Bosom Buddies

Thompson (who would go on to executive-produce such shows as The Larry Sanders Show) said later that he took the job purely for the money, but unexpectedly found it to be "my completely favorite experience in show business", because the network left him and his young cast free to experiment.

We had $500,000 to play with every week." Although the series is set in New York, Bosom Buddies was taped on Stage 25 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.

Stage 25 was also the home of The Lucy Show, Cheers, and its spin-off Frasier.

Like many other sitcoms that aired during the 1980–81 television season, Bosom Buddies felt the effects of a strike by the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists that occurred in 1980.

They originally pitched it as a straightforward buddy comedy done in what they described as "a sophisticated Billy Wilder kind of way." When ABC executives asked Miller and Boyett to explain what they meant by the comparison to Wilder, the producers mentioned Some Like It Hot (directed by Wilder) and ABC bought the show on condition that it would include men in women's clothing, just like that movie.

After the cast had been chosen, Miller and Boyett asked Chris Thompson, one of the writer-producers of Laverne & Shirley, to write the pilot and be the series showrunner.