Television series
Kate & Allie
Kate & Allie is a warm, gently progressive sitcom about two divorced best friends who pool households and kids rather than go it alone in early-80s Manhattan. It's low on jeopardy, high on companionship — jokes come from budgeting, dating disasters and school-run logistics, not zingers. Watch it for the easy chemistry between Curtin and Saint James and the quietly radical idea that friendship can function as family.
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Grace and Frankie2015
Grace and Frankie takes almost the exact same premise — two very different women thrown together after their marriages end — and runs it for seven seasons with sharper jokes, real stakes and two comic legends at the top of their game.
But The setup, with ex-husbands leaving them for each other, is soapier and more melodramatic than Kate & Allie's gentler domestic comedy.
The Golden Girls1985
If you loved watching two women build a household and a family out of friendship, this does it with four, funnier one-liners, and a willingness to talk about sex, aging and grief that 80s CBS never touched.
But The tone is brasher and broader — less naturalistic bickering, more setup-and-punchline rhythm.
One Day at a Time2017
Norman Lear's original single-mom sitcom is the show Kate & Allie is quietly answering — a divorced woman raising two daughters alone, funny and unexpectedly candid about money, dating and independence.
But It's a decade earlier and looks it — the pacing and studio-audience rhythms are pure 70s Lear.
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Grey Gardens1976
Kate & Allie is the sitcom version of two women running a household together as a substitute family; Grey Gardens is the same image with the safety net removed — one roof, one bond, and no easy exit for either woman.
The Maysles brothers' documentary about a mother and daughter marooned together in a crumbling East Hampton mansion is one of the strangest, most tender things ever put on film — funny, sad and impossible to look away from.
But It's real, unstaged and often uncomfortable — nobody here is trying to make you laugh, and the decay on screen is genuine.
More like this (8)
Designing Women1986
Same era, same appetite for women talking frankly to each other about work, men and politics, but transplanted to an Atlanta design firm with faster, angrier, funnier dialogue.
But It's more about friendship at work than family at home, so the domestic warmth of Kate & Allie is mostly traded for office banter.
Alice1976no page yet
A widowed single mother waits tables and jokes her way through hardship with a found family of diner regulars — the same insistence that a woman rebuilding her life deserves comedy, not just sympathy.
But The blue-collar diner setting and broader slapstick are a long way from Kate & Allie's brownstone domesticity.
Full House1987
Another household reshaped by loss, this time three men raising three girls together — proof the unconventional-family-under-one-roof format works whichever adults you plug in.
But It's aimed squarely at kids and swaps Kate & Allie's dry wit for hugs, lessons and a lot more sweetness.
My Two Dads1987no page yet
Two very different men co-parent a teenage girl neither is sure is biologically theirs — a sillier, sitcom-ier cousin to Kate & Allie's blended-household setup.
But The comedy leans on odd-couple gag mechanics rather than the lived-in, low-key realism Kate & Allie built its reputation on.
Cybill1995no page yet
A prickly, very funny show about a middle-aged divorced woman leaning on her best friend to survive dating, aging and Hollywood — later and meaner, but from the same DNA.
But Cybill Shepherd's character is far more self-absorbed and abrasive than Kate or Allie ever were, which some viewers find exhausting rather than funny.
Murphy Brown1988
Not a roommate sitcom, but the same era and the same refusal to make a single working woman's life a tragedy — sharp, topical and unapologetically opinionated.
But It's a workplace newsroom comedy first, so the domestic throughline is much thinner than in Kate & Allie.
Motherland2016
Same idea — that modern parenthood requires a found family of allies rather than a nuclear unit — restaged as mockumentary-style British comedy with far more bite and far less hugging.
A British single-camera comedy about the friendships parents lean on to survive — sharper, more embarrassing and far less cosy than the American sitcom version, but built on exactly the same instinct that you can't do this alone.
But There's no studio audience or warmth cushioning the jokes; the comedy comes from cringing recognition rather than affection.
The Odd Couple1970
Swap two divorced women for two divorced men, keep the premise of contrasting personalities forced into domestic partnership, and you get the direct structural ancestor of Kate & Allie, more than a decade earlier.
Neil Simon's mismatched-roommates premise, already a hit play and film by the time this series aired, proves the two-very-different-people-forced-to-share-a-home engine works regardless of who you cast in it.
But It's broader and more theatrical, and the gender dynamics feel dated — this is joke-machine sitcom, not the naturalistic warmth of Kate & Allie.
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Cast
Writing
- Sherry CobenCreator