Brothers and Sisters was an NBC sitcom that attempted to capitalize on the success of the 1978 motion picture National Lampoon's Animal House. It was the second of three "frat house" comedy series to air in early 1979 (the others were Delta House and Co-Ed Fever).

Brothers and Sisters takes place on the campus of Crandall College, with William Windom starring as Dean Larry Crandall. Chris Lemmon (Milos "Checko" Sabolcik), Jon Cutler (Larry Zipper), and Randy Brooks (Ronald Holmes III) play three students who live in the basement of Pi Nu fraternity. Rather than attend class, the three cellar-dwellers would create havoc with the more straight-laced members of the fraternity, and "interact" with the Gamma Iota sorority sisters that live nearby.

Brothers and Sisters debuted on NBC following their broadcast of Super Bowl XIII on January 21, three days after ABC aired the first episode of its Animal House-inspired series (which was, in fact, the "official" series in everything but name). Two weeks later (February 4), Co-Ed Fever made its debut on CBS after a broadcast of the motion picture Rocky, and all three "frat house" series were off the air by the end of April (with Co-Ed Fever having only one episode broadcast). Brothers and Sisters made its last appearance on April 3, 1979; Delta House followed suit on April 21, 1979.

The show's lack of success became painfully apparent when series regular Mary Crosby turned up as a celebrity on NBC's Hollywood Squares for a week in March of 1979; host Peter Marshall mentioned Brothers and Sisters as airing "on another network", only to be informed by Crosby that they were, in fact, on the same network!

In this short-lived TV ripoff of ANIMAL HOUSE, three fun-loving misfits (Zipper, Checko & Ronald) inhabit the basement of the preppie Pi Nu fraternity house on the Crandall College campus, run by unctuous Dean Crandall. Zipper, Checko & Ronald don't spend much time going to class, preferring instead to hang out, torment the more straight-laced members of Pi Nu and chase the beautiful, stuck-up girls of the Gamma Iota sorority. Written by Marty McKee

Tom Skerritt and Sally Field have played a married couple before, in Steel Magnolias (1989). They played roles of Julia Roberts's parents.

Rachel Griffiths (I) (Sarah) and Matthew Rhys (Kevin) have appeared together in Very Annie Mary (2001) (TV) a TV movie.

Robert McCallister was the name of a character on a previous Greg Berlanti show, "Jack & Bobby" (2004) about a boy that grew up to be the President of the United States. As with Brothers & Sisters, he had a wife named Courtney and a son called Jack.

While the producers were looking for an actor to play the role of Jason McCallister (Robert McCallister's brother and Kevin Walker's love interest), Rob Lowe (I), who plays Robert McCallister, recommended John Barrowman, who had costarred with Lowe in "A Few Good Men" on the London stage. The producers offered the role to Barrowman, and he was interested in taking it, but was ultimately unable to work the shooting schedule around the schedule for his own show, "Torchwood" (2006).

The Walker siblings' birth order is: Sarah (Rachel Griffiths (I)), Kitty (Calista Flockhart), Tommy (Balthazar Getty), Kevin (Matthew Rhys), Justin (Dave Annable), and Rebecca (Emily VanCamp).