House Rules (1998)

"The unique friendship shared by a trio of childhood chums and roommates from Denver is the focus of this half-hour comedy. Through romances, job problems and the trials and tribulations of daily life, a woman and her two male roommates give modern romance a decidedly comic spin.

"'House Rules is about two men and a woman in their mid-twenties who, after 20 years of growing up together, going to school together, living together and sharing nearly every experience of their lives, are so completely suited to each other that any outside romantic involvement is probably doomed to failure,' says executive producer Christopher Thompson. 'Each episode threatens the status quo and comically tests this romantically confusing relationship.'

"Jobs and romances may come and go for attorney Casey Farrell, medical student William McCusky and reporter Thomas Riley III, who are all trying to find their niche in adulthood. But while their unusually tight friendship may keep them from establishing any meaningful relationships outside their own circle, it keeps the pals laughing to know they have each other to fall back on." (NBC)

In one of those strange coincidences that dog television seasons, two virtually identical two-guys-and-a-girl sitcoms appeared simultaneously: House Rules and ABC's Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. In the latter the emotional entanglement of the trio makes a sort of sense because they are college age and do not actually live together; here the supposedly adult trio's sharing a house seems vaguely unsavory and their arrested adolescence simply childish.moreless