[1] The show, a spoof of the soap opera format, depicted the trials and tribulations of a group of executives at the Globatron corporation.

The series featured Eileen Brennan, Greg Evigan, Lois Nettleton, Gary Sandy, Tim Thomerson and Jessica Walter.

[6] Under the working title Womb at the Top, All That Glitters was co-created by longtime soap writer Ann Marcus, with a transgender consultant hired to help Linda Gray develop her character Linda Murkland as well as Eve Merriam, whose off-broadway show The Club featured women as turn-of-the-century male chauvinists "strutting around in top hats and tails and telling sexist jokes.

"[2] Feminists were uncertain how to react to the series, with some being concerned that audiences would not perceive the show as satire but as an attempt to represent how a female-dominated society would actually operate.

[2] It was poorly critically received, with one reviewer going so far as to call the show's theme song "blasphemous" for suggesting that God was female and created Eve first.

[15] Time magazine sharply criticized the series, calling it "embarrassingly amateurish", with "flaccid" and "wearying" jokes, flat writing, "mediocre" acting and "aimless" direction.

Although labeling it "unquestionably the weirdest [show] that Lear has ever produced",[5] New Times found that the series was not "a satire of mannerisms but of attitudes".

[5] All That Glitters, after initially capturing 20% of viewers in major markets in its opening weeks, had lost about half of that audience midway through its run.

[17] In the years since the series, it has garnered something of a positive reputation, with one critic listing it and other Lear efforts as "imaginative shows that contained some of the most striking satires of television and American society ever broadcast".

"You Don't Bring Me Flowers", which had been written with the intention of its being the theme song, was recorded by Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand and made it to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

[19] The replacement, "Genesis Revisited", was later described by The New York Times as "sparkl[ing] with witty rhymes and a punchy good humor".