The Adventures of Aggie

1956 United Kingdom

An oddity - a British made sitcom from the 1950s starring a US actress so it could be sold to America.

The actress in question was Joan Shawlee who shortly after this series enjoyed her most famous film role was as Sweet Sue in the 1959 comedy classic, Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon.

She also appeared as a semi-regular in The Dick Van Dyke Show (as Buddy's wife, Pickles). Before this UK series the 27-year old actress had appeared in The Abbott and Costello Show on US TV. In The Adventures of Aggie she appeared as Aasgard Agnette Anderson, an international buyer working for a world-famous fashion house.

The demands of her job meant that she didn't stay in one city too long so her globetrotting meant there was no room for a regular cast. However, a number of upcoming celebs appeared throughout the series run of 26 episodes, including Wilfrid Brambell, Christopher Lee, Patrick McGoohan, Richard Wattis, Rupert Davies, Gordon Jackson, Anthony Valentine, Patrick Allen and future film director John Schlesinger, all destined for fame and fortune.

Like most females in 1950s sitcoms the situations she got into were normally a result of her tendency towards being accident prone, although none of these were of the domestic type and normally involved spies, smugglers or murderers. The series was shown in the US in syndication as simply Aggie.

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Published on November 26th, 2018. Written by Laurence Marcus for Television Heaven.

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