Three's Company entered the television scene in the midst of TV's "jiggle era," which began in 1976 with ABC's Charlie's Angels and was the medium's response to the sexual revolution and the swinging single. Three's Company, though otherwise apolitical in content, was the first sitcom to address the sexual implications and frustrations of unmarried and unrelated men and women living together, which in 1977 was still somewhat taboo. In the minds of many, male­ female cohabitation was anything but innocent and, apparently, would lead only to the evils of premarital sex. Three's Company toyed with this dilemma in its premise, an Americanized version of the 1973-76 British TV comedy Man about the House.

     Set in Santa Monica, California, the series chronicles the innuendo-laden, slapstick-prone misadven­tures of the affably klutzy bachelor Jack Tripper (played by John Ritter) and two single, attractive women, one a cute, down-to-earth brunette named Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt), the other a sexy, dim­ witted blonde named Christmas "Chrissy" Snow (Suzanne Somers). The three shared an apartment in order to beat the high cost of living, but Jack was also present to provide "manly protection." Though he never broke his vow of keeping a "strictly platonic" relationship with his roommates (the three were really best friends who always looked after each other), the series was rife with double entendres. Antagonists in this domestic farce were the trio's downstairs landlords, first the prudish Stanley Roper, an Archie Bunker-type played by Norman Fell, and later the comically swaggering "ladies man" Ralph Furley, played by Don Knotts. The landlords were so suspicious of the "threesome" arrangement that they would not permit it until after Jack told them he was gay, a "lifestyle" against which, ironically, neither discriminated by refusing housing. Though Jack was a hetero­ sexual with many girlfriends. he masqueraded as an effeminate "man’s man” around the near-sighted Roper, who called him "one of the girls,” and Furley, who often tried to "convert” him; this comic device played heavily at first but was toned down considerably by the show's fourth season. When out of Roper's and Furley's reach, Jack and his upstairs buddy, Larry Dallas (Richard Kline), leered at and lusted after every female in sight, including. in early episodes, Janet and Chrissy. Chrissy, especially, was prone to bouncing around the apartment, braless,in tight sweaters, when she was not clad in a towel, nightie. short-shorts, or bathing suits. The irony here was that even though sex was so ingrained in the Three's Company consciousness, nobody on the show ever seemed to be actually engaging in intercourse, not even the show's only married characters, the sex-starved Helen Roper (Audra Lindley) and her impotent handyman husband. Stan­ ley, the butt of numerous faulty plumbing jokes.

     Three’s Company’s sexiness and libidinal preoccupation helped gain the show tremendous ratings and media exposure. A February 1978 Newsweek cover story on "Sex and TV” featured the trio in a sexy, staged shot. Sixty Minutes presented an interview with Somers, who, in the tradition of Charlie's Angels’ Far­rah Fawcett, became a sex symbol and magazine cover-girl with top-selling posters, dolls, and other merchandise. TV critics and other intellectuals rallied against the show, calling its humor sophomoric, if not insulting. Feminists objected to what they called exploitative portrayals of women (primarily in the Chrissy character) as bubble-brained "sexpots... And while Three's Company was not as harshly condemned among conservative educators and religious organizations as its ABC counterpart Soap (a more satirical comedy with a shock value so high that ABC almost delayed its premiere in the fall of 1977), it received low marks from the Parent-Teacher Association and was targeted in a list of shows whose sponsors were to be boycotted, produced by Reverend Donald Wild­mon 's National Federation for Decency.

     Although Three’s Company would become  notori­ous as titillation television. its origins are that of British bedroom farce and "socially relevant”American sitcoms. In 1976, M*A*S*H writer and producer Larry Gelbart penned an initial Three's Company pilot script, borrowing scenarios and characterizations from Thames Television's Man about the House. However, that pilot, with Ritter, Fell, Lindley, and two other actresses, did not sell. Fred Silverman, programming chief at ABC, requested a revamped pilot for a show he believed  would  be a breakthrough  in sexiness  the same way that CBS's All in the Family was in bigotry. Therefore, show owners Ted Bergman and Don Taffner commissioned All in the Family Emmy­ winning head writers and Jefferson’s producers Don Nicholl, Michael Ross. and Bernie West to rewrite the pilot. The roommates, in Gelbart's script, an aspiring filmmaker and two actresses. took on more bourgeois jobs in the new pilot-Jack became a gourmet cooking student. Janet a florist, and Chrissy an office secretary. The female leads were recast (DeWitt was added for the second pilot, and Somers for the third), the chemistry clicked, and ABC bought the series.

Most critics called Three's Company an illegitimate attempt to use the TV sitcom's new openness for its own cheap laughs. However, Gerard Jones, author of Honey, I’m Home! Sitcoms, Selling the American Dream. notes that the minds behind Three's Company intelligently responded to the times. He suggests that producers Nicholl, Ross. and West recognized that even the highly praised work of producer Norman Lear "had always been simple titillation." The producers simply went a step further. They "took advantage of TV's new hipness.. to present even more titillation "in completely undemanding form,” thus creating "an ingenious trivialization that the public was waiting for.”

  Although Three’s Company jiggled beneath the thin clothing of titillation, the show was basically innocent and harmless. a contradiction that annoyed some critics. Its comedy, framed in the contemporary trapping of sexual innuendo, was basically broad farce in the tradition of I Love Lucy, very physical and filled with misunderstandings. (Lucille Ball loved Three's Company and Ritter's pratfalls so much she hosted the show’s 1982 retrospective special.) As fast-paced, pie­ in-your-face farce. Three’s Company spent little time on characterization, but underlying themes of care and concern among the roommates often fueled the comedy and occasionally led to a tender resolve by episode's end.

     Behind the scenes, three was company until the fall of 1980, when Somers and her husband/manager, Alan Hamel, asked for a raise for her from $30,000 per episode to $150,000 per episode plus l0 percent of the show's profits. Costars Ritter and DeWitt, confused and angry, refused to work with Somers, whose role was reduced to a phone-call from a separate soundstage at the end of each episode (Chrissy had been sent to take care of her ailing mother in Fresno, California). For the remainder of the 1980-81 season, Jenilee Harrison performed as a "temporary" roommate, Chrissy's clumsy cousin Cindy Snow. By the fall of 1981, Somers was officially fired, and Priscilla Barnes was cast as a permanent replacement, playing nurse Terri Alden, a more sophisticated blonde  (Harrison's  character  moved  out to attend a university but occasionally visited  through the spring of 1982). Viewership dropped when Somers left, but Three's Company remained very popular, fo­cusing more on Ritter's physical abilities and his character's transition from cooking student to owner of Jack's Bistro, a French cuisine restaurant.

     Three's Company, weathering key cast changes and Americans' waning interest in sitcoms, remained a top-ten hit through the 1982-83 season. In 1984, how­ever, after 174 episodes, a final People's Choice Award as Favorite Comedy  Series, and an eighth,  embattled season in which it dropped out of the top 30 in the face of competition from NBC's The A-Team, Three's Company changed its format. A final one-hour episode saw Janet get married, Terri move to Hawaii, and Jack fall in love and move in with his new girlfriend. Ritter, who won an Emmy for Outstanding Male Lead in a Comedy in 1984, was the only Three's Company cast member to remain when production resumed in the fall with a new cast and new title. Recycling much of its parent show's comic formula, Three's a Crowd focused on Jack Tripper's relationship with his live-in girlfriend (Mary Cadorette), whose disapproving father (Soap's Robert Mandan) became their landlord. This incarnation lasted one season.

     Three's Company might seem tame television by more recent standards, but it pushed the proverbial envelope in the late 1970s, opening the door for sexier, if not sillier, comedies offering audiences both titillation and mindless escape.