The role model for We Got It Made was the British hit Man About The House or, to be more accurate, Three’s Company the broader US adaptation of that series. Three’s Company had been a ratings phenomenon in the USA at its height in the late 1970s, and it was an obvious target for cloning.
In We Got It Made, instead of having one man live with two women, as in the original series, we had one stunning woman (the Marilyn Monroe-like Teri Copley) move in with two full-blooded men.
The premise was that sloppy bachelor boys Jay (Tom Villard) and David (Matt McCoy and then John Hillner) – an importer and a lawyer respectively – advertised for a live-in maid for their shared Manhattan home (Apartment 9A at 1054 West 61st Street).
But instead of getting the expected fifty-something Gorgon, the boys got living-doll Mickey MacKenzie, much to the distress of their girlfriends, Beth (Bonnie Urseth), a kindergarten teacher, and Claudia (Stepfanie Kramer), a sales clerk at Bloomingdales.
Throughout the series, the boys lusted after their busty Mrs Mop, but being a simple ‘jiggle’ show (US TV industry slang for teasing fare featuring well-developed women bouncing around suggestively) their dreams were never realised.
With all the vulgarity but none of the charm of Three’s Company, We Got It Made was cancelled by ABC after its first season but was unexpectedly revived for one further season in 1987.
Teri Copley once again starred as the 36-24-34 dream cleaner and Tom Villard appeared as sloppy Jay, but John Hillner was installed as the new David and the girlfriends were absent.
This should have meant that the boys had a clear field to dally with the daily, but once again tele-morality prevailed and sex remained a subject heard but never seen.
Among US media watchers, this series vies with My Mother The Car for the Worst Ever Sitcom ‘honour’, no mean feat in a country that has produced hundreds of humour-free comedies over the years.
This is not to say that the USA is bad at producing sitcoms – far from it, for since the late 1970s they have proved to be masters of the genre, generating arguably the best examples in the world.
The truth, however, is that American TV churns out a huge amount of product, and to counterbalance the diamonds at one end of the scale are shows like We Got It Made.
Mickey MacKenzie Teri Copley
Jay Bostwick
Tom Villard
David Tucker
Matt McCoy (1)
John Hillner (2)
Claudia Evans
Stepfanie Kramer
Beth Sorenson
Bonnie Urseth
Max Papavasilios Sr
Ron Karabatsos (1)
Lance Wilson-White (2)
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