''So Little Time'' is an American
sitcom
A sitcom (short for situation comedy or situational comedy) is a genre of comedy produced for radio and television, that centers on a recurring cast of character (arts), characters as they navigate humorous situations within a consistent settin ...
starring
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in their third and final television series (after ''
Full House
''Full House'' is an American television sitcom created by Jeff Franklin for American Broadcasting Company, ABC. The show is about the recently widowed father Danny Tanner who enlists his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis and childhood best friend ...
'' and ''
Two of a Kind'').
It aired on
Fox Family: the first half of the series aired from June 2 to August 18, 2001, and the series then went on a four-month hiatus owing to network management changes. By December 2001, Fox Family had become
ABC Family
American cable television, cable and satellite television network Freeform (TV channel), Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through four different owners and six different name changes dur ...
, and the remaining episodes aired from December 1, 2001, until May 4, 2002.
Premise
Chloe and Riley Carlson are twin sisters living in Malibu, California. Their fashion designer parents Macy and Jake are separated, living with their mom and their flamboyant, wise-cracking nanny Manuelo, while their dad is living in a trailer park a few miles away. Riley has the romantic affection of Larry Slotnick, the Carlson's wacky next-door neighbor.
Cast and characters
Main cast
*
Mary-Kate Olsen as Riley Carlson
*
Ashley Olsen as Chloe Carlson
*
Eric Lutes as Jake Carlson
*
Clare Carey as Macy Carlson
* Jesse Head as Spartacus Lawrence "Larry" Slotnick
*
Natashia Williams as Tedi
*
Taylor Negron as Manuelo Del Valle
Recurring cast
*
Amy Davidson as Cammie Morton
* Wendy Worthington as Ellen Westmore
*
Ben Easter as Lennon Kincaid
*
Todd Susman as Ed
*
Robert Hegyes as Vice Principal Connor
Notable guest stars
*
Tim Bagley as Mr. Diamond ("The Flat Fire")
*
Drake Bell
Jared Drake Bell (born June 27, 1986) is an American actor and musician. Born in Newport Beach, California, he began his career as a child actor in the 1990s, appearing on ''Home Improvement (TV series), Home Improvement'' (1994) and in severa ...
as Himself ("Waiting for Gibson")
*
Rini Bell as Tanya ("Larrypalooza")
*
Billy Aaron Brown as Rob ("The Wheelchair")
*
Francis Capra as Tony ("There's Something About Riley")
*
Sue Casey as Dolores Strathmore ("The Volunteer")
*
Bill Erwin as George ("The Volunteer")
*
Art Evans as Clayton Simms ("You've Got Mail")
*
Cheryl Hines as Barbara Morrison ("The Job")
*
Kathryn Joosten as Louise Van Horn ("The Volunteer")
*
Stephen Lee as Ted Morrison ("The Job", "The Flat Fire")
*
Jodi Long as Neptune's Net owner ("Manuelo in the Middle (Part 2)")
*
Trina McGee-Davis as Waitress ("The New Guy")
*
David Reivers as TV commercial director ("The Wheelchair")
*
Adam Wylie as Todd ("Riley's New Guy")
Production
Filming
Filming began the week of February 19, 2001. Production offices for the show were located on the
Universal Studios Lot
Universal Studios Lot is a television and Film studio#Typical components, film studio complex located at 100 Universal City Plaza in Universal City, California, and is part of the entire Universal Studios complex, which also includes the adjacen ...
in
Universal City, California
Universal City is an unincorporated area within the San Fernando Valley.
Approximately within and immediately outside the area is the property of Universal Pictures NBCUniversal's film studio, one of the five major film studios in the United ...
.
In March 2001, it was revealed the show was slated for a summer premiere date.
In a May 2001, New York Times article, head of children's programming at FOX Family Channel, Joel Andryc said, "...
he Olsens areon more than any other show on the entire network, daytime or prime time." He went on to say, "and consistently, wherever we put their shows, they do very good numbers. We're positioning our network as sort of a steppingstone between Nickelodeon and MTV. This new series
'So Little Time''is going to be a major initiative for us. We're kind of where Comedy Central was a couple of years ago, when suddenly 'South Park' came onto their network and everybody wanted Comedy Central. So, like ''The Sopranos'' for HBO or ''Rugrats'' for Nickelodeon -- that's what I'm hoping this show will be."
Conclusion
In 2002, it was reported the show would end after Mary-Kate and Ashley bowed out, in favor of a feature film contract. It was eluded that
ABC Family
American cable television, cable and satellite television network Freeform (TV channel), Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through four different owners and six different name changes dur ...
wanted to keep the series after the change over from FOX Family Channel, but "not at any price."
Broadcasting
On 6 August 2001,
Fox Kids Europe announced they had acquired worldwide television distribution rights to the series, including the United States.
In Canada,
Family Channel aired reruns of the series weekdays at 6:00pm until June 28, 2007, when they were replaced by ''
Zoey 101''.
In the United Kingdom, the show aired on
BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television b ...
18 September 2001 and on the ''Children's Channel''
CBBC
CBBC is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast children's television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is also the brand used for all BBC content for children aged 6 to 12. Its sister c ...
. Some episodes had a shorter running time than others because of the removal of the "behind the scenes"
featurettes.
Later in the series, the show starts with the crew wandering around the set with the
camera
A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...
following them. They talk about today's events, such as the birthday of an actor on the set.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen usually appear in this segment.
In Italy, the series aired on
Italia 1 under the name ''
Due gemelle e un maggiordomo'' (''Two Twins and a butler'') from August until September 2002.
A short "behind the scenes"
featurette was sometimes included at the end of an episode as well. Although retained on the
Warner Home Video VHS and
DVD releases, these were always edited out of the
U.K. terrestrial transmissions.
The series briefly reran on
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (nicknamed Nick) is an American pay television channel and the flagship property of the Nickelodeon Group, a sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on April 1, 1979, as the first ca ...
in 2015 after the network acquired the rights to Olsen twins'
Dualstar video library.
Episodes
Home media
From 2002 to 2003, Warner Bros. and DualStar released 4 separate volumes of the show on DVD and VHS. Each volume contained 6 episodes each for a total of 24 episodes. In 2005, those 4 volumes were packaged together as one box set containing a fifth DVD with the only two episodes that had not yet been released to DVD ("Outbreak" and "Look Who's Talking"). This box set was titled ''So Little Time: 5 DVD Gift Set''. The episodes on the gift set are not presented in air date or production order, because it is simply a repackaging of the individual DVD releases and each release had its own theme.
Although the gift set and individual releases for volumes 1–4 have since gone out of print, volumes 1–4 were re-released in 2017 as two 2-disc "double feature" sets, the first containing volumes 1 and 2 and the second containing volumes 3 and 4. The bonus disc containing "Outbreak" and "Look Who's Talking" has not been re-released and those two episodes remain only available as part of the ''5 DVD Gift Set'' package.
* ''So Little Time, Volume 1: School's Cool'' (August 13, 2002)
* ''So Little Time, Volume 2: Boy Crazy'' (August 13, 2002)
* ''So Little Time, Volume 3: About A Family'' (August 13, 2002)
* ''So Little Time, Volume 4: Hangin' Out'' (June 3, 2003)
* ''So Little Time: 5 DVD Gift Set'' (September 6, 2005)
Books
Several episodes of ''So Little Time'' were
novelized and published in book form by HarperCollins Entertainment. The series also featured new original stories based on the show, which were written by the same authors. As of the spring of 2008, 17 ''So Little Time'' books have been released, following the lives of Chloe and Riley.
# ''How to Train a Boy''
# ''Instant Boyfriend''
# ''Too Good To Be True''
# ''Just Between Us''
# ''Tell Me About It''
# ''Secret Crush''
# ''Girl Talk''
# ''The Love Factor''
# ''Dating Game''
# ''A Girl's Guide to Guys''
# ''Boy Crazy''
# ''Best Friends Forever''
# ''Love is in the Air''
# ''Spring Breakup''
# ''Get Real''
# ''Surf Holiday''
# ''The Makeover Experiment''
Soundtrack
A soundtrack album featuring the show's theme song as well as other music featured in the series was released by
Trauma Records and
Dualstar Records in June 2001, and was made available on
iTunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...
,
Amazon MP3 and
Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...
on June 5, 2010, by
Kirtland Records.
#
Arkarna - "So Little Time"
#Noogie - "Mr. Fabulous"
#Jason Feddy - "The Beautiful Few"
#Joey Kingpin - "Rock It"
#Vienna - "Where I Wanna Be"
#Ritalin - "Stuck Like Glue"
#George Tenen III and James Pennington - "You Make Me Love You More"
#
Lovepie - "Thoughts of You"
#The Getaway People - "Superstar"
#Chad Hollister - "Leavin' Home"
#Crashpalace - "Brickwall"
#
The Weekend - "Punk Rock Show"
References
External links
*
*
{{Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
2000s American teen sitcoms
2001 American television series debuts
2002 American television series endings
ABC Family original programming
American English-language television shows
Fox Family Channel original programming
Television series about families
Television series about sisters
American television series about teenagers
Television series about twins
Television series by Warner Bros. Television Studios
Television shows set in Malibu, California
Works about twin sisters
2000s American single-camera sitcoms
2000s American multi-camera sitcoms