It is the longest-running live-action sitcom ever aired on Fox. The series' run ended with the episode broadcast on May 5, The show is set in Chicago and follows the lives of Al Bundy , a former high school football player turned hard-luck women's shoe salesman; his lazy wife Peggy ; their pretty but dim-witted daughter Kelly ; and their smart-aleck son Bud.
The show also features their neighbors Steve and Marcy Rhoades, both of whom Al finds annoying, but likewise feel the same way about him. Later in the series, Marcy marries Jefferson D'Arcy , a white-collar criminal who becomes her "trophy husband" and Al's sidekick. The series is one of the longest-running sitcoms in American television history, covering 11 seasons with episodes in its run.
Critical reception was mixed during its original run, and the show's sexually charged humor and depiction of a dysfunctional family were in stark contrast to family sitcoms of the era. The series was initially produced by Embassy Communications. Before the series aired publicly the roles for the two Bundy children were re-cast. Ed O'Neill and the show's producers worried about a lack of chemistry with the parents and the original actors cast as the children. The working title of Married Moye were told by Garth Ancier and other Fox executives "to be as outrageous as they could be, doing the sort of material the Big Three would never allow on the air", wrote Daniel M.
Kimmel in For season 1, Metacritic calculated an average of 58 out of based on 5 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". In , Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times praised the casting of the Bundys, found the character development of the D'Arcys lacking, and warned viewers: "The satire is heavy-handed.
O'Connor described it as "loud, coarse and life-of-the-party vulgar". Despite the show's enduring popularity and fanbase, Married Part of the reason was that Fox, a startup network, did not have the affiliate base of the Big Three television networks , thus preventing the series from reaching the entire country. In an interview for a special commemorating the series' year anniversary in , Katey Sagal stated that part of the problem the series faced was that many areas of the country were able to get Fox only through low-quality UHF channels well into the early s, while some areas of the country did not receive the new network at all, a problem not largely rectified until the launch of Foxnet in June and later the network's acquisition of National Football League rights which led to several stations across the United States changing affiliations.
