Tattingers (later Tattinger's) is an American comedy-drama television series that aired by the NBC television network from October 26, 1988, to April 26, 1989, as part of its 1988 fall lineup. After failing in the Nielsen ratings as an hour-long program, the plot and characters were briefly revived in the spring of 1989 as the half-hour sitcom Nick & Hillary.
| Tattingers | |
|---|---|
| Also known as |
|
| Genre | Comedy drama |
| Created by | Bruce Paltrow Tom Fontana John Masius |
| Starring | Stephen Collins Blythe Danner Patrice Colihan Chay Lentin Jessica Prunell Jerry Stiller Mary Beth Hurt Roderick Cook Zach Grenier Rob Morrow Sue Francis Pai Yusef Bulos Robert Clohessy Simon Jones Chris Elliott Anna Levine |
| Theme music composer | Jonathan Tunick |
| Opening theme | "Anybody's Guess" by Brock Walsh (Nick & Hillary run) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | Tattingers - 11 (2 unaired) Nick & Hillary - 4 (2 unaired) |
| Production | |
| Producers | Bruce Paltrow Tom Fontana John Masius |
| Running time | 60 minutes/30 minutes |
| Production companies | Paltrow Group MTM Enterprises |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | October 26, 1988 (1988-10-26) – April 26, 1989 (1989-04-26) |
An unaired episode, "Screwball," aired on TV Land on April 4, 1999.[1]
Tattingers is the story of a divorced couple, Nick and Hillary Tattinger (Stephen Collins and Blythe Danner), along with their 2 daughters: Nina and Winnifred. They had remained co-owner partners in a posh Manhattan restaurant until Nick was shot by a drug dealer, which prompted them to sell the restaurant and move to Paris. Their successors, however, proved incapable of properly running the restaurant, so Nick reclaimed the restaurant from them to give it another go. Real-life Manhattan celebrities often appeared in cameo roles as themselves as Nick's exclusive clientele.
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | U.S. viewers (millions) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tattingers | ||||||||||||
| 1 | "Pilot" | Unknown | Unknown | October 26, 1988 (1988-10-26) | 20.5[2] | |||||||
| 2 | "The Sonny Also Rises" | Unknown | Unknown | November 2, 1988 (1988-11-02) | 12.5[3] | |||||||
| 3 | "Nouvelle York" | Unknown | Unknown | November 9, 1988 (1988-11-09) | 12.2[4] | |||||||
| 4 | "Virgin Spring" | Unknown | Unknown | November 16, 1988 (1988-11-16) | 11.0[5] | |||||||
| 5 | "Rest in Peas" | Unknown | Unknown | November 30, 1988 (1988-11-30) | 11.3[6] | |||||||
| 6 | "Death and Taxis" | Unknown | Unknown | December 7, 1988 (1988-12-07) | 9.7[7] | |||||||
| 7 | "Two Men and a Baby" | Unknown | Unknown | December 14, 1988 (1988-12-14) | 11.4[8] | |||||||
| 8 | "Broken Windows" | Unknown | Tom Fontana | January 4, 1989 (1989-01-04) | 9.9[9] | |||||||
| 9 | "Wall Street Blues" | Gwen Arner | Peter McCabe | January 11, 1989 (1989-01-11) | 10.6[10] | |||||||
| 10 | "Screwball" | TBD | TBD | Unaired (Unaired) | N/A | |||||||
| 11 | "Ex-Appeal" | TBD | TBD | Unaired (Unaired) | N/A | |||||||
| Nick & Hillary | ||||||||||||
| 12 | "Half a Loaf..." | Art Wolff | Tom Fontana & Channing Gibson & John Tinker | April 20, 1989 (1989-04-20) | 21.0[11] | |||||||
| 13 | "El Sid" | Don Scardino | Story by : Tom Fontana & John Tinker Teleplay by : Channing Gibson | April 26, 1989 (1989-04-26) | 13.3[12] | |||||||
| 14 | "Tour of Doody" | TBD | TBD | Unaired (Unaired) | N/A | |||||||
| 15 | "Money Matters" | TBD | TBD | Unaired (Unaired) | N/A | |||||||
This program was a ratings failure and was cancelled in January 1989. However, NBC was apparently unwilling to give up totally on the characters or the concept, and the program was revamped into a half-hour sitcom, Nick & Hillary. This new series premiered on April 20, 1989,[13] but proved even less successful than its predecessor and was cancelled after only two episodes.
General