Brother's Keeper (1998 TV series)

Premise

The series centers around Porter Waide (Ragsdale), a milquetoast college History professor and widowed single father, raising his son, Oscar (Cooper), by himself until his brother, Bobby (O'Bryan), a football placekicker who had just been signed to play with the San Francisco 49ers and has a reputation for being a bad boy, moves in with his brother and nephew, as part of a stipulation in his new multimillion-dollar contract in which Bobby has to live with someone who is more responsible than him, in order to change his troublemaking ways.

This situation proves incredibly challenging as Bobby continues to exhibit childish behavior in his adult years, which often aggravates Porter, as well as Bobby's smart, sarcastic and harried sports agent Dena Draeger (Bess Meyer), who has the unenviable task of "babysitting" Bobby to ensure he stays out of trouble and keep him from violating the terms of his new NFL contract. Although Porter is reluctant to let Bobby stay with him and his son, he realizes that Oscar is thrilled with the fact that he now gets spend time with his famous uncle, with Bobby becoming an unlikely second parent to his nephew and making attempts to try to get his brother to have fun and loosen up, while Porter tries teaching Bobby how to be a responsible person.

Main cast

Recurring cast

Special guest appearances

Broadcast and ratings

The series aired as part of ABC's TGIF comedy lineup on Friday evenings; despite this, some of the show's episodes featured decidedly more adult humor than the rest of the TGIF lineup, which otherwise targeted pre-teens and teenagers (though like most family sitcoms aired on TGIF, Brother's Keeper incorporated humor that would appeal to both adult viewers as well as to the lineup's target audience); as such, the series was aired at 9:30 p.m. ET on Friday evenings and was one of two freshman series added to the block that season, along with the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen starring vehicle Two of a Kind (both series were joined by veteran TGIF shows Boy Meets World and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch).

Despite respectable ratings, often winning the 9:30 p.m. timeslot in most demographics and averaging 10.7 million total viewers during its run (finishing the 1998-99 season #62 out of 155 primetime shows, tied with the CBS newsmagazine 48 Hours, according to Nielsen Media Research), the series was cancelled by ABC in May 1999.

Production

Brother's Keeper was produced by Axelrod-Widdoes Entertainment and Donald Todd Productions in association with Studios USA Television. Show creator Donald Todd served as the executive producer and showrunner of the series, alongside non-writing executive producers Jonathan Axelrod and James Widdoes (the latter of whom had also directed fifteen of the series' 23 episodes, including the pilot episode and the final episode of the first season, that effectively became the show's series finale, "The Duel").

Online streaming

Since October 12, 2007, 22 of the series' 23 episodes (excluding the show's ninth episode "The Boss of Me") are available through Hulu though its distribution agreement with part-owner NBCUniversal (one of the show's production companies, Studios USA, was absorbed into Universal Television after NBCUniversal predecessor company Vivendi Universal acquired USA Networks' Film and television assets in 2002; NBCUniversal Television Distribution currently handles the series' domestic and international distribution rights).

The series is among a handful of program titles (both ongoing and discontinued television series with complete seasons) that do not require a subscription to the Hulu Plus service to access all of the episodes online, though a Hulu Plus subscription is required to view the episodes on internet-enabled television sets and mobile devices.