While Samantha complies with Darrin's wishes to become a normal suburban housewife, her magical family disapproves of the mixed marriage and frequently interferes in the couple's lives.

The witches and their male counterparts, warlocks, are very long-lived; while Samantha appears to be a young woman, many episodes suggest she is actually hundreds of years old.

The main setting for most episodes is the Stephenses' home at 1164 Morning Glory Circle, in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood, either in Westport, Connecticut, or Patterson, New York, as indicated by conflicting information presented throughout the series.

[6] In the film Bell, Book and Candle, modern witch Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) uses a love spell on Shep Henderson (James Stewart) to have a simple fling with him but she genuinely falls for the man.

Creator Saks, executive producer Harry Ackerman, and director William Asher started rehearsals for the pilot on November 22, 1963; this coincided with the assassination of John F.

First season producer and head writer Danny Arnold set the initial style and tone of the series, and he also helped to develop supporting characters such as Larry Tate and the Kravitzes.

Arnold, who wrote for McHale's Navy and other shows, thought of Bewitched essentially as a romantic comedy about a mixed marriage; his episodes kept the magic element to a minimum.

[citation needed] In its first season, Bewitched was the American Broadcasting Company's number one show and the best-rated sitcom among all three networks, coming second in ratings only to Bonanza.

By his own admission, Froug was not very familiar with Bewitched and found himself in the uncomfortable position of being the official producer even though Asher was making most of the creative decisions.

Beginning in the show's sixth year, Alice Ghostley was finally used to play the character of Esmeralda, a kind but shy and inept witch who served as a nanny and nursemaid to Darrin and Samantha's children, Tabitha and Adam.

(Ghostley had appeared in a similar role as Naomi, an incompetent domestic, hired by Darrin to do housecleaning for a pregnant Samantha in the second-season episode "Maid To Order".)

Towards the end of the season five, York's increased disability, which had caused numerous shooting delays and script rewrites, resulted in his collapsing on the set in January 1969 while filming the episode "Daddy Does His Thing."

Fewer recurring characters were used this season; the Kravitzes, Darrin's parents and Uncle Arthur did not appear at all, and Louise Tate only featured in three episodes.

[13] As a result, Chevrolet vehicles were often prominently featured on the series, even as a part of the storyline (an example of product placement), and there were many scenes of the Stephenses having breakfast in the kitchen.

Production and filming for Bewitched was based in Los Angeles and, although the setting is assumed to be suburban New York, several episodes feature wide-angle exterior views of the Stephenses' neighborhood showing a California landscape with mountains in the distance.

Another example of questionable continuity regarding the location can be seen in Season 6, Episode 6: Darrin's parents drive home after visiting the new baby, passing several large palm trees lining the street.

In creating a series for Paul Lynde, Asher decided to resurrect the Howie concept for ABC and Screen Gems as a replacement for Bewitched the following year.

Many actors regularly seen on Bewitched were also used on Lynde's series including Mabel Albertson, Herb Voland, Jack Collins, Richard X. Slattery, and Dick Wilson.

At the same time, to help fulfill the network's contract with Bewitched, Asher and Harry Ackerman created another ABC sitcom for the 1972–1973 season called Temperatures Rising.

When Screen Gems head John Mitchell and ABC chief programmer Barry Diller noticed that The New Temperatures Rising Show was failing, they contacted William Asher and asked him to come back and salvage the series.

The final episode of Temperatures Rising aired on August 29, 1974, which ended William Asher's original contract with Bewitched and ABC.

"[21] Walter Metz attributes the success of the series to its snappy writing, the charm of Elizabeth Montgomery, and the talents of its large supporting cast.

[9] The first episodes featured a voice-over narrator "performing comic sociological analyses" of the role of a witch in middle class suburbia.

[22] On hand were three surviving actors from the show, Bernard Fox (Dr. Bombay), Erin Murphy (Tabitha), and Kasey Rogers (Louise Tate), as well as producer/director William Asher.

[24] An animated TV special made in 1972 by Hanna-Barbera Productions for The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, this featured teenage versions of Tabitha and Adam visiting their aunt and her family who travel with a circus.

This show would have concerned Tabitha's daughter Daphne, a single woman who despite having the same magical powers as her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, is determined not to use her special abilities to find a soul mate.

The new version of the proposed series, written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, had been on the radar of several major networks, including ABC, after Sony began shopping the project to interested parties.

Exteriors of the neighborhood were filmed at the now Warner Ranch Backlot with Wanda's nosy neighbor Agatha Harkness living in the Stephens house.

In Italy, the series aired on Raiuno, Telemontecarlo, Italia 1, Rai 3, Canale 5, Retequattro, Boing & Paramount Network under the name Vita da strega (Life as a Witch) from 1967 until 1979.

On August 27, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library including Bewitched.