Tales of the City Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Armistead Maupin

SOURCE: "A Tale of the '70s," in TV Guide Magazine, Vol. 42, No. 2, January 8-14, 1994, pp. 26-8.

In the following essay, Maupin discusses the creation and development of the Tales of the City series from newspaper serial to novel to television miniseries.

PBS—famous for such British-made epic dramas as Upstairs, Downstairs; Brideshead Revisited; and The Jewel in the Crown—will broadcast yet another this week: Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, a sweeping period saga whose literary origins can be traced directly to the vegetable department of a San Francisco supermarket.

Let me back up a little.

It was 1974. I'd come to the local Safeway as a reporter for a weekly paper to follow up on a tip I'd received. According to my source, hordes of "swinging singles"—as we once so quaintly called them—descended upon the store every Wednesday night in search of romance.

Sure enough, the place...
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