Dick and the Duchess is a rare 1950s CBS situation comedy

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 filmed and set in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and starring Patrick O'Neal and Hazel Court

Hazel Court

Hazel Court was an English actress best known for her roles in horror films during the 1950s and early 1960s.-Early life:...

. O'Neal, a cousin of actor Ryan O'Neal

Ryan O'Neal

Charles Patrick Ryan O'Neal , better known as Ryan O'Neal, is an American actor best known for his appearances in the ABC nighttime soap opera Peyton Place and for his roles in such films as Paper Moon , Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon , A Bridge Too Far , and Love Story , for which he received...

, starred as Dick Starrett, an American insurance

Insurance

In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...

 claims investigator based in London, who is married to Jane, an attractive patrician Englishwoman whom he calls "Duchess". Court was also known for her roles in horror films. Sheldon Reynolds was the executive producer of the series, filmed by Associated-Rediffusion Television.

Twenty-six episodes aired between September 28, 1957, and March 22, 1958. The series aired in Britain during the following 1958–1959 season. In the story line, Jane's family had difficulty accepting Dick both as an American and a "commoner". Jane often got involved in a comical vein in Dick's insurance cases. Beatrice Varley

Beatrice Varley

Beatrice Varley was a British actress who appeared in a variety of television and film roles between 1936 and 1964...

 appeared in a supporting role as Mathilda. Richard Wattis

Richard Wattis

Richard Cameron Wattis , was an English character actor.He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the family electrical engineering firm before becoming a professional actor. After his debut with Croydon Repertory Theatre he made many stage...

 was cast as Peter Jamison, Dick's friend and office associate, in three episodes entitled "Maude", "The Wild Party", and "Bank Robbery". Michael Shepley

Michael Shepley

Michael Shepley , was a British actor, appearing in films and some television between 1931 and 1961....

 played Inspector Stark of Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...

, who sometimes helped Dick with his cases. English actor Ronnie Stevens

Ronnie Stevens (actor)

Ronald Stevens was a London-born English actor known as Ronnie Stevens.He appeared in many television comedy series in regular roles, including May to December, Goodnight Sweetheart and A J Wentworth, BA. He also appeared as the "Minister of Pollution", in The Goodies pollution episode...

 appeared as Rodney, an employee in Dick's office.

Series guest stars were mostly English actors. Margaret Rutherford

Margaret Rutherford

Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford DBE was an English character actress, who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest...

, for instance, appeared as Cynthia Gordon in the 1957 episode "The Kissing Bandit".

Dick and the Duchess aired on Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, sandwiched between Perry Mason

Perry Mason (TV series)

Perry Mason is an American legal drama produced by Paisano Productions that ran from September 1957 to May 1966 on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a fictional Los Angeles defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner...

and The Gale Storm Show

The Gale Storm Show

The Gale Storm Show is an American sitcom starring Gale Storm. The series premiered on September 29, 1956, and ran until 1960 for 143 half-hour black-and-white episodes, initially on CBS and in its last year on ABC...

. Its principal competition was the second half of The Perry Como Show on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. After the initial airing, rebroadcasts of Dick and the Duchess aired on CBS at 7:30 p.m. Fridays from March to May 1958 in the time slot formerly held by Leave It to Beaver

Leave It to Beaver

Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy about an inquisitive but often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood...

, which then switched to Wednesday evenings for the remainder of its first-season run on CBS.