Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Ca't Hurry Love on DVD

Can't Hurry Love aired from September 1995 until July 1996 on CBS.

This was not a copy of Friends, claimed the producers and stars of this series which focused on the social and working lives of 4 attractive friends in their late 20's in New York. Three of them worked together at a Manhattan personnel agency -Annie ( Nancy McKeon), who over the years had " kissed too many frogs looking for a prince" ; loveable, womanizing Roger( Louis Mandylor) , whose rough edges made finding a classy lady difficult, and Elliot ( David Pressman in the pilot and Kevin Crowley in the series), the married confidant who found all the dos and don'ts of dating in the 90's hard to keep track of. Annie's neighbor, sexy divorced Didi ( Mariska Hargitay), was always giving her advice, often unsolicited on everything from what to buy to how far to go on a first date. The 4 of them regularly provided emotional support and helpful advice-not always good advice-to each other. By December Elliot's marriage was in trouble. In January , he moved in with Roger, and after his wife served him with divorce papers in February, it looked like he would be back in the dating game along with the others.

A Review from Variety

Can't Hurry Love
(Mon. (18), 8:30-9 p.m., CBS)
By JOHN P. MCCARTHY

Filmed in Los Angeles by Axelrod-Widdoes Prods./The Producers Entertainment Group Ltd. in association with CBS Entertainment Prods. and TriStar Television Inc. Executive producers, Jonathan Axelrod, James Widdoes, Gina Wendkos; producers, Patricia Fass Palmer, Nancy McKeon, Chuck Binder; director, James Widdoes; writer, Gina Wendkos; camera, Tony Yarlett; editor, Andy Zall; art director, Bernard Vyzga; sound, Gordon Klimuek; music, Jonathan Wolff.

Cast: Nancy McKeon, Mariska Hargitay, Louis Mandylor, David Pressman, Peter Dobson, J.D. Cullum.

Led by the easygoing performance of Nancy McKeon, "Can't Hurry Love" offers a comfortable take on a well-worn theme -- the dating exploits of a single girl in the city. The downside is it's too comfortable, and the strong debut could be as good as it gets. Show is likely to stay on the schedule but won't provide CBS with a ratings jolt. Annie O'Donnell (McKeon) is 28, works at a job placement agency in Gotham and hasn't had any luck with men. She has minor hang-ups (like calling her different-sized breasts Thelma and Louise), but otherwise she's pretty normal, which makes her a refreshingly odd bird.
Her batch of friends is always nearby. Mariska Hargitay gives an energetic turn as Didi, the lusty best friend living across the hall. Co-workers include the oversexed Roger (Louis Mandylor) and the very married Elliot (David Pressman, who'll be replaced by Kevin Crowley in subsequent episodes).

Annie meets a handsome, Ghandi-quoting cop on the subway. The date fizzles when Annie, who's on a first-name basis with the pigeons outside her office window, learns he hunts doves.

Creator Gina Wendkos' script is pretty cavalier about sex, attesting to the endangerment of the family hour. Annie's ready to jump in the sack, and Didi's quick to provide condoms. But it's light and funny, with a nice sequence on mating rituals and one nasty Clinton joke, and there are actually some delivery-proof lines. The sappy message is clear but not excessive.

Director James Widdoes handles the crucial date segments well, so episode is strongest when it counts. Perhaps it's just coincidental that all three male characters have peculiar hairdos.

"Can't Hurry Love" will make some sensible girls want to move to the big city. Its charm -- and maybe its Achilles heel -- is that it doesn't try too hard.

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
'LOVE' HURTS
SPUNKY NANCY MCKEON CAN'T SAVE HER PAINFUL NEW SITCOM
By Ken Tucker

CBS describes Nancy McKeon's character, Annie O'Donnell, in CAN'T HURRY LOVE (CBS, Mondays, 8:30-9 p.m.) as being ''an upwardly mobile placement coordinator'' -- which, as it turns out, means she makes less than $20,000 a year, lives in a cramped apartment, and tries to find jobs for people who have degrees in medieval literature and ''Byzantine anthropology.'' (In sitcom world, a serious education is considered the height of ridiculousness, of course.) She has two notable pals. At work, it's Roger, a barrel-chested numskull played by Louis Mandylor, who looks like his brother Costas (Picket Fences) and sounds as if he's doing a Tony Danza impersonation. Back at the apartment, there's her next-door-neighbor pal, Didi, played by Mariska Hargitay with a brassy sassiness in a wardrobe apparently designed to remind you that she's the daughter of Jayne Mansfield.

In the trite, stereotypical context of Can't Hurry Love, McKeon comes off as a rock of authenticity -- she still has that likable spunkiness that endeared her to audiences when she was Jo in The Facts of Life. Annie seems too nice to be hanging out with these lust-addled party hounds, and McKeon, like so many other actors this season in search of Friends, has just fallen in with a bad crowd. C-

For more on Can't Hurry Love go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can't_Hurry_Love