"This show was created," a CBS release stated, "by the executive producer and producer, respectively, of My Three Sons." So much for that. All right, now for the two or three readers, respectively, whom we still have with us, let us say that contrary to the prevailing network thinking, we do not agree that one of the most hysterically funny ideas ever conceived for a comedy is the story of a bachelor with children. Nor do we subscribe to the school which goes on from there to feel that when to this idea you add another bachelor--in this case, a valet--and more children--in this case, twins--you are sure to have, each week, a small riot. And finally, we outrightly challenge the belief that such a program can be guaranteed by a laugh track which greets every greeting with a guffaw, every gesture or grimace with a belly laugh and every old joke with a clap of thunder.

The children, 15-year-old Cissy (Kathy Garver) and the 6-year-old twins Jody (Johnnie Whitaker) and Buffy (Anissa Jones), are primarily responsible for making Family Affair the appalling thing it is. But they are not, we wish to emphasize, solely responsible. In fact, the writers have given them so much idiotic dialog and the directors so much obvious business that the whole thing ends up as a team effort--one which, at its depths, manages to achieve the impossible. It makes you look forward to the laugh track.

The saddest thing of all about this show is that the globe-trotting bachelor father (Brian Keith) deserves better. He copes with the disasters around him with extraordinary good grace and at times even genuine touchingness. As for French, the valet (Sebastian Cabot), he, too, is a true trouper--a man who serves not only in the spirit of his part but also of all those in television who only stand and wait for better scripts. One recent script, for example, has French determined to cook a meal for his employer, who is returning from Lebanon. So he takes the children to a Lebanese delicatessen. Here he meets and takes cooking lessons from a none-too-young Lebanese lady. Whereupon her cousin and two brothers convince him that, having cooked a meal for her, he must, according to Lebanese custom, marry her. At this juncture, the man in Lebanon with whom his employer has been doing business just happens not only to turn up but also to turn out to be (a) a good-guy Lebanese, (b) an authority on Lebanese marriage customs and (c) such a well-known and well-recognized authority that he is believed even by the bad-guy Lebanese.

All in all, such a show convinces us that the only hope for the current TV season is to have, during the holidays, a Christmas truce. During this period, all networks would agree not to put any situation comedy on the air unless it has (a) a good idea, (b) a good script and (c) such a good idea and script that it can be recognized without a laugh track.

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