Paul Sand in Friends & Lovers
| Friends and Lovers | |
|---|---|
Title card with text "Friends & Lovers." A card with the text "Paul Sand in" immediately preceded it in the opening credits.
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| Genre | Situation comedy |
| Created by |
James L. Brooks Allan Burns |
| Starring |
Paul Sand Michael Pataki Penny Marshall Dick Wesson Steve Landesberg Craig Richard Nelson Jack Gilford Jan Miner |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 15 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | James L. Brooks Allan Burns |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | MTM Enterprises |
| Distributor | 20th Television |
| Release | |
| Original network | CBS |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | September 14, 1974 – January 4, 1975 |
Friends and Lovers (also known as Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers) is an American sitcom starring Paul Sand which centers on a musician in Boston, Massachusetts, and his personal relationships. It was Sand's only starring role in a television series. The show aired from September 14, 1974, to January 4, 1975.
Robert Dreyfuss is a young bachelor and double-bass player who returns to Boston after living in Denver, Colorado, for three years and wins a job playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is a romantic who falls in love easily with the women he meets, but he has little luck with them because he is shy, passive, dour-faced, and tends to say the wrong things at the wrong time. In sharp contrast, his older brother Charlie is aggressive, loud, physically fit, and athletic. Charlie is protective of Robert, while Charlie's affection-starved wife Janice constantly mocks Robert for his romantic failures, and Robert often gets caught in the middle of the arguments to which Charlie and Janice are prone. Charlie and Janice have a three-year-old son named Brendan who is mentioned in the first episode, but Brendan never appears in the show and is never discussed in any other episode. Ben and Marge are Robert's and Charlie's parents.
In the orchestra, Robert makes friends with an Austrian violinist, Fred Meyerbach, who has a strained relationship with his father. They must deal with the young, sarcastic, and overweight conductor, Mason Woodruff, and the antagonistic orchestra manager, Jack Riordan.
Paul Sand was a rising star – he had won a Tony Award on Broadway and received good reviews for his appearances on The Carol Burnett Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show – when MTM Enterprises decided to give him his own situation comedy in 1974. In order to give the show the maximum possible exposure to new viewers, CBS aired Friends and Lovers on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. between two blockbuster hit situation comedies, All in the Family at 8:00 p.m. and The Mary Tyler Moore Show at 9:00 p.m. – arguably the best time slot for a new series in the autumn of 1974. The show also received much publicity, touted as the "sleeper" hit of the fall 1974 season.
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