relief together, with a comic double-act, forever squabbling over Father Dowling's involvement in police matters, or about parish duties. However, Marie always emerges victorious. Phil's devotion to never missing a meal at the Rectory is gradually developed into a running gag. In addition, Phil's attempts at keeping on the Bishop's good side (another running gag) are a further source of comic relief. In the episode The Legacy Mystery (aired April 4, 1990), Tom Bosley was reunited with his Happy Days co-star, Marion Ross, who plays the mother of a wealthy businessman accused of stealing valuable artwork. Pilot The pilot was a two-hour TV movie titled Fatal Confession, which originally aired on NBC on November 30, 1987. There were few similarities to the books written by McInerny, with the principal character even changing his name (in the novels, he was Roger Dowling), while the setting was changed from a rural parish in the small town of Fox River to the city of Chicago – a setting which was borrowed from another series of novels by McInerny, concerning a Chicago nun. For TV, the nun changed her name, became streetwise, lost many years of age, and metamorphosed into Father Dowling's youthful assistant. Father Prestwick did not appear in the 1987 pilot. In the first episode of the series, "The Missing Body Mystery", he is brought in by the Bishop to evaluate Father Dowling's parish, and Prestwick is initially appointed to replace him. At the end of the second episode, Prestwick is reassigned to a parish in Alaska: hence he does not appear again until the final Season 1 episode, "The Pretty Baby Mystery" (when it's said he had offended the Bishop in Anchorage, Alaska, and been kicked out there). From the start of Season 2 he becomes one of the regular cast. Regular series The show was due to begin in 1988, but because of a writers' strike it did not begin to air weekly until January 1989. For the first season, on NBC, the episodes were principally written by Supervising Producer Robert Hamilton, who contributed five of the scripts, but Hamilton was dropped when NBC cancelled the show after just eight episodes. When ABC picked up the show for the second and third seasons (initially as a mid-season replacement), the show's executive producer, Dean Hargrove, together with Joyce Burditt, became the backbone of the writing team, frequently writing episodes jointly (Hargrove