Sister, Sister (TV series)

Sister, Sister

The main cast of Sister, Sister (from left to right), Tia Mowry with Jackée Harry as Tia and Lisa Landry and Tim Reid with Tamera Mowry as Ray and Tamera Campbell
Created by Kim Bass
Gary Gilbert
Fred Shafferman
Starring Tia Mowry
Tamera Mowry
Jackée Harry
Tim Reid
Marques Houston
RonReaco Lee
Deon Richmond
Theme music composer Tim Heintz, Randy Petersen and Kevin Quinn (entire run)
Kurt Farquhar (seasons 5–6)
Opening theme "Sister, Sister" (main title theme)
Composer(s) Kurt Farquhar
(seasons 1–2 and 4–6)
Paul A. Kreiling (season 3)
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 6
No. of episodes 119 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s) Suzanne de Passe
Suzanne Coston
(both; entire run)
Sy Rosen (seasons 1–2)
Brian Pollack & Mert Rich
(season 3)
Leslie Ray & David Steven Simon (both; season 4)
Rick Hawkins (seasons 5–6)
Camera setup Videotape; Multi-camera
Running time 22–24 minutes
Production company(s) de Passe Entertainment
Paramount Network Television
Distributor Paramount Domestic Television (1998–2006)
CBS Paramount Domestic Television (2006–2007)
CBS Television Distribution (2007–present)
Release
Original network ABC (1994–1995)
The WB (1995–1999)
Picture format 480i (SDTV)
Original release April 1, 1994 (1994-04-01) – May 23, 1999 (1999-05-23)

Sister, Sister is an American television sitcom starring identical twins Tia and Tamera Mowry. It aired from 1994 to 1999. The premise of the show was that the girls (playing characters Tia Landry and Tamera Campbell) were separated and adopted at birth. One was adopted by a single mother while the other was adopted by a couple, although the mother died a short time later. The two accidentally found each other fourteen years later and reunited.

Created by Kim Bass, Gary Gilbert and Fred Shafferman, the series was produced by de Passe Entertainment and Paramount Network Television. The cast, along with Tia and Tamera Mowry, also featured Jackee Harry as Tia's mother, Tim Reid as Tamera's father, and Marques Houston as their annoying neighbor. RonReaco Lee and Deon Richmond joined the main cast in the fifth season.

Sister, Sister was picked up by ABC as a midseason replacement and debuted on April 1, 1994 as part of the network's TGIF comedy lineup. The show later moved to a new timeslot for the 1994-95 season, but ABC announced that it was cancelling the program due to low ratings and its final episode aired April 28, 1995.[1] The WB, which was still in its infancy in 1995, picked up Sister, Sister to replace the cancelled Muscle on its Wednesday night lineup of shows and the third season debuted on September 6, 1995. The program found its niche as part of The WB's lineup and aired for four additional seasons on the network, with the final episode airing on May 23, 1999.

Premise

In the pilot, the twins are reunited during a chance encounter shopping at a clothing store at the mall with their adoptive parents. The premise is similar to the movie The Parent Trap, in which a pair of separated-at-birth twins has a chance encounter at summer camp.

Tia Landry (Tia Mowry) is the intelligent twin from inner city Detroit, where her adoptive mother Lisa (Jackée Harry) works as a seamstress; Tamera Campbell (Tamera Mowry) is the boy-crazy twin from the suburbs, where her adoptive father Ray (Tim Reid) owns a limousine service. After their unexpected encounter in the department store, Ray reluctantly allows Tia and Lisa to move in the house because Lisa was about to take a job in St. Louis, which would have separated the girls. The girls' neighbor is Roger Evans (Marques Houston), an annoying teenager who is infatuated with both of them, and who evolves into a perfect gentleman they both find attractive. In the final season when the girls go off to college, Roger disappears from the series without any explanation. By the fifth season, Tia and Tamera ended up with steady boyfriends, Tia with Tyreke Scott (RonReaco Lee) and Tamera with Jordan Bennett (Deon Richmond).

In the sixth season episode "Father's Day", the twins meet their biological father, Matt Sullivan, and learn that he is white and a famous photojournalist. Matt never married their mother, Racelle Gavin, because they never got the chance: she had been asked to paint a mural in Florida and he had been assigned "the opportunity of a lifetime" in the Middle East. Also, Racelle told him that she would later join him in Tel Aviv without telling him of her pregnancy. After six months, Racelle suddenly stopped writing. When the girls' mother died, Matt was not allowed to see them because he couldn't prove he was their father. When he searched for his twin daughters, he never found them because they had been adopted by two different people.

Production

For the first five seasons, the series would often have Tia and Tamera, either together or separately, breaking the fourth wall by talking directly to the viewer. During the ABC run, Tia and Tamera would address the audience on some of the goings on in the storyline involving them and occasionally other main characters, usually Roger. After the series moved to The WB, the breaking of the fourth wall was limited mainly to certain episodes and usually only in the teaser scenes and featured increasingly less often by the fourth season. For some of the episodes in the fifth season, it was included but was dropped by the middle of the fifth season. The sixth and final season was the only season that did not include it.

Characters

Main characters

Minor characters

Special guest appearances

Episodes

Season Episodes Original air dates Nielsen ratings
First air date Last air date Ranking Avg. ratings share
1 12 April 1, 1994 September 6, 1994 No. 33 11.2 (estimated)
2 19 November 16, 1994 April 28, 1995 No. 60 10.1[2]
3 22 September 6, 1995 May 15, 1996 No. 142 3.0[3]
4 22 September 4, 1996 May 14, 1997 No. 135 3.4[4]
5 22 September 10, 1997 May 17, 1998 No. 149 3.0[5]
6 22 September 13, 1998 May 23, 1999 No. 133 3.6[6]

Reunion Movie

As for a Sister, Sister reunion, both Tia Mowry and Tamera Mowry are game for reuniting the cast, as they said in an interview back in June 2012. They were thinking of doing a "Twins in the city" plot, like the twins in New York City.[7]

Theme song and opening sequences

Theme song

The series' original theme song was written and composed by Tim Heintz, Randy Petersen and Kevin Quinn. Season one was the only season using the full version, with the short middle instrumental portion, vocalizations and the line "Living underneath one roof, no it won't be trouble-proof" dropped in season 2, though the short instrumental and vocalizations were restored in season 3. An updated version of the theme song was used starting in Season 5, composed by Heintz, Petersen, Quinn and Kurt Farquhar, who composed the music score for most of the series (save for Season 3, when the score was composed by Paul A. Kreiling), and performed by Tia and Tamera Mowry; this version used the same tune, but a slower tempo and lyrics that emphasized the two characters' differences and increased maturity. The season 5 version of the theme began with the end of the original theme prior to the start of the theme song. An instrumental version of the final theme was used as a closing theme for the final two seasons, though with the exception of the episode "Designer Genes", it was generally played over a blooper reel during the closing credits.

Opening titles

The opening sequence used in the first two seasons, designed by Twin Art, opens with the sound of two spanks and crying babies over a black screen as animated crying babies appear with the word "separated" between them, then showing Ray and Lisa each holding babies representing Tamera and Tia with the word "adopted" appearing between both. The main cast are shown in front of a white background with various animations around them, ending with Tia, Tamera, Ray and Lisa at a couch with an animated roof over it (pushed overhead by Ray), which morphs into the title logo. The sequence was shortened with the theme song in season two and modified to include Marques Houston as Roger, who became a contract cast member that season (Houston, as Roger, is shown peeking from an animated door which Tia and Tamera promptly close on him).

Seasons 3 and 4 used a computer-animated sequence by Pittard-Sullivan, with the main cast's video headshots in a stop-motion effect, opening with two babies drifting away from each other into two backgrounds: one, the city (which is actually the pre-September 11, 2001 Manhattan skyline, despite the fact the series was set in Detroit) and the other, a country road with the word "separated" between them, then showing Ray and Lisa each holding babies in a similar manner as the previous sequence with a rotating "adopted", then showing the cast in front of different backdrops (some which include cutouts of objects). It ends with the cast (sans Marques Houston) walking into each other, then getting themselves together over changing cloud backdrops, one which features two roadsigns, before the title logo appears. The cast's surnames are animated and in a variant of the show's logotype. This was the only time the intro remained exactly the same, though by season four, the intro became a bit outdated as Tia and Tamera dropped the wavy hair, tams and plaid outfits for trendier fashions and Roger stopped wearing braids.

The final two seasons used a music video-style sequence, designed by Paramount Digital Design; Marques Houston remained in the sequence despite his appearances on the series decreasing midway through the fifth season, and Houston was replaced in the sequence by RonReaco Lee and Deon Richmond for the sixth season. Because virtually the same sequence was used as the season before, viewers may notice that in the final part of the second version of the sequence before the title logo when the cast dances together that Richmond and Lee do not appear in the black-and-white shots and are digitally inserted in the regular shots with Tia and Tamera Mowry, Tim Reid and Jackée Harry.

Syndication

U.S. broadcast and cable syndication

After being picked up by The WB in 1995, reruns of the first two seasons of Sister, Sister were broadcast in early primetime as part of the network's then-newly launched Sunday night lineup during the 1995–1996 season, in addition to the first-run episodes of the series that aired on the WB's Wednesday night schedule.[1] The series has been aired on various broadcast television networks in the U.S. after the series finale on The WB Television Network. From September 1998 to September 2002, Paramount Domestic Television (now CBS Television Distribution) distributed the series to Fox, WB and UPN network affiliates around the United States, airing depending on market.

The N aired reruns of Sister, Sister from April 2002 until April 2004. Disney Channel aired edited versions of the series from September 9, 2002 until May 28, 2007. From June 11, 2007 to April 9, 2010, reruns of the show ran on ABC Family, which is a sister channel to Disney Channel via the Walt Disney Company division Disney/ABC Television Group.[8] When the series debuted on ABC Family, it replaced Step by Step, but was knocked off two weeks later then returned in the early morning.

The series has also aired on BET from July 2009 to January 10, 2010, initially airing on weekdays, before moving to Saturday mornings when the series returned after a brief break; the series was slated to return to BET on Saturday mornings starting in October 2010, but other than a special marathon that aired in September 2010, this did not occur.[9] The show also aired on WGN America from September 11, 2007 until May 2009, first on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings, then moved to a weeknight graveyard slot.[10] Incidentally, the series aired in first-run form on WGN from the show's move to The WB in 1995 until the series ended in 1999, shortly before WGN ceased to carry WB network programming on its national superstation feed (Sister, Sister, along with 7th Heaven, The Parent 'Hood and The Wayans Bros. are the only WB series to air in both first-run broadcast and off-network syndication on WGN America). As of August 2009, GMC TV began airing the series. The series also began airing on Centric since early 2011, first airing as a part of the network's weekday lineup, then airing sporadically in marathon stunts; it currently airs weekday middays. In promotion of the series Tia & Tamera in 2012, Style began airing reruns of Sister, Sister. The Hub Network used to air reruns of the show from March 1, 2014, to October 13, 2014 where it was rebranded as Discovery Family This show is currently airing only on GMC TV network on Saturdays only From 11am to 1 pm

Disney Channel airings had most episodes edited for content deemed by the channel as unsuitable for its pre-teen audience; the edited Disney Channel versions were also the syndication package of the show that aired on sister network ABC Family, with the exception of the season two episode "Tattoo" that was omitted from Disney Channel airings. GMC also airs episodes with content the channel deems inappropriate usually muted or removed entirely, ranging from mild suggestive dialogue said by Roger to tame phrases such as "shut up", "butt", "dumb" and "pervert"; whereas the airings on other channels were the original syndicated prints.

International syndication

In Australia and New Zealand, the series was aired on Nickelodeon and the Seven Network; in the United Kingdom, Sister, Sister was aired on Nickelodeon, and on Channel 4 between 1995 and 2000 as the channel had the terrestrial rights to the show. In the UK, Nickelodeon aired Sister Sister again in 2009 but only showed episodes from the first four seasons. It Currently aires on The Vault in the UK, which has recently started showing classic Teenage comedies like Saved by the Bell and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It also aired in Ireland, on Nickelodeon and RTÉ Two. It does not currently air in Ireland any more.

In Latin America, Sister, Sister used to air on Nickelodeon in the late 1990s and early 2000s. On October 21, 2009 it debuted on open television Rede Record, but was taken off on October 30, 2009, the cause for this is unknown.

DVD releases

Cover of "Sister, Sister: The Complete First Season" DVD, that was released on October 28, 2008

CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) released the first and second seasons of Sister, Sister on DVD in Region 1 in 2008/2009. As of September 2014, these releases have been discontinued and are out of print.

On May 4, 2015, it was announced that Visual Entertainment had acquired the rights to the series in Region 1 and plan on releasing the entire series on DVD on January 16, 2016.[11][12]

It was subsequently announced on December 28, 2015, that VEI (through its deal with CBS) will release Sister, Sister- The Complete Collection on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time on January 16, 2016 in Canada and the United States.A Specific Release Date is Scheduled for the 'The Complete Collection'.

Awards and nominations

1998 – Outstanding Lighting Direction (Electronic) for a Comedy Series – George Spiro Dibie (Nominated)
1997 – Outstanding Lighting Direction (Electronic) for a Comedy Series – George Spiro Dibie (Nominated)
1996 – Outstanding Individual Achievement in Lighting Direction (Electronic) for a Comedy Series – George Spiro Dibie (Nominated)
1995 – Outstanding Individual Achievement in Lighting Direction (Electronic) for a Comedy Series – George Spiro Dibie (Won)
2000 – Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Won)
2000 – Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Jackée Harry (Won)
2000 – Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Tim Reid (Nominated)
1999 – Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Won)
1999 – Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Jackée Harry (Won)
1999 – Outstanding Comedy Series (Nominated)
1998 – Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Tim Reid (Nominated)
1996 – Outstanding Comedy Series (Nominated)
1996 – Outstanding Youth Actor/Actress – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Nominated)
1998 – Favorite Television Actress – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Nominated)
1998 – Favorite Television Show (Nominated)
1997 – Favorite Television Actress – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Won)
1996 – Favorite Television Actress – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Won)
1996 – Favorite Television Show (Nominated)
1995 – Favorite Television Actress – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Won)
1999 – Best Performance in a TV Comedy Series: Supporting Young Actor – Deon Richmond (Nominated)
1997 – Best Performance in a TV Comedy: Guest Starring Young Performer – Verner, Robin Marie (Nominated)
1997 – Best Performance in a TV Comedy: Leading Young Actress – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Nominated)
1996 – Best Performance by a Young Actress: Guest Starring Role TV Series – Selico, Krista Sherre (Nominated)
1996 – Best Performance by a Young Actress: TV Comedy Series – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Nominated)
1995 – Best Youth Comedian in a TV Show – Marques Houston (Won)
1995 – Best New Family Television Series (Nominated)
1995 – Best Youth Comedian in a TV Show – Victor Togunde (Nominated)
1995 – Best Youth Comedienne in a TV Show – Tia & Tamera Mowry (Nominated)

References

  1. 1 2 Richmond, Ray (May 23, 1995). "Out with the Old, in with New at Fox, WB Network". Los Angeles Daily News   via HighBeam Research (subscription required) . Retrieved February 5, 2014.
  2. "Complete TV Ratings 1994–1995". fbibler.chez.com.
  3. "Complete TV Ratings 1995–1996". fbibler.chez.com.
  4. "Complete TV Ratings 1996–1997". fbibler.chez.com.
  5. "Final Ratings for '97–'98 TV Season". sfgate.com. May 25, 1998.
  6. "TV Winners & Losers: Numbers Racket a Final Tally of the Season's Shows". Archived from the original on October 29, 2009.
  7. Ross, Robyn (October 2, 2011). "Tia and Tamera Mowry Talk Season Finale, Babies, and a Sister, Sister Reunion". TV Guide. Retrieved February 5, 2014.
  8. Fox and The CW Upfront 2007–08: Fall 2007 Schedule; ABC Family Adds 'Sister', '8 Simple Rules'
  9. Pavan -- SitcomsOnline.com (September 2, 2010). "BET Fall 2010 Schedule Has 3 New Sitcoms; Network TV Fall Preview Specials for 2010 – SitcomsOnline.com News Blog". Blog.sitcomsonline.com. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  10. 'Fresh Prince' Comes to TBS in May, 'Sister, Sister' to WGN in the Fall; TV Land Awards Prev Includes Spoof 'Ugly Betty...White'
  11. Lambert, David (May 4, 2015). "Sister, Sister – Real-Life Twins Tia and Tamera Star in the '90s Show That's Getting New DVDs". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved September 15, 2015.
  12. Lambert, David (September 14, 2015). "Sister, Sister - Oh, Brother! What's Happening With the Sisters on DVD? Studio Says...". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved September 16, 2015.

External links

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