The zesty, ebullient actor Louise Lasser, who has died aged 87, played a harried Ohio housewife dealing with extreme events (drug addiction, mass murder, drowning-by-soup) in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, an innovative satirical sitcom that doubled as a spoof of daytime soap operas.
Like the target of its mockery, the show aired five times a week in the US, so that its modest two-season run, between 1976 and 1977, produced a staggering 325 episodes. (UK audiences were treated to a measly nine of them in 1980; a 38-disc DVD box set was released in 2013.)
