[James2001]

And if anyone over here does know who Jaleel White is, it will almost certainly be for playing Sonic The Hedgehog, and not Urkel!

Reading about Family Matters, it seems like a very bizarre show itself- began as a fairly straightforward family sitcom, but by the end you had stories with things like time travel, cloning and robots. Seems strange how a show can make such a change!

Quite interesting actually how many very long running US sitcoms were, as far as I can tell, never shown here, terrestrially at least (a fair amount of old US TV did turn up on early satellite and cable channels though). Though the fact ITV schedules aren't readily available in the way the BBCs are, and what was shown varied from region to region, it makes it hard to be entirely sure. It's possible some shows had short runs in 1 or 2 regions that I can't find.

For example, I can't find any evidence that The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet and Make Room For Daddy, the first 2 US sitcoms to hit the 10 year mark (the former ran for 14- still the longest running sitcom on US TV, the latter for 11) were ever shown here terrestially (though the Lifestyle channel definitely showed the latter in the early 90s). Also can't find any evidence that The Andy Griffith show, also massive in the US, was shown here (Forces TV did show the spin-off Gomer Pyle USMC a few years back though- interesting they picked up a 50 year old spin off to a show that was never shown here). Seems unusual how shows can be such long running hits in the US but seemingly not get even short runs over here.

Though Andy Griffith himself isn't entirely unknown here, seeing as Matlock seems to have been in repeat on the CBS channels for years!

Was going to mention My Three Sons as well, which ran for 12 years, but it does seem that had a run in some ITV regions in the 60s.