Punky Brewster: Season 01 (1984)

Abandoned by her parents, eight-year-old Penelope "Punky" Brewster and her little dog, Brandon, set up a home of their own in an abandoned Chicago apartment, where they are discovered by the building's manager, Henry Warnimont (George Gaynes). A bachelor with no great love for either kids or dogs, Henry nonetheless takes a liking to Punky and Brandon, and arranges with the authorities to have the two castaways live with him -- temporarily of course. Thus begins season one of the NBC sitcom Punky Brewster, in which the wide-eyed, spunky heroine brings happiness and purpose to the life of grumpy old Mr. Warnimont -- and several others along the way. During the series' initial season, Eddie Deezen appears as eccentric apartment-building maintenance man Eddie Malvin, while Dody Goodman is seen as Punky's schoolteacher, Mrs. Morton. Both Deezen and Goodman would be gone from the series before long, but three other characters introduced this year, Punky's classmates Cherie Johnson (played by Cherie Johnson!), Margaux Kramer (Ami Foster), and Allen Anderson (Casey Ellison), would "go the distance" right to the end of the run. Likewise seen throughout the series' four seasons, both on and off the network, is Henry's upstairs neighbor Betty Johnson (Susie Garrett), a registered nurse who has been legal guardian to Cheri ever since the deaths of the girl's parents. Once past its three-part opener, "Punky Finds a Home," the series settles into a unique pattern. While most of the subsequent episodes run a full half-hour, others ("Punky Gets Her Own Room," "Gone Fishin," "Go to Sleep") run a scant 15 minutes each. This is because Punky Brewster was originally telecast on Sunday evenings, just after NBC's weekly football telecasts; whenever a game ran overtime, Punky lost half of its 30-minute time slot, necessitating a stockpile of shorter episodes. Conversely, Punky Brewster's season-one finale, "Fenster Hall," ran a full hour -- that is, it was seen in two half-hour segments over a period of two weeks. In addition to bringing the season to a lively close, this elongated episode was also intended as the pilot for a series starring Billy Lombardo as a resourceful orphan named T.C. Fenestra. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi