Show Description:

Debuting September 16, 1972 and completing its original run August 26, 1978, The Bob Newhart Show was part of a highly rated Saturday night of adult comedies on CBS. The show was produced by the same creative team as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, also part of the winning lineup. There are some obvious similarities between the shows. Both Bob Newhart and Mary focus equally on the main characters' office and home lives. Both employ an eccentric supporting cast to offset the temperance of the main characters. And both exemplify the 1970s, though Mary Tyler Moore expresses it more through wardrobe, while it is the set design on The Bob Newhart Show that is quintessentially '70s. Newhart plays Bob Hartley, a psychologist living in Chicago with his wife Emily, a schoolteacher. Regulars include neighbor Howard Borden, a divorced airplane navigator; Jerry Robinson, the orthodontist that shares Bob's office space; Carol Kester (later married to Larry Bondurant), Bob and Jerry's saucy receptionist; and a colorful cast of crazies whom Bob treats. The Bob Newhart Show was the forerunner to two of Newhart's other sitcoms, Newhart and Bob. All three are vehicles for Bob Newhart's buttoned-down comic persona. Newhart's trademark telephone routine is worked into every episode, providing him with the best means to showcase his patented deadpan delivery. Surrounded by neurotics, depressives and other mentally unstable people at his psychology practice, Bob has plenty of opportunity to underrea