Webster

Synopsis

The show, set in Chicago, revolves around Webster Long (Emmanuel Lewis), a 5-year-old African American orphan whose biological parents, Travis and Gert Long, were recently killed in a car accident. He is taken in by his godfather, retired football star George Papadopolis (Alex Karras), with whom Travis had played professional football in the 1970s, and his wife Katherine (Susan Clark), an upper crust socialite with zero housekeeping skills. George and Katherine's new married life was part of the premise, but it was Webster who was the main focus of the show. The Papadopolises lived in a luxurious high-rise apartment in Chicago, with burly George now working as a sportscaster at local station WBJX-TV, and Katherine working as a consumer advocate, later becoming a family psychologist.

Although the series is set in Chicago, the apartment complex shown in exterior shots of the first two seasons is actually The Mirabella condominium building, located at 10430 Wilshire Blvd, in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California.

Sarcastic social climber Jerry Silver (Henry Polic II) was Katherine's secretary, as well as her professional and personal confidant. Webster also had an uncle, Phillip Long (Ben Vereen) who first appeared near the end of the first season. Phillip had issues with Webster living with a white couple (creating acrimony between him and George) and sought to adopt him and take him to live in Chicago's South Side. After his numerous attempts at this during the second season, Phillip moved to Hollywood to launch an acting career. In the later seasons, Phillip would return in a few guest appearances.

Shortly after being adopted, Webster started calling George by his first name but calling Katherine "Ma'am." In one episode Katherine asked Webster why he used such a formal name, and he explained that he was calling her as close to "Mom" as he could without disrespecting his birth mother. George often called Webster "Web."

Shortly into the second season, Webster accidentally burned down the family's apartment with a science kit, and the Papadopolises had to leave the high-rise. In the next episode, the family moved to a large Victorian house located at 1432 North State Parkway in Chicago's Gold Coast (41.908825°N 87.628949°W / 41.908825; -87.628949). Bill and Cassie Parker (Eugene Roche and Cathryn Damon) were the gregarious middle-aged couple who leased the house to the Papadopolises while they moved into a basement apartment below. Bill, a craftsman/shop teacher, and Cassie, an editor of high-profile romantic and crime novels, were taking in rent in order to complete the numerous additions they were making to the property. George and Bill, despite the competitiveness that occurred between them, became good buddies; Cassie and Katherine became each other's confidants; and Webster easily became the apple of the Parkers' eye, often retreating to the basement for special quality time with them.

Production history

When Alex Karras and Susan Clark married in real life, they started their own production company, Georgian Bay Ltd. ABC approached the couple about a sitcom development deal which resulted in a proposed romantic-comedy series, Another Ballgame, to star Karras as an ex-NFL player who quickly found true love with a socialite consumer advocate (Clark) on a cruise. ABC picked it up for the fall 1983 schedule, with Paramount Television as packager, but major changes would occur before the premiere.

After seeing Emmanuel Lewis in a Burger King commercial, ABC's programming chief, Lew Erlicht, wanted to give the actor his own series. At this time, Another Ballgame creator Stu Silver desired to develop an original show based on the lead characters portrayed by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in the film Woman of the Year and saw Alex Karras and Susan Clark's on-screen chemistry as being strikingly reminiscent of this.

The network felt the need to cast Lewis in a project quickly, before he grew another inch (like child actor Gary Coleman, who was also small for his age, Lewis would end up at 4 ft 3 in (1.30 m)). With the number of comedy pilots ABC had greenlit for that fall's schedule, it was likely that Lewis would not be able to secure his own series and timeslot unless he was worked into already-existing comedy projects. So, among other series, co-producers on Another Ballgame were approached about working Lewis into the show. Stars Karras and Clark liked the idea of the sudden marriage and instant adoption of a young black boy, and the Webster character was thus created.

The premise of Webster's parents' death, and his inclusion into the Papadopoulos household, originated with the second phase of the pilot, which had the show's title changed to Then Came You. Executives soon made it clear that the show's major focus would be on the Webster character, instead of it being a split romantic/family comedy. The character of George Papadopolis' buddy and broadcasting colleague, played by Art LaFleur, was summarily dropped from the regular cast; once getting to air, LaFleur only appeared in the pilot.

Karras and Clark did not approve this round of changes, as creative control was still in their hands with Georgian Bay. However, Clark originally prevented their co-producers and ABC from changing the series' title to Webster, since she wanted to maintain the ensemble aspect of the series. While early promotions for the sitcom carried the title Then Came You, network politics would end up violating Clark's request; ABC executives ultimately settled on Webster just before its fall premiere.

Cancellation and move to syndication

Even though Webster had seen its overall ratings decline leading into its cancellation, the series had always drawn a large audience of younger viewers; in fact, Webster's largest audience was children.

At the time of the cancellation of Webster by ABC, there was a trend in syndication of seeing various television series that had been cancelled by the three major networks find new life as weekly syndicated series (examples of the time including Too Close for Comfort, Mama's Family, Charles in Charge, Fame, 9 to 5, It's a Living, and Punky Brewster). Even before Webster fell out of the Nielsen top 30 on ABC, Paramount had signed an exclusive deal with the show's producers to continue the show in first-run syndication if the network eventually had reason to cancel it before it reached its 100th episode. (This package deal also gave the same option to the Paramount-produced Cheers and Family Ties, if either of them were to see an early demise on NBC, but both series enjoyed long runs on that network.)

Although Webster managed to hit its hundredth episode at the end of its final season on ABC, Paramount decided to exercise their option to keep the show in production. By doing this Paramount was no longer bound by network standards and could easily target the young audience that made up the majority of its Webster viewer base. Paramount's syndication arm began a drive to sell the series to local stations, and enough bought the series to enable a fifth season to be produced.

Webster's fifth season premiered in syndication on September 21, 1987, with a three-episode story arc which saw Webster, George, and Katherine head to San Francisco. Beginning with the fourth episode of the season, the Papadopolis household gained a new member in George's nephew Nicky (Corin Nemec), who moved in when his parents went off to work in Nigeria on assignment for the United Nations. Nicky provided Webster with a sort of "brother figure", and the two got along famously. However, Nicky was gone from the show at the start of season six (Nemec would later reach greater fame as the star of Fox's Parker Lewis Can't Lose). Although no longer a regular when the series moved to first-run syndication, Papa Papadopolis continued to make a few guest appearances during the fifth and sixth seasons, as did Webster's friend Tommy and malt shop owner Benny.

While the lead character's plots continued to mature somewhat with Webster's onset of pre-teendom, the same "cutesy factor" remained, thanks in part to Lewis' timing and portrayal. However, this was something Lewis was slowly tiring of, despite the fact that he had more creative control over Webster at this point. Now 17 years old and about to complete his high school education (which was followed by his enrollment at Clark Atlanta University in 1989), Lewis did not have the desire to continue portraying a character roughly half his age. Ultimately, due to Lewis' height, the character of Webster Long was only depicted between the ages of 6 and 12 years old over the show's six seasons. Early in the 1988–89 season, with Lewis clearly outgrowing the title role, Karras and Clark also decided that the time was right to move on. Webster's sixth season was announced to be its last, with the finale airing on March 10, 1989. Instead of a typical series finale, the last episode—titled "Webtrek"—saw Webster go on an adventure aboard the Starship Enterprise from the series' Paramount-produced sibling, Star Trek: The Next Generation. There, he interacts with Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn) from TNG, whom Webster attempts to humanize, while a series of Webster flashbacks are shown that depict the concept of feelings.

Cast

Main cast

Susan Clark as Katherine Calder-Young Papadopoulos

Alex Karras as George Papadopoulos

Emmanuel Lewis as Webster Long

Henry Polic II as Jerry Silver

Cathryn Damon as Cassie Parker (1984–1986)

Eugene Roche as Bill Parker (1984–1986)

Recurring cast

Ben Vereen as Uncle Phillip Long (1984–1985)

Jack Kruschen as George "Papa" Papadopoulos, Sr. (1985–1989)

Chad Allen as Rob Whitaker/Joiner (1985–1986)

Carl Steven as Petey/Roger (1983–1987)

Danny McMurphy as Timmy/Andy (1986–1987)

Gabe Witcher as Tommy (1987–1989)

Nick DeMauro as Umpire/Benny (1986–1988)

Corin Nemec as Nicky Papadopoulos (1987–1988) (credited as Corin "Corky" Nemec)

Notable guest stars

Heather O'Rourke as Melanie (season 1)

Harrison Page as Travis Long (flashback sequence, season 1)

Bumper Robinson as Curtis (season 1)

Richard Karron as Maurice (seasons 1–2)

Neva Patterson as Emily Calder-Young, Katherine's mother (seasons 2–3)

The Four Tops as themselves (seasons 4, 5 and 6)

Tiffany Brissette as Kathy (season 2)

Alison Sweeney as Beth ("The Uh-Oh Feeling", season 2)

Mayim Bialik as Frieda (seasons 5–6)

Frank Gifford as himself (season 2)

Diahann Carroll as herself (season 2)

Jack Elam as Dusty ("How the West Was Once", season 3)

Alan Autry as Jack ("How the West Was Once", season 3)

Norman Fell as Charlie ("Almost Home", season 3)

Mac Davis as "Uncle" Jake Tyler ("Almost Home", season 3)

Faith Ford as Terry Berman ("Almost Home", season 3)

Patrick Ewing as himself ("One More Shot", season 3)

John Thompson as himself ("One More Shot", season 3)

Nielsen ratings

1983–84: #26 (17.47 rating)

1984–85: #22 (17.46 rating)

1985–86: #41 (15.30 rating)

1986–87: #46 (13.80 rating)

U.S. syndication

ABC aired reruns of Webster on its daytime schedule from December 1986 to July 1987. In addition to its continuation as a weekly series in syndication for 1987, and since Webster reached the so-called "magic number" of 100 episodes before ABC's cancellation decision, Paramount began distributing reruns of the four previous seasons to local stations alongside the new episodes produced for syndication. When the series ended in 1989, the syndicated Webster episodes were added to the rerun package.

USA Network aired reruns of the show from September 22, 1997, to March 13, 1998. It also aired on Superstation WGN from September 21, 1998, to September 2, 1999 (which was, until 2016, the last time that Webster appeared on national television).

Webster also aired on Chicago's local station MeTV and WMEU-CA (now known as MeTV's sister station MeToo since March 2008) from 2006 to 2009. It aired on Antenna TV on weekend afternoons from June 4, 2016, as the leadoff program of its "Saturday Summerthons" marathon programming stunt when it first began, to December 27, 2020.

Streaming

Hulu acquired rights to stream all seasons of Webster, from June 2014, to March 2018.

On September 10, 2021, Pluto TV announced that they would stream classic CBS shows (which involves Webster), including The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple, etc. In October 2021, the show was added to Pluto TV.

Home media

Shout! Factory (under license from CBS Home Entertainment) has released the first four seasons on DVD in Region 1.

On October 9, 2012, Shout! Factory released a 20 episode best-of set entitled Webster- 20 Timeless Episodes.