To me, this movie is perfection.

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Peter Christopher was the lead man . He played a bachelor (Michael) who was determined to never marry in spite of his bosses family values Peters boss baby food mogul Max Brahms was controlling and Michael had to ask a beautiful hat check clerk (Greta Patterson) to pose as his wife and the charade became out of control and the antics off the wall. Yet they continued to fool Michaels boss.What Michael did not realize is that his neighbor (Bryan Obyrne) was a peeping Tom because he watched the comings and goings from the Sixth floor where Michael lived to the eighth floor where Greta lived.There may have been a few sparks of love but cupids arrow did not hit its target in the first season and cupid had no other seasons to score . So the possibility of them marrying was left hanging

When this show debuted, I was all of 8 years old. I loved it! Firstly, I would've married Michael Callan in 1966, if he'd only asked! I thought he was gorgeous. And Patricia Harty? Adorable.The premise of the show sounds ridiculous now, but back then, there really wasn't any fuss and bother about discrimination in the workplace (or sexual harassment - just watch "Mad Men"!). If a boss said you had to be married to receive a promotion in his company, then you had to be married. Now, of course, if your boss laid down such a condition, you'd engage a lawyer and sue. But in 1966, you couldn't. What you could do was find a female friend, and pretend to be married, as far as your boss was concerned.Luckily for Callan's character, he earned enough money to pay for an apartment in his building to house his "occasional wife". This not only helped to seal the deal - it also ensured that she was close at hand when needed. And having the apartments two floors apart gave us the opportunity to see the comic facial expressions of the guy who lived in between, as the Occasional Spouses ran up and down the fire escape.The show was pretty racy for its time. The characters appeared to have sexual relationships without intending for them to end in marriage. Woooooooo....In the pilot, Callan's mother nagged him about still not being married. She said, "You're not... 'eccentric'... are you?" (what a funny way of enquiring about his sexuality!), which he exasperatedly and quickly denied. It cracked me up.I wouldn't mind seeing more episodes of this show, but I think it really was a bit of a one-trick-pony. There would've been only so many times where the boss showed up uninvited, or one or the other partner was seen with someone else... I don't see how it could've gone on longer than a year, now that I think about it.Still, I thought it was a fun show to watch, and enjoyed seeing the pilot again.

I remember watching Occasional Wife back in the 1980s when it aired on the old CBN cable network. While the show itself was OK ( it had its moments ) but the opening of the show pretty much, well was the show. The plot and everything can be found within the first 30 seconds of the program.A previous post wondered why this show isn't available on DVD. I think I have a hunch as to why. The act of a company hiring only those who are married is illegal today and if a company was found to do such a thing they could find themselves into very big trouble. Prehaps its for this reason why we may never see Occasional Wife come to DVD or even be seen anywhere on TV again.

On a scale (for television sitcoms) I'd be generous if I gave OCCASIONAL WIFE a "4" out of "10". I seem to be in a minority on this thread, but I watched it two or three times while it was on the air in 1966, and it was always too situation oriented. Meaning it was too mechanical to be believed.The story is that Michael Callan works for a baby food company: the Brahams Baby Food Company. It is run by Mr. Brahms (Jack Collins - an obscure moon faced character actor). Since the company is named for it's owner, the attempt to do a type of pun (for want of a better term) regarding Johannes Brahms famous musical piece (his lullaby, that we sing the words, "Lullaby, and good night..." to.)is there. Mr. Brahms is one of those hundreds of self-centered bosses on television (and in the movies) who think they know best. He has a company that deals in baby food, so the executives should be married men, preferably with children. Brahms tells Callan that unless he is married, he cannot work for Brahms. That this stupid point of view overlooks that Callan is a hard working young man who does a good job never enters the idiot boss's mind. He reminds me of Edward G. Robinson in GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM, as the puritanical dairy company millionaire, Mr. Nurdlinger.Facing dismissal, Callan gets the idea that he must have what is a stand-in wife. He knows Patricia Harty from her job as a hat check girl (and she lives in his apartment house - how she does this given the disparity of their salaries is never explained). He offers her money if occasionally she will agree to be his "occasional wife." One of the running jokes is that they will both use the interconnecting fire-escape outside the living room window to meet on the floor between in front of the window of their other neighbor (Bryan O'Byrne) confusing him while he is in the middle of a wide variety of personal activities which he proceeds to botch up while he watches them on his fire escape.Each episode dealt with a different "crisis" that Callan had to face dealing with his own boss and job, and how his arrangement with Harty keeps interfering with her own personal life (it's hard for her to go out on dates if she is on call for Callan to satisfy the idiocies of his boss). I recall (vaguely) an episode where the situation gets reversed, with Harty being romanced by a pest named Bernie, who learns of the existence of Callan. Instead of simply introducing Callan as her husband, she introduces him to Bernie as her brother. Wonderful - Bernie introduces Callen to his dippy sister Bernice. So in that episode Callan and Harty had to keep running between his and her apartments to satisfy the idiot boss about being married, while then satisfying the stupid brother and sister thinking they were on a cool, promising double date with another unattached brother and sister.The acting was reasonably good, but not the most memorable. As it lasted one season, I suspect the script writers did not know how it would end exactly, but presumably (had it lasted as long as CHEERS or COSBY) Callan's and Harty's characters would have eventually actually married. But it was not worth keeping beyond one season - it was a mediocre comedy.