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Bridget Loves Bernie ran from September 1972 until September 1973 on CBS.
An updated video version of the long-running Broadway hit, Abie's Irish Rose, about a rich Irish girl who marries a poor Jewish boy, this show was part of a wave of ethnic comedies in the early 1970's that followed on the success of All In The Family and Sanford And Son.Bernie ( David Bernie), was Jewish, a struggling young writer who supplemented his income by driving a cab. Bridget ( Meredith Baxter), his young bride, was an elementary school teacher whose parents were wealthy Irish Catholics. The couple shared a small apartment above a New York City delicatessen owned by Bernie's parents, Sam and Sophie ( Harold J. Stone, Bibi Osterwald).Also featured were Audra Lindley as Bridget's pompous mother Amy Fitzgerald; David Doyle as Bridget's father Walter Fitzgerald, an executive; Robert Sampson as Bridget's brother Mike, a priest; Ned Glass as Bernie's uncle Moe Plotnick; and William Elliott as Bernie's black friend, Otis Foster. The widely divergent ethnic,cutural, and social backgrounds of the Steinberg and Fitzgerald families, and their attempts to reconcile for the sake of the young couple provided most of the plot situations.
Aired at 8:30 on Saturdays between CBS's monster hits All In The Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bridget Loves Bernie was one of the highest-rated shows ever to be canceled after one season. It was widely reported that many Jewish groups had pressured CBS to axe the series, but the network's official explanation was that the show's ratings were not high enough. Too many viewers, it said were switching away from CBS after All In THe Family and returning for The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Considering Bridget Loves Bernie finished the season ranked #5 among all television shows and The Mary Tyler Moore Show ranked #7, this did not make sense.
An interesting sidelight is that the 2 stars of the series David Bernie and Meredith Baxter married each other in real life the year after this series left the air ( they were divorced in 1989).
An Article from Time Magazine
Published February 19, 1973
Bridget may love Bernie, but Jewish groups are charging that the hit TV series "mocks the teachings of Judaism" by suggesting that intermarriage between Jews and Christians is desirable. Rabbi Balfour Brickner, director of the Commission for Interfaith Activities, complained that, "the program treats intermarriage in a cavalier, cute, condoning fashion, and deals with its inevitable problems as though they're instantly, easily solvable." Worried by threats of economic boycotts against the show's sponsors, CBS officials could only point out that intermarriage was essential to Bridget Loves Bernie's plot; to rule it out would spell the end of the show. That prospect hardly seemed to strike the critics as tragic.
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