Brother's Keeper (1998 TV series)

Brother's Keeper
Opening title sequence screenshot
Created by	Donald Todd
Starring	William Ragsdale Sean O'Bryan Justin Cooper Bess Meyer
Composer(s)	Jonathan Wolff
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	23 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Donald Todd Jonathan Axelrod James Widdoes
Producer(s)	Mark Grossan
Location(s)	San Francisco, California (setting)
Camera setup	; Multi-camera
Running time	22 minutes (approx.)
Production company(s)	Axelrod/Widdoes Entertainment Donald Todd Productions Studios USA Television
Distributor	NBCUniversal Television Distribution
Release
Original network	ABC
Picture format	480i (SDTV)
Original release	September 25, 1998 – May 14, 1999

Brother's Keeper is an American television sitcom that ran for one season from September 25, 1998 to May 14, 1999 on ABC. Created by Donald Todd, the series chronicles the rocky coexistence of Porter Waide (William Ragsdale) and his irresponsible pro-football player brother Bobby Waide (Sean O'Bryan), who is contractually forced to move into his brother's house, where Bobby's lifestyle often clashes with that of Porter's, and becomes an unwitting second parent to Porter's son Oscar (Justin Cooper).

The series centers around Porter Waide (Ragsdale), a milquetoast college History professor and widowed single father, raising his son, Oscar (Cooper), by himself until his brother, Bobby (O'Bryan), a football placekicker who had just been signed to play with the San Francisco 49ers and has a reputation for being a bad boy, moves in with his brother and nephew, as part of a stipulation in his new multimillion-dollar contract in which Bobby has to live with someone who is more responsible than him, in order to change his troublemaking ways.

This situation proves incredibly challenging as Bobby continues to exhibit childish behavior in his adult years, which often aggravates Porter, as well as Bobby's smart, sarcastic and harried sports agent Dena Draeger (Bess Meyer), who has the unenviable task of "babysitting" Bobby to ensure he stays out of trouble and keep him from violating the terms of his new NFL contract. Although Porter is reluctant to let Bobby stay with him and his son, he realizes that Oscar is thrilled with the fact that he now gets spend time with his famous uncle, with Bobby becoming an unlikely second parent to his nephew and making attempts to try to get his brother to have fun and loosen up, while Porter tries teaching Bobby how to be a responsible person.

The series aired as part of ABC's TGIF comedy lineup on Friday evenings; despite this, some of the show's episodes featured decidedly more adult humor than the rest of the TGIF lineup, which otherwise targeted pre-teens and teenagers (though like most family sitcoms aired on TGIF, Brother's Keeper incorporated humor that would appeal to both adult viewers as well as to the lineup's target audience); as such, the series was aired at 9:30 p.m. ET on Friday evenings and was one of two freshman series added to the block that season, along with the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen starring vehicle Two of a Kind (both series were joined by veteran TGIF shows Boy Meets World and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch).