Beginning as a writer and actor with a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, theater company, Tarses reportedly worked as a New York City truck driver for the Candid Camera series before beginning a career in advertising. In the late 1960s he teamed with Tom Patchett as a stand-up comedy duo performing dry, semi-satirical material on the coffeehouse circuit. The Patchett­ Tarses team turned to television writing, gaining credits on musical variety shows and assorted sitcoms prior to working on the writing staff of The Carol Burnett Show, for which they won an Emmy in 1972. The two went on to become collaborative executive producers for MTM Enterprises, where they achieved their first major impact on television history, as writers and producers for the original Bob Newhart Show (CBS, 1972-78), in which Newhart played an introverted psychologist surrounded by a circle of interesting and quirkily eccentric characters.

Building upon their success with The Bob Newhart Show, Tarses and Patchett developed The Tony Randall Show (ABC/CBS, 1976-78), another MTM series, starring Randall as a widowed Philadelphia judge surrounded by his children, housekeeper, secretary, friends, and legal associates. Apparently, this sitcom was the site of great tension between the producers and the networks over the nature and style of the type of innovative "character comedy" that Tarses and Patchett were trying to introduce. During this period, they also produced several other short-lived and often­ controversial series, including We've Got Each Other (CBS, 1977-78), a domestic sitcom about the personal and professional lives of a professional couple, their colleagues, and neighbors, and Mary (CBS, 1978), a comedy/variety hour attempting to revive the televisual charisma of Mary Tyler Moore. However, Mary was a ratings disaster of such magnitude that it was canceled after three episodes, and its embarrassing failure "drummed us out of the TV business for a while," according to Tarses. During a hiatus from tele­ vision following this experience, the Patchett-Tarses team turned to writing screenplays, including two Muppet movies. The writing/producing team returned to television with the poorly received Open All Night (ABC, 1981-82), a sitcom about a convenience store with an ensemble of eccentric customers, and the no­ table Buffalo Bill (NBC, 1983-84), about an unlikable, egomaniacal talk show host, Bill Bittinger (played by Dabney Coleman), and his ensemble of television station coworkers.

During this period, Tarses split from Patchett and developed The Faculty (ABC, 1985). Canceled after one episode, this program about embattled high-school teachers was characterized by its black humor and mock documentary interviews. The ABC network reportedly asked Tarses to reshoot the pilot because they felt it was too dark and they wanted more emphasis on the students rather than the faculty; when he refused, the series was dropped.

Tarses achieved a critical comeback as producer and occasional writer and director of the controversial "dramedy" The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (NBC/Lifetime, 1987-91 ). Originally produced for NBC, this series starred Blair Brown as a divorced woman living alone on New York City's Upper West Side, surrounded by an ensemble of quirky and likable characters representing her family, friends, and lovers. After it was canceled by NBC, the series was picked up by the Lifetime cable network, which continued production of the series, reshaped to be aimed strategically at a female audience of a certain age, class, and income level. The same year that Molly Dodd debuted, Tarses also introduced The "Slap" Maxwell Story (ABC, 1987-88), another critically acclaimed "dramedy" about the professional and personal tribulations of an arrogant, provocative sportswriter, played by Dabney Coleman. In the 1990s, Tarses was far less active as a television producer; his most notable production in this decade was Public Morals,  which he co created with Steve Bocho. On CBS’s schedule for the fall of 1996, this ensemble cop sitcom became the target of a protest campaign by the American Family Association and other conservative watchdogs because its dialogue was peppered with profanity and sexual references. Twelve episodes of the series were shot, but only one made it to air before CBS canceled the program. 

In addition to writing and producing, Tarses has occasionally played cameo roles in his series (for example, as a neighborhood cop in Open All Night and a garbage collector in Molly Dodd) as well as playing a writer for a cartoon studio in 1984 MTM sitcom, The Duck Factory, and appearing in episodes of a number of other programs and in one film (Teen Wolf, 1985). 

The dramatic/character comedies written and produced by Tarses have operated in what has been con­sidered "uncharted territory" in the U.S. television industry. In terms of production style, they have gener­ally not been shot as traditional sitcoms (four cameras, on videotape, in a studio before a live audience, with an added laugh track). Tarses has generally worked independently of the studio system, shooting in a cinematic style in warehouses or on location, and using a single 35mm film camera. He has characterized his work as low budget, preferring to put his money into writing and actors rather than sets. Tarses's characters are distinguished as not always sympathetic or charismatic (an example is Bill Bittinger on Buffalo Bill). His dialogue is markedly low key and "quirky," with a humor best described as biting and often darkly satiric, sometimes surreal, and written in a subtle comedic rhythm that eschews punch lines. Unlike traditional episodic sitcoms, which attempt to solve problems in one episode, the narrative elements of Tarses's drame­dies are serial, continuing from episode to episode.

Perhaps Tarses's two greatest contributions to the U.S. television industry have been his creativity in constantly pushing the limits of television style-both visually and narratively, and his willingness (often ea­gerness) to do battle with the networks to champion the broadcasting of innovative and non formulaic forms of narrative television at the expense of audi­ence ratings. Tarses has increasingly refused to play the Hollywood programming "game," yet he produced what were some of the freshest and most daring televi­sion series of the 1970s and 1980s.