Four Seasons, The

1 9 8 4 (USA)
11 x 30 minute episodes
1 x 60 minute episode

This CBS sitcom was created by Alan Alda (and was based on his 1981 movie of the same name). It told the story of four couples spending four holidays together over the course of the four seasons.

Alda himself turned up in some episodes of the TV series, reprising his movie role of lawyer Jack Burroughs, but the main star was the neurotic dentist Danny Zimmer (Jack Weston, again from the film) who, with his wife Claudia, moves out from Manhattan to Los Angeles.

Here Danny befriends Ted Bolen, who works in real estate and lives the Californian lifestyle to the hilt. Ted’s girlfriend Pat is a stuntwoman.

The other characters included Boris (played by Alan Arbus, who had appeared in a few episodes of M*A*S*H including the key role of Hawkeye’s psychiatrist in the stunning final episode), a lawyer who has quit the legal business to open a bicycle shop; and his wife Lorraine, who teaches orthopaedic medicine at UCLA.

Alan Alda’s real-life daughters Elizabeth (as Beth Burroughs) and Beatrice (as Ted Bolen’s daughter Lisa) also reprised their movie roles in the TV series.

Despite the solid cast and thirtysomething-played-for-laughs premise, The Four Seasons sitcom wasn’t nearly as good as the movie and soon came off the air. The laughs it did get, sadly, were ‘canned’.

Danny Zimmer 
Jack Weston
Claudia Zimmer 
Marcia Rodd
Boris Elliott 
Alan Arbus
Lorraine Elliott 
Barbara Babcock
Ted Bolen 
Tony Roberts
Lisa Bolen 
Beatrice Alda
Beth Burroughs 
Elizabeth Alda
Jack Burroughs 
Alan Alda
Pat Devon 
Joanna Kerns