Love, Sidney

Love, Sidney
Title card showing Sidney Shorr and Patti Morgan together
Starring	Tony Randall Swoosie Kurtz Kaleena Kiff Alan North Chip Zien Barbara Bryne Lynne Thigpen
Opening theme	"Friends Forever" performed by Tony Randall, Swoosie Kurtz & Kaleena Kiff (Opening version, eps. 1-20, 30-44; Closing version, eps. 1-20); also by Gladys & Bubba Knight (Opening version, eps. 21-29; Closing version, eps. 21-44)
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	44
Production
Executive producer(s)	George Eckstein (1981–1982) Rod Parker & Hal Cooper (1982–1983)
Running time	22–24 minutes
Production company(s)	Warner Bros. Television
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	October 28, 1981 (1981-10-28) – June 6, 1983 (1983-06-06)

Love, Sidney is an American sitcom which aired on NBC from October 28, 1981 until June 6, 1983. The series was based on a short story written by Marilyn Cantor Baker, which was subsequently adapted into a TV movie entitled Sidney Shorr: A Girl's Best Friend, which NBC aired on October 5, 1981, a few weeks before the series premiered. The premise involved a gay man and his relationship with a single mother and her five-year-old daughter whom he invites to live with him. Tony Randall stars as Sidney Shorr, with Swoosie Kurtz as Laurie Morgan and Kaleena Kiff as her daughter Patti. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Television.

Love, Sidney was the first program on American television to feature a gay character as the central lead, although for the series, Sidney's homosexuality was almost entirely downplayed from its subtle yet unmistakable presence in the two-hour pilot.

Love, Sidney was a continuation of the television movie Sidney Shorr: A Girl's Best Friend. Randall played the title character, a well-to-do gay New Yorker in his 50s, who befriends a single woman, Laurie Morgan (Lorna Patterson) and the daughter she gives birth to. At the end of the movie, he is brokenhearted when the mother and daughter move to California. Laurie's daughter Patti is played in the later stages of the movie (once time lapses to her being five years old) by Kaleena Kiff, who retains the role in Love, Sidney.

With the debut of the series, Laurie Morgan (now played by Swoosie Kurtz) and Patti returned to New York when Laurie's marriage in California didn't work out. Sidney, Laurie and Patti were now all living under the same roof again, still in Sidney's Manhattan apartment. In the movie, viewers had seen Laurie work her way up in the ranks of show business; by the time frame of Love, Sidney, she had already become a known actress, primarily in television and commercials. She resumed her acting career in New York, appearing as vixen "Gloria Trenell" on the (fictional) daytime soap opera As Thus We Are. Sidney continued to be a doting father figure to precocious Patti, whose innocence filled his life with sunshine and provided him with the child he never had. Laurie and Sidney's relationship, from the outset, could be interpreted as running the gamut from being overprotective parents to that of brother and sister, with only fleeting displays of affection that could have suggested a more-than-platonic connection to the novice viewer.