I Love Lucy holds a hitherto unchallenged position as the most popular domestic comedy series ever devised for this, or any other medium. In the USA the programme has a regular following of 50,000,000, while throughout its run in this country it has figured prominently in the ‘Top Ten’ ratings.

A superbly scripted comedy series, I Love Lucy tells the story of a young married couple, Lucy and Ricky, who live in a comfortable New York apartment. Ricky is a band leader and Lucy has an almost overpowering ambition to join him in show business. Ricky has always felt that a woman’s place is in the home, and therefore does all he can to thwart his wife’s efforts to get on the stage.

Their married life is explored with charming intimacy, and despite the hilarity (and some alarming quarrels), one is never in doubt that Ricky and Lucy are very much in love.

The tremendous success of the series rests on the twin talents of the real-life husband and wife team of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Desi Arnaz really is a bandleader off the screen, and leads one of New York’s plushiest Latin-American combos. Lucille Ball is a film star comedienne who has starred with her husband in The Long Long Trailer, and more recently in Forever Darling. Desi, incidentally, produced both these pictures.

The phenomenal success of I Love Lucy has enabled the husband and wife team to form Desilu Productions, a firm which owns not only its own programme but also film studios, television stations, and the programmes of many other performers besides.

Lucy was first shown in this country during the opening week of Independent Television in September 1955, and by the time the Midlands and Lancashire transmitters had opened the programme was on view to some million people.

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