
Not to be confused with Newhart's eponymous 1961 variety show, "The Bob Newhart Show" finds the comic playing Bob Hartley, a Chicago psychologist living with wife Emily in a highrise. Bob is forced to deal with crazy patients, his wife and their friends.

Bob suffers family problems when his mother becomes a houseguest and an elderly patient involves him in a parent-child vendetta.

When she's given an assignment to see what makes a bunch of doctors tick, inquiring news reporter Ellen Hartley gives Bob and his medical cohorts the tell-it-like-it-is treatment. Meanwhile, Carol is on vacation and Gail is filling in for her.

Bob contends with a patient's delusion that her bingo game is fixed, staggers through a series of wild poker parties, and watches in wonder as his secretary slowly smothers under an attack of love.

Howard's game-warden brother (William Redfield) comes to Chicago to witness the mating of two whooping cranes and stays to make a play for Howard's girlfriend.