SYNOPSIS

The Brady Bunch was one of the last of the old-style, fun-around-the-house situation comedies, full of well-scrubbed children, trivial adventures, and relentlessly middle-class parents. The premise here was a kind of conglomerate family, formed by a widow with three daughters who married a widower with three sons; a nutty housekeeper, Alice, thrown into the act as referee; plus, of course, a shaggy dog named Tiger.

All of these smiling faces lived in a four-bedroom, two-bath house in the Los Angeles suburbs, from which Dad pursued his nice, clean profession as a designer and architect. Typical stories revolved around the children going steady, family camping trips, competition for the family telephone (at one point, Dad installed a pay phone!), and, of course, war in the bathroom.

The children ranged in age from 7 to 14 at the series' start, and the oldest son, Greg, played by Barry Williams, soon became something of a teenage idol; he was receiving 6,500 fan letters per week during 1971. Barry and several of the others tried to parlay their TV success into recording careers in the early 1970's, but without notable success.

Reruns of The Brady Bunch were aired as part of ABC's weekday daytime lineup from July 1973 to August 1975, and an animated spin-off titled The Brady Kids ran Saturday mornings on ABC from September 1972 until August 1974. It has continued to be a classic on TV and has spawned two movies: The Brady Bunch and A Very Brady Sequel, starring Shelley Long.