Jesse (NBC, 1998-2000)
In the early-2000s, I used to enjoy watching the American sitcom Married… With Children on the Paramount Comedy Channel (having not seen any of the episodes when they were shown rather late at night on ITV). Around the same time, I was channel hopping one afternoon, when I came across a sitcom that looked like it featured one of the cast members, and that’s because it did, so I was interested in finding out more.
Having seemingly tired of having played the dumb blonde Kelly in Married… With Children for a decade, Christina Applegate took on this new role, and this time, she was the one with the children (well one child anyway). Jesse starred Christina as Jesse Warner, a single mother who was trying to raise her young son John in Buffalo, New York.
Jesse works at her rather overbearing dad John’s bar Biergarten, where the uniform is German traditional dress. She also has two brothers, Darren and John (and that means that with her dad, brother, and son all having the same name, there are three characters in this cast called John Warner). John has decided to give up speaking, and tries to find different methods of communication.
Jesse eventually meets Diego, a rather handsome Chilean, and they soon get together. This was a sitcom that was given some of the “this can’t fail!”-style promotion, with the first series being shown in America in the hugely coveted slot between Friends and Frasier, but this one achieved nowhere near the success of those popular long-running sitcoms.
This meant that there was something of a relaunch for the second series. Jesse was now training to become a nurse, her family are no longer seen, and cast members included her new group of work colleagues. But this didn’t make too much difference, and the second series turned out to be the last, although Christina was commended for trying to move away from her Kelly image.
All 42 episodes of Jesse were shown on Channel 4 in 2000 in an afternoon slot (which is definitely not a coveted place in the schedule), and I think that there were a few repeats too. Around the same time, this was also shown on satellite channel for teenagers Trouble, although I never had access to that one. I’m fairly sure that there has been no DVD release either.
ADAM'S NOSTALGIC MEMORIES 
Funny to see George Dzundza playing Christina Applegate’s father, he had been in Law & Order but apparently felt he was above it yet years later was in… THIS.
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