Years ago on one of the cable channels (probably A&E) there were a couple of seasons of a British sit-com called Two's Company with Elaine Stritch as a writer from Brooklyn, NY, living in London with a butler played by Donald Sinden. It was very funny (though I see it gets mixed reviews on IMDB). Somehow this idea was transmogrified (with the negative connotation in use here) into the sacharine and silly American program Three's Company. And I recall reading somewhere that a short-lived remake of that was attempted fairly recently.