Like its sister series, Fantasy Island, ABC's The Love Boat was one of television's most reliable barometers of celebrity. Guests on the show, it was said, were either on their way up or on their way down. That they wanted to come on at all was evidence of the program's formidable popularity with viewers. Perfectly ensconced in a Saturday night time slot, when shut-ins and the socially challenged are most apt to be watching TV, this airy seaborne soufflé rode the public's fascination with recognizable performers to ratings success over the course of nine improbable seasons from 1977 to 1986.

Based on a forgettable 1974 novel by former cruise ship director Jeraldine Saunders, the lighthearted anthology interwove three romantic plots over the course of one hour each week. The series eschewed the book's soapy conventions in favor of romantic comedy like the similarly structured Love, American Style...