Rhoda Rhoda Rhoda is an American sitcom starring Valerie Harper which aired a total of 109 half-hour episodes and one hour-long episode over five seasons from September 9, 1974 to December 9, 1978. The series was a spin-off of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", in which Harper between the years 1970 and 1974 had played the role of Rhoda Morgenstern, a spunky, weight-conscious, flamboyantly fashioned Jewish neighbor and native New Yorker in the role of Mary Richards' best friend. After four seasons, Rhoda left Minneapolis and returned to her original hometown of New York City. The series was the winner of
Maude (TV series) program (during the heyday of topical sitcoms, which its presence helped to create), when it was regularly one of the top-ten highest-rated American television programs in any given week. In Great Britain, "Maude" was not shown nationally, although it was shown (beginning in 1975) in the ITV regions of Westward, Border, Tyne Tees, Anglia, Yorkshire, Granada and Channel. Satellite station Sky One ran the series in the early/mid 1990s. In the fifth season, "Maude" unexpectedly plunged from #4 to #31 in the Nielsen ratings as its lead-ins "Rhoda" and "Phyllis" began to struggle. In 1978, late in the sixth season,