Perpetual Honeymoon

Led by I Love Lucy, the TV family comedy show has been gradually winning U.S. audiences away from other forms of TV comedy. My Favorite Husband (Sat. 9:30 p.m., CBS), a happy-family newcomer, last week boasted a Trendex rating of 25--compared to only 21.5 for its top competitor, the gaudy Your Show of Shows, starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. The fact that Husband was able to equal, and then surpass, the rating of one of the best and oldest of the expensive variety shows may have played an important part in the decision to break up the team of Caesar and Coca next season (TIME, March 8).

Based on Isabel Rorick's 1940 book, Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, Husband had a two-year run as a radio show starring Lucille Ball. In moving the show to television, CBS's West Coast vice president in charge of network programs, Harry Ackerman, searched hard and long for a properly glamorous pair of young marrieds. He finally decided on Hollywood's Joan Caulfield ("She has some kind of half-woman, half-gamin, half-childlike quality that is perfect") and Broadway's Barry Nelson "He's the handsome, rugged American male"). Like most family comedies, Husband is long on character, short on plot, and played for laughs. It does buck a few popular trends: unlike most TV husbands, Nelson has a modicum of intelligence and, unlike most TV wives, Joan is some distance ahead of the usual lovable idiot.

Ackerman believes that "this is the type of show that can go on forever . . . Most people are married, most people have been in love, so it follows that most people will like our program, because here is real, recognizable domesticity." But there is no real drabness in this domestic life. Over everything is the rosy glow of a perpetual honeymoon. Explains Ackerman: "It isn't sex [that keeps the show going], though that's implied. What it is, really, is a certain quality of love and smooch."

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