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Roxie aired from April 1-8, 1987 on CBS.
Roxie ( Andrea Martin) was the program director for WNYU, a struggling UHF station in New York City. Working with her at the station were Marcie (Teresa Ganzel), the secretary and bookkeeper; Vito ( Ernie Sabella), the technical genius who operated and fixed all the broadcasting equipment; Randy ( Jerry Pavlon), the impressionable young gofer; and Leon ( Jack Riley), the cynical , aging station manager who was also-ironically-the star of WNYU's afternoon children's show. Roxie's husband Michael ( Mitchell Laurance) was a schoolteacher.
Roxie was based on a similar character of a cable TV station manager that Martin had played in two episodes of Kate & Allie in December 1986.
Roxie and the program that followed it, Take Five, were the disasters of the 1986-1987 season. They were both canceled after only two weeks on the air, never to be seen again.
A Review from The New York Times
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: April 1, 1987
THIS week's headlines tell us that the number of homeless families wandering the nation's streets has reached record numbers - to mention just one current crisis - but television entertainment seems determined to assure us that everything will be all right as long as we remain adorably bubble-headed. The sitcom marches on to the sounds of its own sweetened laugh track. Three new entries are coming on line this week.
''Roxie'' (CBS, tonight at 8:30). With Allan Katz as executive producer and writer, here is a vehicle for Andrea Martin, a veteran of Canada's ''SCTV'' comedy troupe. Miss Martin, a sort of Cher in a restrained wardrobe, plays a programmer at WNYV, Channel 66, a fictional New York station. Her co-workers include Leon (Jack Riley), the station manager, who doubles as the star of a children's show called ''Larry the Lizard.'' The suit happened to fit, he explains.
At the station, Roxie oversees such shoestring efforts as an exercise class for the elderly, starring and sponsored by the Plotnicks, owners of a kosher French pastry shop (''Our Blintzes Melt in Your Bouche''). At home, Roxie is comforted by her wryly understanding husband, Michael (Mitchell Laurance). ''Am I schizophrenic?'' she asks. ''Yes and no,'' he says sweetly.
The premiere, directed by Sheldon Larry, has Roxie being visited by her old high-school girlfriend Heather (Cynthia Szigeti). Roxie is desperate to impress the former class valedictorian. Heather turns out to be decidedly overweight, a fact used to create a great deal of confusion and a slew of fat jokes. Will the friendship survive this? Will the pleasantly dizzy Miss Martin survive this? Will we, the viewers?
A Review of Roxie and Take Five from USA TODAY
TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH
Two stars in two new comedies-too bad
These two new CBS sitcoms lack nothing in star power. SCTV alumna Andrea Martin and movie actor George Segal , are no slouches. But their charisma is sorely tried by these exercises in blandness.
" Average programming for the average viewer," says Jack Riley, playing the manager of the struggling UHF station that's Roxie's setting. He's talking about his station, but he could be talking about Roxie.
" I feel silly to be here," says Segal as poor Andy Kooper, a hero of Take Five, a mid-life crisis comedy in which the star pops his eyes and wildly waves his arms in a psychiatrist's office. We feel pretty silly too, watching him strain for effect.
As with so much comedy on TV, these shows lack an edge, a new twist, a new anything. We've seen variations on these likable folks , and their workplaces seem oh so familiar.
Roxie is particularly disappointing given Martin's history on SCTV, which brilliantly lampooned TV and gave her some riotously funny characters to chew on. But Martin's Roxie shows little moxie.
As Roxie, who virtually runs the station, Martin uses a high-pitched , giggly voice and is nice, nice, nice. She even has a sensible husband..
You begin to have hope when she mockingly says, " I'm singlehandedly changing the direction of television today." This in the face of programming like Exercise With the Plotnicks, led by a grotesque twosome who run a kosher French pastry shop.
But there's no real satire at work here, and we see far too little of the station's chaos. And Martin isn't the only one being wasted. Teresa Ganzel, so deliciously dizzy as Bobbi Jo Bobb in Fresno , has to play straight woman as a winsome Loni Anderson-type bookkeeper.
In Take Five, things are marginally better, if only because Segal-a crack banjo player-gets to blow off steam by indulging with his buddies in a Dixieland Jazz quartet. In the musical moments, the show has a relaxed enjoyable feel.
Mostly the show is full of kvetching. Segal has a litany of woes: His wife of 21 years has divorced him; her father, who was his boss, has fired him. And the job he finally lands is no picnic. He'll be fronting for a nincompoop of a boss' son and squabbling with a woman who says he stole her job.
The writing and cast seem more polished here than in Roxie, but it's hard to imagine either show living up to its star's potential.
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