Mary (1985 TV series)

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For the 1978 variety series, see Mary (1978 TV series)

Mary was a situation comedy aired in the United States by CBS during the 1985-86 television season.

Mary was first aired in December of 1985. It starred Mary Tyler Moore, marking her return to series television after an absence of over six years, during which time she appeared on Broadway in Whose Life Is It Anyway? and in the dramatic film Ordinary People, among other projects. After The Mary Tyler Moore Show, her subsequent ventures into series television, the variety show Mary and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour had been short-running ratings disasters, and Moore decided to return to the sitcom format which had brought her the greatest television success.

In Mary, she played Mary Brenner, a 40-ish divorcée working at a second rate tabloid, the Chicago Eagle. She had formerly been a high-profile writer at a fashion magazine which had recently gone out of business and was now reduced to writing a consumer-assistance column, "Helpline", helping to expose substandard business practices and products and the often uncaring reaction of government to these problems. Her boss, Managing Editor Frank DeMarco (James Farentino), concentrated on sensationalism as he was convinced as that was what really sold papers. He was also quite a ladies' man, and was attracted to Mary, as she was to him, but she found dealing with that situation to be quite awkward.

Also working at the Eagle were the cynical, chain-smoking columnist Jo Tucker (Katey Sagal), the condescending theater critic Ed LaSalle (John Astin), and Tully (David Byrd), a copy editor who could scarcely function because he was going blind but knew he wasn't going away; his job had strong protection from the union. Neighbors included Susan Wilcox (Carlene Watkins), Mary's good friend, whose fiancé Lester Mintz (James Tolkan) seemed to be somehow "connected".

The program never really found much of an audience; after February, Mary was moved to a different time slot in order to attempt to save it. Susan and Lester were written out and Mary's personal life was generally downplayed in favor of her business one. There were some favorable reviews, although some critics pronounced it as more or less a clone of her previous sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The program was eventually cancelled (at Moore's request) in April 1986.