In a review published in its October 10, 1960, edition,
TIME magazine said: : "The Tom Ewell Show (CBS) leads a relentless parade of situation comedies, all designed to show that American family life is as cute as a freckle on a five-year-old. The show, which might also be titled Father Knows Nothing, presents the comic with the excavated face as a bumbler named Potter who is trapped in the customary format: Harassed Man Beaten Down by Wife, Three Daughters, Mother-in-Law. In the opening episode, Ewell could find no better way to outsmart his spendthrift women than closing his bank account and ruining his own credit. For those who may have tuned out early, the women were all set to start spending again." After its debut in September 1960,
The Tom Ewell Show struggled in the ratings. In an interview with
Associated Press television critic Cynthia Lowry published on December 4, 1960, Ewell explained that he had examined early reviews of the show after its debut episode and found some positive ones, but also discovered that the negative reviews reflected two main concerns he also had about the show's writing and performances, i.e., that it depicted the Tom Potter character as "too much of a boob," with too great a focus on his ineptness rather than on "real comedy," and that it attempted "to play farce in a realistic situation" even though farce is not realistic, leading to an inappropriate tempo and defeating the effort at farce. Ewell promised that changes in the show's writing and acting to address these problems would be apparent beginning with the episode ("Site Unseen") broadcast on December 6, 1960. An article carried in the May 2, 1961, edition of the same newspaper indicated that the series had indeed been dropped. ==Broadcast schedule==