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The Lucie Arnaz Show aired from April until June 1985 on CBS.
Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz starred in her own sitcom as Psychologist Jane Lucas. Jane had a work schedule that would make most people shudder. Not only did she maintain a private practice in New York City, but Jane also wrote a regular advice column for Gotham Magazine and was co-host, with egocentric Larry Love ( Todd Waring) of radio station WPLE's popular call-in show " The Love And Lucas Show." It made for a hectic professional life, and didn't leave her with much time for herself, but Jane loved it-at least most of the time. Giving other people advice about their love lives was rewarding, but their were occasions when she would rather have been working on her own love life. The other principal people in Jane's life were Jim Gordon ( Tony Roberts), WPLE's demanding and conniving station manager; Loretta ( Karen Jablons-Alexander), Jane's secretary at the office; and Jill ( Lee Bryant), her older sister who, in her meddlesome way was looking out for Jane's best interests.
A Review From The New York Times
The Lucie Arnaz Show
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: April 9, 1985
TUESDAY'S new sitcoms are offering a menu of sweet and sour television. At 8 P.M., ''The Lucie Arnaz Show,'' introduced by CBS last week, stars the always ingratiating Miss Arnaz as a psychologist who not only writes an advice column but also takes calls from listeners on her own radio program. She is, in other words, a successful career woman. This is the sweet one. Then, getting under way at 9:30 this evening on ABC, ''Hail to the Chief'' features Patty Duke as the first female President of the United States, surrounded by assorted misfits in a format that is intended to be, as they like to say, zany and irreverent. This one's sour, to say the least.
Miss Arnaz plays Dr. Jane Lucas, a bright, attractive woman in her early 30's who will be forced to contend weekly with a still overly protective mother (by phone), a loving and interfering sister (Lee Bryant), a boyishly adolescent radio co-anchor (Todd Waring) and a dizzily chauvinistic station manager (Tony Roberts). In the first episode, Dr. Lucas met by chance the man who had been her first boyfriend before he jilted her 12 years ago. He, played by John Getz, wanted to resume their affair and even began talking about marriage again. She, despite the warnings of her sister, began to succumb.
There was, of course, no chance that Dr. Lucas was going to get married on her very first show. That's the kind of ploy producers save for an ''event episode'' on a hit series. Discovering that her beau had indulged in a few lies, Dr. Lucas decided, sadly but brightly, that ''after 12 years, I can put down the torch.'' At the half- hour's end, she was advising a radio listener that ''happiness is being aware of the fact that you're not going to be happy all of the time.'' Would Mary Tyler Moore, clearly a role model for Dr. Lucas and Miss Arnaz, have resorted to such greeting-card cuteness? Will Miss Arnaz get better scripts to showcase her decidedly appealing personality? Perhaps only Sam Denoff, the creator and executive producer, knows for sure.
Incidentally, ''The Lucie Arnaz Show'' is based on a British series called ''Agony.'' Also incidentally, Miss Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, keeps telling interviewers how she resents being asked about her famous mother. Yet one of the advertisements for her show pointedly announces that ''You'll Love This Lucie!'' It's unfortunate. Miss Arnaz does not need that kind of exploitation
An Article from USA TODAY
Another Lucie tries comedy
She's out of mom's shadow
By Tom Green
USA TODAY
NEW YORK-Lucie Arnaz, three times a mother herself, flinches at questions about being the daughter of Lucille Ball.
" There's no answer to that," she says, " and whatever the answer is , I've given it a million times."
Besides she now has her own family: second husband Laurence Luckinbill and their two boys , 4 and 2, and an infant daughter-plus Luckinbill's two children from a previous marriage, who spend every other week in their father's home.
Still comparrisons between her comedic style and her mother's , between her family life and that of the Arnaz/Ball clan, naturally creep into her conversation.
Her first starring television series, The Lucie Arnaz Show premieres tonight on CBS. She plays a radio psychologist, cool on the job but hassled in real life. " My life is like that all the time."
Because the six shows that will air were filmed while Arnaz was pregnant, the comedy isn't as physical as it might get if the network orders more-or as physical as mom's slapstick style.
" Her show wasn't reality. She never said that it was. People today need esacpism with a little reality, like in The Cosby Show."
Arnaz says her family life today is as good as it was when she was growing up with famous parents.
" We had a normal upbringing. As normal as it could be.
There was always money and opulence, and I never wanted...It was terrific.
They were also divorced. How terrific could it have been? It didn't save their marriage. It didn't stop my brother from doing cocaine for years before he finally streightened up his act...
Often these days, Arnaz catches herself saying things to her kids that are word-for-word what her mother said to her. And like every other mother-famous ones included-she's finding it difficult to keep her youngsters' attention.
" I'm a lot like my mother, as much as I said I wouldn't be. I'm strict and I'm real peculiar about table manners and homework and all that stuff. I'm trying to instill in them what's important."
A Review from USA TODAY
TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH
Too little pizazz in 'Arnaz'
For a last-minute end-of-season entry , The Lucie Arnaz Show boasts an impressive TV pedigree-but demonstrates how easily blue bloods can bruise.
The star is the daughter of the medium's preeminent sitcom actress, Lucille Ball. And the concept has been lifted from a highly successful British sitcom, Agony. Despite that lineage , the series is awfully runty.
The sitcom never really exploits the areas of humor implicit in its premise: It takes radio psychology seriously! Rather than tapping into the comedy and pathos of AM/FM psyche-adjusting, it uses the call-in show as simply a way of drawing together the characters. It's just another work situation, like a gas station or a soda shop.
In the original series, says Len Richmond, who's worked on both, sex played a more important role, and the show had more texture than this adaptation. For instance, the character Arnaz plays wasn't a doctor, and she was Jewish. CBS insisted that she be a professional and that she not be ethnic. Other changes: drug references and two gay characters were dropped.
Instead, The Lucie Arnaz Show hired a pack of network regulars: the silly female secretary, the obnoxious male boss, the intrusive older sister. The stale situations-a relative moves in and upsets the routine, an old boyfriend shows up and upsets the routine-kill the little pizazz in Arnaz.
To use radio jargon, the series went golden oldie when it was striving for adult contemporary.
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