Tales of the City: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

Tales of the City (and its sequels) follows the soap-operaish lives of the people living in 1970's and 1980's San Francisco, and are based on Armistead Maupin's novels. The show centers around Anna Madrigal, the eccentric landlady at 28 Barbary Lane (who welcomes her tenants by taping homegrown joints above their doors), her tenants and the others implicated in their lives. Tenants include Mary Ann Singleton, a naive midwesterner who moves to California to start a new life; Mona Ramsey, a "fag-hag" with a special connection to Mrs Madrigal; Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, a gay Floridan who moved to California to avoid letting his parents find out he was gay; and Brian Hawkins, a horny straight guy trapped in a gay city... People involved in their lives are Beauchamp Day, Mary Ann's boss, and his wife DeDe; Edgar Halcyon, Anna's boyfriend, and his wife, Frannie who are DeDe's parents.

Series details

• Title: Tales of the City
• Format: Scripted
• Language: English
• Genres: Drama, Comedy, Romance
• Premiere date: 1994-01-10
• Final broadcast date listed: 2001-05-27
• Status in TVmaze: Ended
• Network listed by TVmaze: PBS
• Network country: United States
• Typical episode runtime: 60 minutes
• TVmaze community rating: 8/10
• TVMaze ID: 24413
• TVDB ID: 77422

Cast and credited roles

• Olympia Dukakis — Anna Madrigal
• Donald Moffat — Edgar Halcyon
• Laura Linney — Mary Ann Singleton
• Marcus D'Amico — Michael "Mouse" Tolliver
• Billy Campbell — Jon Fielden
• Paul Gross — Brian Hawkins
• Thomas Gibson — Beauchamp Day
• Barbara Garrick — DeDe Halcyon Day
• Chloe Webb — Mona Ramsey
• Stanley DeSantis — Norman Neal Williams

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 1: premiered 1994-01-10; final listed air date 1994-01-12; episode order: 6.
• Season 2: premiered 1998-06-07; final listed air date 1998-06-08; episode order: 6.
• Season 3: premiered 2001-05-06; final listed air date 2001-05-27; episode order: 4.

Source and licence

Adapted from Tales of the City on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.