Charles in Charge joined the CBS Wednesday night lineup at 8:00 pm, placing it against ABC’s hit action series The Fall Guy and the new Michael Landon-led Highway to Heaven on NBC.

At the time, with the exception of their Monday-night comedies (Kate & Allie and Newhart), CBS's sitcom lineup was not performing well in the ratings and Charles in Charge did not do much to change that.

Charles, who has no given surname, is a student at Copeland College (fictional, perhaps meant to represent Rutgers University, whose main campus is in New Brunswick) and is 19 years old when the series begins.

Needing a place to live while attending school, Charles applies for a job working for Stan and Jill Pembroke, an affluent couple in search of a live-in housekeeper.

An arrangement is reached where Charles would take the job with the Pembrokes while he attended Copeland, and in lieu of a salary, he would receive room and board for his duties as caretaker for their children Jason, Douglas, and Lila.

In addition to this, as well as his escapades with his best friend Buddy, Charles has a crush on fellow Copeland student Gwendolyn Pierce and spends quite a bit of his free time trying to court her, which never seems to work.

The second season's first episode featured Charles returning to New Brunswick from his summer vacation, only to discover an unfamiliar family living in the Pembrokes' home.

In September 2007, Arts Alliance America (which subsequently changed its name to Virgil Films & Entertainment during the summer of 2007) announced it had acquired the rights to the series.

When Charles in Charge returned to television, an arrangement had been made with stations owned by Tribune Broadcasting to carry the program in first run.

In 1988, with the series nearing the 100-episode mark, distributor MCA Television began advertising in trade publications that it would begin selling reruns of Charles in Charge to local stations for a fall 1989 launch.