Set in a contemporaneous home in Staten Island, the show starred Harry Morgan as the eccentric elderly family patriarch Martin Vanderhof, and Lois Nettleton as his daughter, Penny.
[3] You Can't Take It with You was a part of a syndication package that was conceived by NBC for its owned-and-operated stations.
Five sitcoms each aired once a week under the brand "Prime Time Begins at 7:30", and were produced by various production companies contracted by NBC.
Besides You Can't Take It With You, which aired on Wednesdays, the series included Marblehead Manor (from Paramount Television, airing Mondays), centering on a mansion owner and the people who live with him;[4] She's the Sheriff (from Lorimar-Telepictures and airing Tuesdays), a comeback vehicle for Suzanne Somers which cast her as a widowed county sheriff;[4] Out of This World (from MCA Television and airing Thursdays), which starred Maureen Flannigan as a teenager born to an alien father and human mother that develops supernatural abilities on her 13th birthday;[5] and a revival of the short-lived 1983 NBC series We Got It Made (produced by Fred Silverman for MGM Television and closing out the week on Fridays), as part of an ongoing trend at the time in which former network series were revived in first-run syndication.
[5] The package was aimed at attracting viewers to NBC stations in the half-hour preceding prime time (8:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones, 7:00 p.m. elsewhere),[5][6] and was conceived as a result of the FCC's loosening of the Prime Time Access Rule, legislation passed in 1971 that required networks to turn over the 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) time slot to local stations to program local or syndicated content; and the relaxation of the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, which had prevented networks from producing content from their own syndication units to fill the void.