The first of two televised versions based on the radio series, Jackie Gleason played Chester A. Riley, a riveter with Stevenson Aircraft and Associates. He lived with his wife Peggy, and their children, Babs and Junior.

Riley worked in an aircraft plant in California, but viewers usually saw him at home, cheerfully disrupting life with his malapropisms and ill timed intervention into minor problems. His stock answer to every turn of fate became a catch phrase: 'What a revoltin' development this is!"