Tattingers

Tattingers (later Tattinger's) is an American comedy-drama series that aired by the NBC television network as part of its 1988 fall lineup. After failing in the Nielsen ratings as an hour-long program, the plot and characters were briefly revived in the spring of 1989 as the half-hour situation comedy Nick & Hillary.

An unaired episode, "Screwball," aired on TV Land on April 4, 1999.^[1]

Synopsis

Tattingers is the story of a couple, Nick and Hillary Tattinger (Stephen Collins and Blythe Danner), who had co-owned a posh Manhattan restaurant. They had divorced, but remained partners in the restaurant until Nick was shot by a drug dealer and decided to sell the restaurant and leave Manhattan for Paris. However, his successors proved incapable of running the restaurant properly, so Nick reclaimed the restaurant from them and decided to give it another go. Real-life Manhattan celebrities often appeared in cameo roles as themselves, Nick's exclusive clientele.

Reception

This program was a ratings failure and was cancelled in January 1989. However, NBC was apparently unwilling to give up totally on the characters or the concept, and the program was revamped into a half-hour sitcom, Nick & Hillary. This new series premiered on April 20, 1989,^[2] but proved even less successful than its predecessor and was cancelled after only two episodes.

References

• Brooks, Tim, and Marsh, Earle, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows