Allan Burns The last project between Hayward and Burns would be as story editors for the sitcom "Get Smart". In 1969, Burns began a partnership with James L. Brooks after being impressed with the television pilot for Brooks's show "Room 222". Burns joined the "Room 222" writing staff and later produced the series. After "Room 222", television executive Grant Tinker hired Brooks and Burns to develop a television series for CBS starring Mary Tyler Moore. In 1970, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" premiered and became a critically acclaimed series, spawning spin-off series such as "Lou Grant" and "Rhoda". Brooks and Burns also
Play for Today (1971), "The Foxtrot" (1971), "Home" (1972), "Bar Mitzvah Boy" (1976), "Abigail's Party" (1977), "Blue Remembered Hills" (1979) and "Just a Boys' Game" (1979). Certain other well known plays, including "Penda's Fen" (1974), "Nuts in May" (1976), were commissioned by David Rose of the BBC's English Regions Drama department based in Birmingham. Some installments in the series were spun off into full-blown series. Probably the two best-remembered examples of this are "", which was produced as a one-off in the "Play for Today" strand in 1975 and three years later became a series for Thames Television, again with Leo McKern, and