Hello, Larry

This quasi-spin-off of Different Strokes brought well-loved McLean Stevenson back to the airways after his departure from MASH. This was one of the first to ACCURATELY portray a single father's struggles raising two young daughters. It never really developed a following, and the numerous scheduling changes made it difficult to find. This is an ideal candidate for TV Land.

"Hello Larry" was part of Fred Silverman's attempt to ruin, er, resurrect NBC from the ratings doldrums. Amongst other great works he begat "Supertrain," "Turnabout," "Diffrent Strokes," and "Hello Larry." Despite it's abysmal badness, the show ran for two seasons simply because so many of the network's offerings bombed that they had nothing better to run, a fact that beleagured network execs cheerfully admitted to. While the show was lousy and never drew good ratings (despite often being paired with "Diffrent Strokes") Mac at least was a "name" actor and supposedly a proven commodity. Poor McLean Stevenson, so loveable as the boob Henry on "M*A*S*H" never again found material as good. Unfortunately unlike fiascoes like "In the Beginning," "Condo," or even "The McLean Stevenson Show," "Hello Larry" ran long enough for people to remember it as the series that wouldn't die, and poor Mac is now probably as well remembered for being trapped in TV purgatory there than he will be for "M*A*S*H."

Does anyone remember the call letters of the radio station where Larry worked? I've drawn a blank on this one item. As a matter of fact, I can barely remember the series. Obviously, this was not one of my father's favorites since he controlled the remote and only watched 2 or 3 episodes. Back then that was the way most families had to watch television. Also, we only had one set in the whole house. Therefore, my mom and I had to wait for dad to go out of town in order to watch anything with females, sex, or anything that was not sports or war related. My,how times have changed! We have only three people currently living in our house, but we have a total of five TV sets. Go figure!

This was a series that I never missed, but also never recorded. It would be nice to see it go back on air sometime. It was about a single father raising 2 teenage girls.

Hello Larry was, strangely enough, the most successful TV show McLean Stevenson was ever on. After he left MASH that is. Every single show he was the headliner for was cancelled after one season. Hello Larry ran for two. He later admitted that leaving MASH was the worst career decision he ever made and... I have to agree with him.

The show itself didn't feel complete. It was shown after "Diff'rent Strokes" and was by the same producer so in order to cement this they had a couple crossovers where Larry and Mr. Drummond met as they were old war buddies. Nothing really came of it though. After those three episodes they never met again.

The story itself was of a guy on the radio giving people advice but he wasn't very good at it. He often made smart-alec responses to what the callers would call in about. After a couple episodes it was decided to change the format around and now he was supposed to focus on his two daughters. After his divorce he moved, with them, to Portland from LA for this job.

Older daughter Diane and younger daughter Ruthie. They.. were typical sitcom kids. Nothing of real note.

In the end it just wasn't interesting enough to carry along and was dropped.