That Girl

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.

Four years before the debut of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, this was the first show to feature an independent woman who wanted to make it on her own without having to rely on her parents or her boyfriend. This was a great show with a great cast that really worked well together. The other thing that I really loved about this show was the fact that the humor was very broad and that Ann, even though she was independent, often found herself in some very awkward situations. I especially loved the last season in which we really saw Ann's relationship with Donald really blossom as they finally became engaged. Too bad it ended before they walked down the aisle.

One TV Encyclopedia I consulted claims that since THAT GIRL was canceled in mid-season in 1971, there are "lost episodes" which were never aired, having to do with Ann and Don's wedding plans. IS ABC/TVLAND holding out on us? Can any one confirm or debunk this? As I recall-being 10 years old at the time---the couple spend that entire season looking at furniture, dreaming of a new house, pricing the wedding dress, etc. Also, I find it strange, given that the two are engaged during the last season, that Marlo Thomas supposedly demanded the marriage never take place? What was she going to do; have Ann leave Don at the altar?

I wonder how many preteen boys had a crush on Marlo Thomas like I did during the run of this program. She was soooo beautiful, and Ted Bessell seemed like an awfully lucky guy to me, except that he had to live in constant fear of Ann Marie's father, which was realistic enough as Mr. Marie was rather menacing, which by the time the series ended I realized was because he considered the Donald Hollister character a threat to his daughter's virginity. (Wonder how much different, if any, Danny Thomas was about that issue in real life?) In retrospect, this show requires suspension of disbelief even more than most sitcoms, as Ann, a supposedly struggling actress, had a better apartment and nicer clothes than many steadily-employed New Yorkers could have possibly have afforded, then or now. It's a shame that the show only went as far as Donald's bachelor party; it would seem to have been better if they had actually shown the wedding with the implication that "they all lived happily ever after" and that this show, after all really was a modern fairy tale. A fun aspect of the show was seeing how they were going to work the words "that girl" into the opening sequence.

"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.