aired in 1966 instead of 1970, it would have been this show. American culture changed that quickly. Marlo Thomas plays a young woman, Ann Marie, from the village of Brewster, New York who comes to the big city to become an actress, which is a tough career to break into, thus she takes a series of quirky jobs to get by which often become the central theme of certain episodes. In the very first episode she meets Donald (Ted Bessell), a writer for a magazine, and they are a couple for the next five years, a couple that - apparently - never has sex.

Back home, Ann's dad (Lew Parker) never quite trusts Donald's intentions with his daughter, and believes that girls should live at home until married. Thus a mainstay of the show is dad bursting in on Ann and Donald, either incidentally or intentionally, only to find them in what appears to be a compromising position (Ah ha! I've got him!) that in the end has a logical and platonic explanation.

If you didn't live through this period in history, you might think of the 1960's and believe it was nothing but an endless parade of hippies, pot smoking, and student/police confrontations over the Vietnam War. The fact is, most people in 1960's America were still living in the 1950's at the time, and women were still largely accepted only in traditional professions - teaching, nursing, secretarial work, acting - you know, jobs that involve either serving men or children. So That Girl was about as far as network TV could go with this topic - a young woman living in her own apartment pursuing a career in ANYTHING in New York City - without raising middle class eyebrows.

It was bright, funny, and innocent, sometimes to the point of being naive, but I'll always look back fondly on "That Girl" of my youth.

Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas, Danny Thomas' daughter in case you've never heard) is a single lady living in Manhattan. Her ambition is to make it as an actress on Broadway but between small gigs on children's television, commercials and experimental theater, she must work other jobs. These include news stand salesclerk (where she meets someone special), waitress, door-to-door shoe hawker, and more. On one of her first days in NYC, she meets Don Hollinger (Ted Bessell) and its an auspicious beginning. They both want to buy the same rolltop desk for sale in the same building and Don interrupts a commercial Ann is shooting after hours. But, in short order, they go to dinner. Pretty soon, they are stepping out steadily and, after a disastrous picnic, meet Ann's folks. While Ann's mother (Rosemary DeCamp) is loving and kind, Ann's father, Lew (Lew Parker, hilarious) is a prickly restaurateur. He, Ann, and Don often clash on many topics. Also, Ann is on very friendly terms with the couple across the hall, Judy and Leon, and Don's co-workers include Bernie (Bernie Kopell) before he went to the Love Boat. By the fifth season, will Ann and Don finally tie the knot? This will always be one of my favorite shows from childhood. First, it was and is very funny, with Thomas exhibiting very comedic talents as zany Ann. Bessell is a perfect foil and Parker is a delight, too. Secondly, Ann was a single lady decorating her own apartment, pursuing her own dreams, choosing her own friends and more. Yes, most gals like me wanted to get married AT SOME POINT but, first, we wanted to live the good life by our own merits! Naturally, Ann's costumes are terrific, her hairstyle was one we tried to copy, and her tastes became our tastes. Dear Marlo Thomas, as Ann's alter ego, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A HEROINE TO ME. After all, you were one of the first to show women everywhere that women's goals and ambitions MATTERED!