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...