Charles in Charge

Needing a place to live while attending school, Charles applies for a job working for Stan and Jill Pembroke, an affluent couple in search of a live-in housekeeper. An arrangement is reached where Charles would take the job with the Pembrokes while he attended Copeland, and in lieu of a salary, he would receive room and board for his duties as caretaker for their children Jason, Douglas, and Lila. In addition to this, as well as his escapades with his best friend Buddy, Charles has a crush on fellow Copeland student Gwendolyn Pierce and spends quite a bit of his free time trying to court her, which never seems to work.

When the show returned in 1987, only Scott Baio and Willie Aames returned from the original cast, as the producers reworked the story to accommodate the changes in cast.

The second season's first episode featured Charles returning to New Brunswick from his summer vacation, only to discover an unfamiliar family living in the Pembrokes' home. He learns that the Pembrokes left New Jersey while he was away and have moved across the country to Seattle. The new family, the Powells, agreed to sublet the house from the Pembrokes, which included retaining Charles' services as live-in babysitter.

The Powell clan consisted of mother Ellen and grandfather Walter, who was Ellen's husband's widowed father and who was living with them to fulfill his son's role as he served overseas in the U.S. Navy. Like the Pembrokes, the Powells also had three children, daughters Jamie and Sarah and younger brother Adam.

Charles' previously unseen widowed mother Lillian became a central character in the revival series. She was played by Ellen Travolta, which marked the second time that she had played mother to a character portrayed by Baio; she had done the same thing on Joanie Loves Chachi several years earlier (although she first played cousin Jimmy Baio’s mother on a 1978 episode of The Love Boat[1]).

Universal Pictures released a three-disc set of the first season of Charles in Charge on DVD in North America on February 14, 2006. Due to poor sales, no further seasons were released.

In September 2007, Arts Alliance America (which subsequently changed its name to Virgil Films & Entertainment during the summer of 2007) announced it had acquired the rights to the series.[2] They subsequently released seasons 2–5 on DVD. Seasons 4 and 5 were Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) releases, available exclusively through Amazon.com.[3][4]

All five seasons of the series were made available for streaming through Amazon Video and season one only on Hulu Plus.[5] In addition, the entire series can be streamed on the NBC.com app.