I realized the L.A. Times call must have been prompted by my recent column attacking Roberto Benigni's Holocaust warmedy Life Is Beautiful … which I characterized as a "feel-good fable about the Holocaust."

The "creative team" that set out in the fall of 1978 to put Shirley together began with commensurate ambitions. The show was to be at once witty, happily emotional, and dramatic — a sort of classy example of the genre that one TV Critic has dubbed "warmedy."