Married... with Children (1987)
Domestic bliss was never like this!
Al Bundy is an unsuccessful middle aged shoe salesman with a miserable life and an equally dysfunctional family. He hates his job, his wife is lazy, his son is dysfunctional (especially with women), and his daughter is dim-witted and promiscuous.
| Type | TV series |
|---|---|
| First aired | 5 April 1987 |
| Status | Ended, last episode 9 June 1997 |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Created by | Michael G. Moye and Ron Leavitt |
| Starring | Ed O'Neill, Katey Sagal and Amanda Bearse |
| Seasons | 11 seasons, 258 episodes |
| Episode length | about 22 min |
| Time to watch it all | about 95 hours |
| Rated | TV-PG |
| Scores | TMDB users 7.7/10 |
Where to watch Married... with Children
Married... with Children is streaming on Prime Video ($8.99 a month) in the US. It is also on Hulu ($21.49 a month) and Tubi. At ten hours a week, all of the series takes about 3 months of Prime Video, or $26.97 at list price.
We check availability daily. Page last updated 25 October 2026. Prices are standard monthly plans and change often, so check with the service before you sign up.
Where to watch Married... with Children in 5 other countries
| Country | Streaming on (price a month) |
|---|---|
| Australia | Binge $19.00 AUD, Foxtel |
| Austria | Paramount+ |
| Germany | Paramount+ |
| Netherlands | Prime Video €4.99 |
| Switzerland | Paramount+ |
Subscription, free and ad-supported services we track; prices where Binge Boss has a price list for the country. "About" marks a price the service bills in another currency, converted at the day's rate. All countries as data.
What kind of watch this is
Married... with Children is a 11-season comedy where the domestic sphere functions less like a home and more like a shared war zone. It runs 258 episodes, totaling 95 hours of viewing. That is a specific amount of time to spend watching people who have given up on the idea that their family might have redeeming qualities. The tagline promises that domestic bliss was never like this, which is a generous understatement. It is a show that finds the funny bone in the sheer exhaustion of being related to people who actively choose to be difficult.
What the critics said
The critics saw a show that knew exactly what it was, and most did not mind. Metacritic assigned the first season an average of 58 out of 100 based on 5 reviews, a score that lands squarely in the "mixed or average" territory. It was a consensus of polite disappointment.
Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times praised the casting of the Bundys but warned that "The satire is heavy-handed." He felt the Rhoades family lacked proper development. Tom Shales of The Washington Post was less charitable, calling the debut episode "nasty-minded, overacted and poorly cast." John J. O'Connor of The New York Times added that it was "loud, coarse and life-of-the-party vulgar," comparing it unfavorably to The Life of Riley. It was a loud room, and the critics kept the volume down.
How it did with audiences
TMDB users rate it 7.7 out of 10. There is no box office figure to parse, because television does not have one. Instead, the show suffered a peculiar distribution problem. Fox was a startup network without the affiliate base of the Big Three, meaning many viewers could only catch it on low-quality UHF channels, if at all. Ed O'Neill’s hometown in Ohio did not get a proper Fox affiliate until 1998, a year after the series ended. His friends thought he was famous for beer commercials. Popularity, it seems, requires signal strength.
If you liked this
TMDB's recommendations for people who watched Married... with Children.
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Sources
- Married... with Children on TMDB — synopsis, cast, ratings and recommendations
- Wikidata Q208647 — review scores, box office and awards (CC0)
- “Married... with Children” on Wikipedia, by its contributors (history) — reception, audience figures and legacy, summarised and adapted here under CC BY-SA 4.0
- Where to watch and prices: Binge Boss, from TMDB watch-provider data (powered by JustWatch) and our own provider list
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