Perfect Strangers

Perfect Strangers ran for eight seasons on ABC, from March 25, 1986, to August 6, 1993. Creator Dale McRaven, who had co-created Mork & Mindy, and producers Tom Miller and Robert Boyett pitched an immigrant comedy that Miller traced to the patriotic mood after the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; all three networks passed. ABC signed on once Bronson Pinchot, fresh from his scene-stealing turn as Serge in Beverly Hills Cop, was attached to the role of Balki Bartokomous, a shepherd from the fictional Mediterranean island of Mypos. An early pilot cast Louie Anderson as the American cousin; it did not work, and the producers found Mark Linn-Baker after a guest spot on Moonlighting. The two had chemistry immediately, and the show premiered in a tryout slot between Who's the Boss? and Moonlighting, landing five of its six first-season episodes in the Nielsen top ten.

The premise was Larry Appleton, a Wisconsin boy savoring his first Chicago apartment, opening the door to a distant cousin who knew America only through pop culture ("Land of my dreams and home of the Whopper"). Balki's Dance of Joy, a cross between a do-si-do and the hokey pokey, celebrated every win. The pair worked at a discount store, then at the Chicago Chronicle, and dated two flight-attendant best friends, Jennifer and Mary Anne. From the third season the opening credits put Larry and Balki on a tour boat under the Irv Kupcinet Bridge, an image so tied to the show that Family Matters' early titles reused the vantage point.

The show moved to Fridays in March 1988 and became the anchor of ABC's original TGIF lineup, the reason so many 90s kids knew it despite its 80s birth. Jo Marie Payton's elevator operator Harriette Winslow got her own series, Family Matters, in the fall of 1989, and it outlived its parent. Perfect Strangers was never a smash, usually a top-40 show, but it won its Friday slot and averaged 27th place across its run.

Larry married Jennifer to open the seventh season, Balki married Mary Anne in the April 1992 finale, and a six-episode final season filmed in 1992 aired in July and August 1993, ending with two babies and a montage set to "Unforgettable." The finale drew 15 million households. All 150 episodes lived on in syndication and on cable for years afterward.