Ned and Stacey

1 9 9 5 – 1 9 9 7 (USA)
46 x 30 minute episodes

35-year-old Ned Dorsey (Thomas Haden Church) is an executive at the Spencer Advertising Agency on Madison Avenue. Stacey Colbert (Debra Messing) is a newspaper columnist for the Village Voice – and later a freelance writer. While she works in Manhattan, Stacey lives on Long Island.

Ned lives in a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and has a boss who believes in married executives: no marriage, no promotion.

Ned and Stacey meet by chance at a bar and become friends, although they are not fully compatible – she’s politically right-wing and he’s “no wings at all” – but they discover they each have something the other wants . . .

And so Ned agrees to let Stacey live in the second bedroom of his apartment so she can be closer to her job in return for becoming Ned’s wife, for the sake of his career.

Ned is neat, loves to cook, and enjoys growing vegetables and flowers on his balcony. He drives a cranberry coloured 1967 Cadillac, folds clothes to classical music and manoeuvres and manipulates his way through life.

Although Ned is “married”, he hits on other women and Stacey would like to know who he is dating: “I’m your wife, I have the right to know.”

Stacey was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and attended Brandice College. As a kid, she was gawky, wore braces and was a head taller than the other girls. Her father, Saul, called her “Cookie.”

Ned and Stacey enjoy snacks at Amanda’s-A-Muffins, a coffee shop owned by Stacey’s sister, Amanda Moyer (Nadia Dajani) who is married to Eric ‘Rico’ Moyer (Greg Germann).

The Fox series is basically a reworking of the 1966 series, Occasional Wife.

Ned Dorsey
Thomas Haden Church
Stacey Colbert
Debra Messing
Eric ‘Rico’ Moyer
Greg Germann
Amanda Moyer
Nadia Dajani