Forgotten ‘70s Sitcom, Named One of the 'Worst TV Spinoffs' of All Time, Ended 46 Years Ago Today
It's been 46 years since Hello, Larry ended its run on NBC. The short-lived sitcom, which starred M*A*S*H legend McLean Stevenson, Donna Wilkes, and future Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kim Richards, aired from January 26, 1979, to April 30, 1980. It was cancelled after just 38 episodes and is barely remembered by many classic TV fans.
Hello, Larry was not technically a spinoff, but it featured multiple crossover episodes with the then-hit Diff'rent Strokes. It ranked at No. 8 on Rolling Stone's list of "the 10 worst TV spinoffs," on a list that included short-lived sequels such as Joanie Love Chachi, the Brady Brides, and Joey.
"And goodbye, Larry," the outlet noted. "NBC designed MacLean Stevenson's new comedy as a spinoff of one of their few hit shows at the time, partially in the hopes that fans would follow. It was apparent from the very beginning, however, that the story of a divorced man fleeing to the Pacific Northwest to become a radio talk show host was not the thing to lift them out of their slump. …Hello, Larry quickly went from great white hope to the butt of jokes and is still considered one of the worst sitcoms of all time."
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Identity crisis
Hello, Larry struggled with its identity from the jump. It started as a show about a radio talk show host, Larry Adler (Stevenson), and his teen daughters (Wilkes, Richards) moving to a new city, with a focus on the call-in radio station. The series swiftly put its focus on the divorced dad's relationship with his girls. Then, crossovers with Diff'rent Strokes took place. New characters were added throughout Hello Larry's two-season run, including Harlem Globetrotters legend Meadowlark Lemon. By season two, Wilkes left and was replaced by Krista Errickson.
Years later, Wilkes explained her departure from the show at the Cinema Wasteland panel, noting that she didn't have "chemistry" with Stevenson.
"We were the kids, and he was the star," Wilkes said of the sitcom. "And it wasn't going so good anyway, Hello, Larry…. Pretty much, I said I wanted to leave. But I think that if we had a leading man that we had really good chemistry with... we had screen tested with about a thousand leading men from all over the world, actually, for that role, and there were quite a few of them that were really good that we really wanted to work with. And McLean was kind of just popped onto the scene because he had left M*A*S*H, and Fred Silverman had promised him his own show. That's why he left M*A*S*H, he wanted to have his own show, and I guess this was his show."
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Stevenson spoke out about the changes to the show
Stevenson had high hopes for Hello, Larry after leaving his iconic M*A*S*H role as Lt. Colonel Henry Blake and starring in two other failed series-a self-titled sitcom and another, In the Beginning, in which he played a liberal priest.
In a March 1979 interview with the Press-Tribune, Stevenson admitted that when he began the role, he "made the mistake" of announcing that he was the "new Bonnie Franklin (One Day at a Time) of TV." "The single parent raising a couple of daughters. The show started that way, but it's not that way now," he added at the time. "We're fighting to overcome the image we first represented."
Stevenson was also confident that then-NBC boss Fred Silverman would stick by the series, but low ratings did it in.
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This story was originally published April 30, 2026 at 8:43 AM.