Ah, the simple pleasure of flagrant sexual innuendo! Three's Company, a 1970s sitcom about a guy pretending to be gay so his prudish landlord will let him live with two female roommates, became a top-rated show thanks to jokes and allusions that seem startling explicit even now. Such nudge-nudge wink-wink ribaldry would never have made it on the air were it not for star John Ritter, whose charisma was demonstrated most clearly in the show's rocky fifth season. Ritter's co-star Suzanne Somers, her ego swollen from sex symbol celebrity, demanded more money than her co-stars and swiftly got axed (though she still appears in the opening credits for the rest of the season). Her replacement Jenilee Harrison never developed the same chemistry with the other two actors, yet the show maintained its high ratings--proving how much the show rode on Ritter's shoulders (though one positive side effect of Somers' departure is that co-star Joyce DeWitt got more to do, as she was a fine comedienne in her own right).

Three's Company was the most farcical show on American television, taking silly scenarios--for example, Jack Tripper (Ritter) finds himself obliged to cook three different dinners in three apartments; or, in order to date his landlord's sexy niece, Jack pretends to have a twin brother named Austin--and pushing them until getting in and out of a room became a fight with the laws of physics. When Chrissy's cousin Cindy (Harrison) joined the cast, her character's clumsiness multiplied the slapstick (one particularly elaborate bit traps Jack in an ironing board). The cocktail of physical mayhem and an endless parade of tight-fitting short-shorts and skimpy nighties (19-year-old Harrison, a former professional cheerleader, was the season's main eye-candy) could have felt lewd and sleazy (imagine, with a shudder, if upstairs neighbor Richard Kline had been the show's star)--but somehow, no matter how craven or lecherous Jack behaved, Ritter remained likable and even inexplicably innocent. Three's Company's scripts weren't always comic gold--over the 22 episodes in this season, sexual misunderstandings pile up like bodies in a WWII movie--but Ritter dependably squeezed out laughs without ever seeming desperate. His relaxed persona, combined with sharp comic timing, made him one of the most enduring television personalities of all time. This box set also features interviews with the producers and with Harrison; nothing surprising gets said, but Harrison--after some ill-advised face-lifts and collagen injections--looks like a frightening caricature of Angelina Jolie. --Bret Fetzer