Nanny and the Professor DVD Box Set - Seasons 1-3 - 1970

Nanny and the Professor is a U.S. fantasy situation comedy created by AJ Carothers and Thomas L. Miller for 20th Century Fox Television. During pre-production, the proposed title was Nanny Will Do. The series first aired as a mid-season replacement on January 21, 1970, on ABC and was last telecast on December 27, 1971.

The series enjoyed initial success due to its Friday night timeslot when it was scheduled between The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, which were similar shows, aimed largely at young children and pre-teens. Ratings suffered in the third season when ABC moved the series to Monday night opposite Gunsmoke and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. After it was canceled, the show had a brief run in syndication.

Playing upon the popular successes of Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and other magical nannies of literature, this TV series posited another ostensibly magical British nanny taking care of a family in need of direction. However unlike the candid magicality previously mentioned, this Nanny's paranormal nature was much more suggestive and non-committal as to whether she was or was not magical. The Nanny's wards, as well as the audience, were always left with the question of the Nanny's abilities unanswered.

The series starred Juliet Mills as Nanny Phoebe Figalilly, Richard Long as Professor Harold Everett, and Elsa Lanchester as Aunt Henrietta. Figalilly was apparently psychic, and had regular flashes of what was often more than intuition; she frequently knew who was ringing the doorbell before the bell even rang. There was the vague suggestion that she may have been at least several hundred years old and more than human, which the children thought they discovered in an episode after they saw a photo of Phoebe that looked like it was taken a century earlier.

Figalilly watched over Professor Everett and his three children: Hal, the intellectual tinkerer, played by David Doremus, Butch, the middle child, played by Trent Lehman, and Prudence, the youngest, played by Kim Richards. Patsy Garrett had the recurring role of nosey neighbor Mrs. Fowler. Midway through the brief first season, a yellow 1930 Model A Ford, "Arabella," joined the series.

In character, Mills sometimes wore a navy blue Inverness cape and cap that resembled a deerstalker; the program's opening titles showed animations of both.