What Might've Been: Bridget Loves Bernie (1972)

 To paraphrase the Batman, network executives are a superstitious and cowardly lot. Cowardly in that they caved to pressure from Jewish groups opposed to the interfaith union of the title characters in CBS' 1972 entry, Bridget Loves Bernie.

Bernie Steinberg (David Birney) is a cab driver who's also trying to establish himself as a writer. He meets & falls in love with Bridget Fitzgerald, an Irish Catholic (Meredith Baxter), and the couple are married before the first month of the season.

The supporting cast has a few familiar faces, including character actors Harold J. Stone and Ned Glass, and future icons Audra Lindley (later of Three's Company) and David Doyle (Charlie's Angels). Doyle had already been making the rounds, one of his earliest appearances coming seven years earlier in The Trials of O'Brien, also for CBS, starring Peter Falk.

Bridget Loves Bernie had strong ratings, hammocked between established hits All in The Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the front end of CBS' powerhouse Saturday lineup. Unfortunately, back in those days, marrying outside of your faith was frowned upon. Perhaps not so much now, I'm not sure.

We bring this forward because of a marathon that aired Saturday on Catchy Comedy (formerly Decades)

Edit, 2/8/24: Had to change the video. Here's a sample from the opener:

A year after the series ended, Birney & Baxter were married in real life, and both moved on to other series. Birney, for example, was cast in the fictionalized adventures of Serpico, and, if memory serves correctly, he was also on St. Elsewhere for a bit. Meredith Baxter Birney struck gold with back-to-back hits with Family and Family Ties.

Rating: B.