In the professional sense, recent divorcee Larry Adler (played by former M*A*S*H star McLean Stevenson) has plenty going for him. Host of a popular radio show in Portland, life couldn’t be easier on the job. A little occasional witty banter with his call-in guests and the show’s rotund engineer Earl, and a little flirting with the show’s beautiful producer Morgan were enough to almost make Larry forget the turmoil that waited at home.

That turmoil was the result of his two teenage daughters, who missed their mom and friends who remained in their former hometown of Los Angeles – not to mention their suffering the plight of teenage girls everywhere as they faced various high school issues and, of course, plenty of boys. Making matters decidedly more difficult was the fact that their father was a famous on-air personality. And although he was often eager to give advice on child rearing to his listeners, he wasn't always apt to follow it himself.

Hello Larry was produced by Dick Bensfield and Perry Grant (who had already found success with another single-parent sitcom called One Day at a Time) and debuted in 1978. And since the series was given a time-slot right after another single-parent show called Diff’rent Strokes, it seemed only natural to create a little backstory to link the two shows (and perhaps increase the ratings.) The writers did this by making Larry an old army chum of Philip Drummond, who had his own share of child-raising problems. Drummond also supposedly worked for the corporation that owned Larry’s radio station. As a result, both shows occasionally featured characters from their neighbor-sitcom in many of the episodes.

Other notable cast members included Shelly Fabares, as Larry’s former wife and Kim Richards (Nanny and the Professor, Escape to Witch Mountain) as the youngest daughter Ruthie. In the second season, famed Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon was added to the cast, playing himself as a local owner of a sporting goods store.

Unfortunately, in the winter in 1979, the Iranian Hostage crisis developed – resulting in numerous news interruptions, and often pre-emption, of the show. Perhaps as a result, audiences started tuning out and when spring of 1980 arrived, it was goodbye Larry. All in all, only 35 episodes were produced and to date, no plans have been announced to release the series on DVD.