Perhaps the last of the nicey-nice American sitcoms of the period, The Brady Bunch would be anathema to today's more sophisticated TV viewers. (At least, one might think it so - but persistent re-runs on US TV are indicative of its tremendous cult following.) In 1969, however, the mass audience still thought kindly of twinkling eyes, neat hairstyles, homely looks and rows of flashing white straight teeth, and laughed merrily at the type of innocent middle-class problems that only these US sitcom families got into. In short, The Brady Bunch is the most typical example of the 'happy-families' US comedy genre - in it, a widowed man with three brats, sorry, children, and a widowed woman with three little darlings of her own, marry and settle down as parents of their six-pack. (Clearly, divorce was still too sensitive an issue for mainstream America to handle in 1969, whereas to be widowed was kinda respectable.)

The widower was Mike, an architect, dad to three boys (Greg, Peter and Bobby) and once voted Father of the Year by a newspaper. Carol Martin, the widow whom he meets and marries, is mom to three girls (Marcia, Jan and Cindy). Together, they set up home in a four-bedroom house in suburban Los Angeles, employing ageing (but wacky) housekeeper Alice Nelson and keeping a cat and shaggy dog. Stories abounded of clubhouses, camping trips, high phone bills, illnesses, school proms, and, as the children grew older, lovesickness. All good clean fluff.

Spin-offs from The Brady Bunch are many, so unceasing is the Americans' interest in seeing how the Brady kids turned out as adults. (They also prove how creator/executive producer Sherwood Schwartz had a knack for exploiting ideas - remembering how he was also responsible for the all-pervading Gilligan's Island) First came the cartoon version, The Brady Kids (22 episodes, 1972-74), then The Brady Bunch Variety Hour/The Brady Bunch Hour (nine editions, 1977), The Brady Brides (ten episodes, 1981, some re-edited from a two-hour TV movie titled The Brady Girls Get Married), A Very Brady Christmas (a one-off TV movie, 1988), The Bradys (six episodes, 1990) and a stage production, The Real Live Brady Bunch, which ran in Chicago in 1990-91. Then, in 1995, Paramount Pictures released The Brady Bunch Movie (director Betty Thomas) which, thankfully, sent-up the whole premise somewhat, in that the Brady family were still living in the 1970s while all around them time had moved on a couple of decades. Good reviews meant that a second movie (A Very Brady Sequel, director Arlene Sanford) was released in 1996, since when two more TV-movies have followed: The Brady Bunch (Fox, 16 May 2000) and Growing Up Brady (NBC, 21 May 2000), the latter based on the autobiography of Barry Williams, who played Greg in the original show.