Take a handful of The Odd Couple, add a dash of Mork & Mindy, stir in two teaspoons of Laverne & Shirley, bake for half an hour and serve over a live audience. Voila, the hilarious sitcom of Perfect Strangers, a comedy about mismatched roommates trying to make it in the big city.

Mark Linn-Baker plays Larry Appleton, a Wisconsin native and aspiring photographer who moves to Chicago to find his fortune. He receives a surprise guest at his apartment, one Balki Bartokomous, a distant cousin from the fictional Mediterranean island of Mypos, who has just arrived in America. Balki is kind, innocent and child-like and everything he knows about his new country he learned from pop culture references and advertising jingles. Larry reluctantly takes Balki in and comedy ensues between the clueless Mypiot and his neurotic cousin. The two men end up working at a newspaper and form relationships with Jennifer and Mary Anne, two stewardess living in the same building.

Eventually Balki graduates from the mailroom of the newspaper to draw a weekly comic strip featuring the adventures of his stuffed toy sheep, Dmitri. There are a lot of sheep jokes in the show, as Balki's former career was sheepherding. Larry and Balki end up marrying Jennifer and Mary Anne and the quartet of friends move into a big house together.

Perfect Strangers was a big hit for ABC, kicking off the network's TGIF lineup on Friday nights. One enduring mark left on pop culture is Balki's 'Dance of Joy,' a weird little two step he and Larry performed whenever things were going really well. The series spawned the long-lived Family Matters spin-off that gave the world Steve Urkel in all his nerdish glory.