Maggie

ERMA DRAWS ON FAMILY FOIBLES IN SITCOM.

While Erma is best known for her newspaper column and books, the Maggie sitcom showed her versatility as a writer.

Maggie featured an ordinary family from Dayton, Ohio (where Erma grew up), and

included a son who hadn’t been seen since he’d entered the bathroom when he hit puberty. The show starred the late Doris Roberts, who later won an Emmy for her role in Everybody Loves Raymond.

“I was a housewife and mother, too, so it was easy for me to come up with story ideas,” said Karyl Miller, Emmy award-winning writer-producer who was the executive story consultant. “Working with Erma was wonderful. It was like having a girlfriend at work. Erma wasn’t Hollywood, she was a housewife.”

Erma told The New York Times that she set the show in a beauty shop because “people are so candid and frank there.” What do they talk about? “Men, kids and their status in life, how abused and put upon they are,” she said. ”It’s pretty much the same things men talk about in bars. The only difference is that they don’t care about who won the pennant.”

Episodes:

The School Conference (aired Oct. 24, 1981)

A Tooth for a Tooth (aired Oct. 31, 1981)

Career (aired Nov. 7, 1981)

Bruce’s Birthday Party (aired Nov. 14, 1981)

Marriage Encounter (aired April 30, 1982)

Alienation of Affection (aired May 7, 1982)

Maggie the Poet (aired May 21, 1982)