Louise Lasser, star of Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, dies aged 87

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Actor who made her name in the TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and worked with Woody Allen on several of his early films

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.)

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