Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) is a recovering alcoholic who, in the show's first episode, returns to the fictional newsmagazine FYI for the first time following a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic residential treatment center.

Her colleagues at FYI include stuffy veteran anchor Jim Dial (Charles Kimbrough), who affectionately addresses Murphy as "Slugger" and reminisces about the glory days of Murrow and Cronkite.

Miles Silverberg (Grant Shaud), a 25-year-old yuppie Harvard graduate and overachiever fresh from public television, is appointed the new executive producer of FYI during Murphy's stay at Betty Ford.

A former Miss America from the (fictional) town of Neebo, Louisiana, Corky is the bane of the other journalists with her perky, relentlessly sunny personality—and dumbfounding lack of sophistication.

Due to overwhelming audience reaction, management decides to retain Corky's services after Murphy's return, usually assigning her to lifestyle pieces or lightweight celebrity profiles.

Despite her omnipresent perkiness, Corky does mature and acquires a fair amount of worldliness over the years, not the least of which comes courtesy of her marriage to high school classmate and writer Will Forest (during which she humorously and cluelessly amends her on-air surname to "Corky Sherwood-Forest"), subsequent divorce, and later elopement with Miles, immediately after which the couple has second thoughts — even before consummating the relationship — and decides they should "first" date (despite already being married to one another), eventually separating on good terms.

Phil's was portrayed as a Washington institution, whose owner knew everything about everybody who had ever been anybody in the capital—ranging from what brand of lingerie J. Edgar Hoover preferred to the identity of Deep Throat (unknown to the public at the time of the series' production).

Jim Dial, now in his 80s, widowed and retired, comes back on an occasional basis to act as an informal mentor to the Murphy in the Morning gang.

It also set up the series-long running gag of Murphy's battles with the off-beat and sometimes downright bizarre characters who were sent by Personnel to act as her secretary, none of whom ever last for more than an episode, save two; one played by Paul Reubens.

The most prominent was when Murphy Brown was asked to guest star as herself in the pilot of a sitcom entitled Kelly Green, about a female investigative journalist.

Subsequent seasons saw the emergence of story arcs involving network politics with Gene Kinsella, Frank and Murphy's rivalry and Eldin's ongoing infatuation with Corky.

The show went on, and FYI featured several changes in on- and off-camera staff: Peter Hunt, McGovern and Miller Redfield temporarily joined the regulars at the anchor desk.

A significant story arc saw the network squelch an FYI exposé on the tobacco industry, leading to the resignation of first Dial, then the remainder of the cast.

(Actor Robert Pastorelli left Murphy Brown for his own starring vehicle, the sitcom Double Rush, which lasted one season in 1995.)

Shaud left the series and comedian Lily Tomlin was brought in to replace him in the role of executive producer Kay Carter-Shepley to help bolster the sitcom's ratings.

[3] In the original run's final episode, Murphy met and interviewed God (played by Alan King) and Edward R. Murrow in a dream while undergoing surgery.

Around 2008, the show came the closest to being brought back to the air following Sarah Palin's nomination as the Republican vice-presidential nominee with comparisons being drawn between her and former Murphy Brown critic Dan Quayle.

Candice Bergen was then approached about signing on to the project and she agreed on the condition that Faith Ford, Joe Regalbuto, and Grant Shaud join as well.

[5] On February 26, 2018, it was announced that Faith Ford, Joe Regalbuto, and Grant Shaud were joining the main cast and reprising their roles from the series' original run.

[13] On April 19, 2018, it was announced that Tyne Daly had joined the main cast in the role of Phyllis, the sister of the deceased bar owner Phil from the series' original run.

[14] On August 5, 2018, it was confirmed during the Television Critics Association's annual summer press tour that Kimbrough would reprise his role from the series' original run in a three-episode story arc.

[16] In October 2018, it was announced that Merle Dandridge had joined the cast in a recurring capacity and that Bette Midler, Brooke Shields, John Larroquette, Katie Couric, and Peter Gallagher would appear in guest-starring roles.

Upon the episode's release, it was revealed that the guest star was in fact former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

When her baby's father (ex-husband and current underground radical Jake Lowenstein) expressed his unwillingness to give up his own lifestyle to be a parent, Murphy chose to have the child and raise it alone.

At the end, Brown helps organize a special edition of FYI focusing on different kinds of families, then arranges a retaliatory prank in which a truckload of potatoes is dumped in front of Quayle's residence while a disc jockey playfully commenting on the incident notes the Vice President should be glad people were not making fun of him for misspelling "fertilizer".

Quayle's complaint notwithstanding, prime-time TV in 1992 was "boosting family values more aggressively than it has in decades", wrote Time magazine critic Richard Zoglin, citing everything from Home Improvement to Roseanne.