My Big Fat Greek Life

My Big Fat Greek Life
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Nia Vardalos
Starring	Nia Vardalos Steven Eckholdt Lainie Kazan Louis Mandylor Michael Constantine Andrea Martin Gia Carides
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	7
Production
Executive producer(s)	Nia Vardalos Tom Hanks Rita Wilson
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Original run	02003-02-24 February 24, 2003 – April 13, 2003 (2003-04-13)

My Big Fat Greek Life is a situation comedy series that ran on CBS in 2003. The series is a continuation on the 2002 movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding and was produced by HBO Television and Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions for Sony Pictures Television.^[1]

In addition to being the series star, Nia Vardalos oversaw the show as one of the co-executive producers, along with Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson (who made a guest appearance in one episode as Nia's cousin).

Premise

The series, which is set in Chicago, follows the main character, Nia Portokalos (originally named Toula in the film), a middle class Greek-American woman, as she tries to deal with both her family and her new upper middle class WASP husband, Thomas Miller (Ian in the film version), an English teacher who still doesn't seem to fit in with her family's Greek traditions. Despite the help and interference from family and her husband, Nia tries her best to stay grounded in various situations.

In addition to her husband, the family members in her "life" include her parents Maria (her mother) and Gus (her father), who are the owners of the Greek restaurant where Nia works, her brother Nick, who is not very bright and has a little bit of a love/hate feeling for Thomas, her wise Aunt Voula and her gossipy cousin Nikki.

Differences to the film version

In the movie version, Vardalos's character is named Toula, but was changed to Nia for the series. In addition Toula's husband's name was changed from Ian to Thomas. Also absent from the series was the travel agency Toula worked in the film; in the series she still worked at her family's restaurant, as she did in the film's early scenes. Also, in the first episode, the main characters were given a house, but they were already given the house as a present in their wedding. In addition, Toula and Ian's daughter that was featured in the film was not present in the series.

Production notes

• John Corbett was the only cast member from the film who couldn't make the transition from film to TV because of a deal he made to star in the FX series Lucky. He was scheduled to make an appearance on My Big Fat Greek Life, but it was cancelled before it could happen. Unfortunately, Corbett's Lucky was unlucky as well; FX cancelled it after 13 episodes. Had it continued, Vardalos would have made a guest appearance on that show.
• Originally, Vardalos pitched the idea of turning My Big Fat Greek Wedding into a series for TV but it was turned down. It wasn't until the film's success that CBS gave her the green light to bring it to TV.

Cast

• Nia Vardalos as Nia Miller
• Steven Eckholdt as Thomas Miller
• Lainie Kazan as Maria Portokalos
• Louis Mandylor as Nick Portokalos
• Michael Constantine as Gus Portokalos
• Andrea Martin as Aunt Voula
• Gia Carides as Nikki

References

1. ^ New York Times

External links

• My Big Fat Greek Life at the Internet Movie Database
• My Big Fat Greek Life at TV.com