The next step in the series' genesis was the location of actresses for the central roles. Susan St. James was, at the time, under contract to CBS. Although she was best known for romantic comedy, she liked the script and the part of Kate McArdle but stipulated her demands: production before a live audience and a New York shooting location. St. James's close friend Jane Curtin was soon convinced to accept the part of Allie Lowell. Producer-director-writer Bill Persky agreed to produce and direct six episodes, without committing to an entire series. He also insisted that Bob Randall be brought on board as producer-writer and supervisor. Reeves Communications, with executive producers Mort Lachman and Merrill Grant, undertook production of Kate and Allie, and the series debuted with a script by Coben setting the series' premise: two divorced women who have known one another since childhood decide to move in together and raise their three children as a family unit.

     Kate and Allie was an instant success, ranking fourth the week it debuted, garnering consistently high ratings thereafter, and earning Jane Curtin two consecutive Emmys and Bill Persky, one. The characters and the issues addressed on the program obviously appealed to its audience.

     St. James's character, Kate, is a woman recently divorced from her unstable and somewhat flighty part­ time actor husband, Max. She has one daughter, 14-year-old Emma (Ari Meyers). Curtin's Allie is recently divorced from her successful, but unfaithful doctor husband, Charles. She has a 14-year-old daugh­ter Jennie (Allison Smith) and a 7-year-old son, Chip (Frederick Koehler). Neither Kate nor Allie have ruled out remarriage, but view their new situation as a provisional reprieve, a time for both women to come to know and appreciate themselves. On one level the Series dealt with practical problems faced by divorced women with children: adjusting to a new lifestyle and to living closely with new people, dealing with children's issues, beginning to date again, securing financial stability.

     On another level, however, the series addressed the larger issue of gender identity at a time when gender roles were in transition. Allie Lowell submerged her own identity into that of her husband, and most of the  series' trajectory tracks her journey toward autonomy. Kate McArdle, on the other hand, has a stronger sense of her own identity, but she must constantly struggle for equality at work and for the assurance that her goals will be respected in any love relationship.

     Key to the series' notion of women's development is same-sex friendship, and each episode is narratively structured to highlight the long-term, supportive friendship between the two main characters. Episodes begin with a conversation between Kate and Allie designed to enhance the audience's understanding of both women or to provide background information. Similarly, each episode ends with Kate and Allie discussing and bringing closure to the events just depicted. Their verbal intimacy both reflects and heightens their sustaining friendship. As the series evolved, the same kind of supportive friendship developed between the two daughters, who initially disliked being forced together.

     After directing 100 episodes and having Allie accept the wedding proposal of likable character Bob Barsky, Bill Persky left the series, feeling that Kate and Allie had now fulfilled its premise. The needed respite had worked for Allie, who was now able to enter a meaningful heterosexual relationship as a fully autonomous individual, sure of herself and of her own goals. While Kate still had not met a man whose life goals matched her own, she and Allie owned a suc­cessful business, and the audience was sure that she would not succumb to a marriage that downplayed her personal desires.

     Despite these developments, the series continued. Linda Day became the director, with Anne Flett and Chuck Ranberg as producers, but the new team did not meet with the same success as had the first. The decline of Kate and Allie illustrates an interesting aspect of television's capabilities in combining sociocultural issues with particular narrative strategies. With the series' premise fulfilled, plots lacked the same objective and lost the relevance and vitality of earlier episodes. In part to address this situation, early in the new season, the writers created a device to bring the two women together again: Kate moved out of the old apartment and in with Allie and Bob, who accepted a sportscasting job that would take him away on weekends. By this time, however, Emma was out of the series, ostensibly at college, and while Jennie remained an active and visible character, she too had moved out of the household to live in a university dorm. The friendship between Kate and Allie lost its earlier dynamic now that Allie was married. Kate appeared as an intrusion into the household, rather than a necessary part of it. Even though the series had not "solved" the social problems it addressed, its creators and performers had moved the main characters into a narrative situation that no longer seemed a workable fiction. After its sixth season, the series was not renewed.