''Partners'' is an American television

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...

that aired on

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

from September 24 to November 12, 2012, on Monday nights at 8:30 p.m., following the sitcom ''

How I Met Your Mother ''How I Met Your Mother'' (often abbreviated as ''HIMYM'') is an American sitcom, created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for CBS. The series, which aired from September 19, 2005 to March 31, 2014, follows the main character, Ted Mosby, and his ...

''. The series was created by ''

Will & Grace ''Will & Grace'' is an American television sitcom created by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan. Set in New York City, the show focuses on the friendship between best friends Will Truman (Eric McCormack), a gay lawyer, and Grace Adler (Debra Messing), ...

'' creators

Max Mutchnick Jason Nidorf "Max" Mutchnick (born November 11, 1965) is an American television producer. He has received an Emmy Award, a People's Choice Award, and several Golden Globe Award nominations. Early life and education Mutchnick was born in Chicago ...

and

David Kohan David Sanford Kohan (born April 16, 1964) is an American television producer and writer. After writing for ''The Wonder Years'' and ''The Dennis Miller Show'', Kohan co-created and produced ''Will & Grace'', ''Boston Common'', ''Good Morning, M ...

, who also served as the show's executive producers and it stars

Michael Urie Michael Lorenzo Urie (born August 8, 1980) is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of Marc St. James on the ABC dramedy television series ''Ugly Betty''. He can be heard as Bobby Kerns in ''As the Curtain Rises'', an original podca ...

David Krumholtz David Krumholtz (born May 15, 1978) is an American actor and comedian. He played Mr. Universe in '' Serenity'', Charlie Eppes in the CBS drama series ''Numb3rs'', and starred in the ''Harold & Kumar'' and ''The Santa Clause'' film franchises. Ear ...

Sophia Bush Sophia Anna Bush Hughes (born July 8, 1982) is an American actress. She starred as Brooke Davis in The WB/ CW drama series ''One Tree Hill'' (2003–2012), and as Erin Lindsay in the NBC police procedural drama series ''Chicago P.D.'' (2014� ...

, and

Brandon Routh Brandon James Routh (; born October 9, 1979) is an American actor. He portrayed Superman in the 2006 film ''Superman Returns'', which garnered him international fame. In 2011, he played the titular character of the film '' Dylan Dog: Dead of Ni ...

Premise

Although they could not be more different, Louis and Joe are lifelong friends and partners in an architecture firm. Their " bromance" is tested when Joe gets engaged to Ali and Louis is in a new relationship with Wyatt.

Cast and characters

Main

as Joe Goodman, an architect *

as Louis McManus, Joe's best friend and business partner *

as Ali Landow, Joe's fiancée *

as Wyatt Plank, Louis's boyfriend

Recurring

Tracy Vilar Tracy Vilar (born Tracy Leigh Vilar April 12, 1968; and sometimes credited Tracy Villars) is an American actress. Career She is best known for her roles as Ro-Ro on the CBS sitcom '' Partners'', Sophia Ortiz on The WB sitcom ''The Steve Harve ...

as Ro-Ro, Joe and Louis' secretary *

Jillian Bell Jillian Leigh Bell (born April 25, 1984) is an American actress, comedian and screenwriter. She stars in the 2019 film ''Brittany Runs a Marathon'' and 2022's ''I'm Totally Fine''. She starred as Jillian Belk on ''Workaholics'', voiced the role o ...

as Renata, Ali's hapless cousin and assistant * Randy Sklar and Jason Sklar as Jordy and Nate Blevins, twin architects who have a friendly rivalry with Joe and Louis

Production

CBS cancelled ''Partners'' on November 16, 2012, prior to the planned November 19 airing of episode 7, "Pretty Funny", and announced that the show would be immediately removed from the schedule. The show was replaced with reruns of ''

Two and a Half Men ''Two and a Half Men'' is an American television sitcom that originally aired on CBS for twelve seasons from September 22, 2003, to February 19, 2015. Originally starring Charlie Sheen in the lead role alongside Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones, the ...

'' and ''

The Big Bang Theory ''The Big Bang Theory'' is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom served as executive producers on the series, along with Steven Molaro, all of whom also served as head writers. It premiered on CBS ...

'', leaving seven filmed episodes unaired in the USA and Canada. Filming on the final episode concluded a week later, on November 21. Seven episodes remain unaired in the U.S., but all 13 episodes have been aired by South African channel

M-Net M-Net (an abbreviation of Electronic Media Network) is a South African pay television channel established by Naspers in 1986. The channel broadcasts both local and international programming, including general entertainment, children's series, ...

, Indian channel

Zee Café Zee Café is an Indian pay television channel owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises. The channel mainly syndicates popular American and British television shows to appeal to the English-speaking population of India. History Zee English was ...

and by

HBO Comedy Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television, premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office busi ...

in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. Within days, the show's page was removed from the CBS website and the show was removed from the

People's Choice Awards The People's Choice Awards is an American awards show, recognizing people in entertainment, voted online by the general public and fans. The show has been held annually since 1975, with the winners originally determined using Gallup Polls until ...

online ballot for Favorite New TV Comedy.

Episodes

Reception

The show has been met with negative reviews with a collective score of 37/100 from

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. Critics have noted that the CBS show has many similarities to a 1995

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

sitcom of the same name. Both shows had the same director, concept, characters with similar occupations, similar name for the main female lead, and even timeslot. In addition,

Jeff Greenstein Jeff Greenstein is an American television writer, producer and director. Greenstein was the showrunner of ''Will & Grace'' and '' Dream On'', as well as on '' Partners'' and ''Getting Personal'', both of which he created. A member of the Writers ...

, one of the head writers of the Fox series who also worked on ''Will & Grace'' with Kohan and Mutchnick, has claimed they were big fans of the show.

Broadcast

''Partners'' aired concurrently in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

via

simultaneous substitution Simultaneous substitution (also known as simsubbing or signal substitution) is a practice mandated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requiring broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) in Canada to dist ...

of the CBS broadcast. The complete series was shown on

DSTV Digital Satellite Television, commonly abbreviated to DStv, is a Sub-Saharan African direct broadcast satellite service owned by MultiChoice and based in Randburg, South Africa. Launched on 6 October 1995, the service provides multiple audio, ...

in South Africa from November 2012. It was later broadcast by

in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia from March 2013, Zee Cafe in India from October 2013, and

TVNZ , type = Crown entity , industry = Broadcast television , num_locations = New Zealand , location = Auckland, New Zealand , area_served = Nationally (New Zealand) and some Pacific Island nations such as the Cook Islands, Fiji, and the So ...

's TV2 in New Zealand from November 27, 2013, late-night. The

Nine Network The Nine Network (stylised 9Network, commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by parent company Nine Entertainment and is one of five main free-to-air television netw ...

in Australia were going to air the series prior to cancellation for their late 2012 to early 2013 season,Later this year on Nine , TV Tonight
/ref> however delayed the complete series for

burning off In American broadcast programming, "burning off" is the custom of quickly airing the remaining episodes of a television program, usually one that has already been or is planned to be cancelled, without the intent to attract a large number of vie ...

until December 30, 2013, late-night also airing on Thursdays. Also captioning was converted to teletext subtitling by AI Media, which are made available due to ACMA rules – unlike New Zealand and other countries that have very limited legislated broadcasting rules. The series was preempted during the first week of February 2014.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 2248977, Partners 2010s American LGBT-related comedy television series 2012 American television series debuts 2012 American television series endings American LGBT-related sitcoms CBS original programming English-language television shows Gay-related television shows Television series by Warner Bros. Television Studios Television shows set in New York City