Viewers expecting it to be just another situation comedy, found themselves bombared by controversy. It was the first series to take a long hard long at moral issues, like abortion, which were taboo on TV in the early '70s, when Maude first hit the small screen.

The show, which returns to TV1 on Wednesday, ran for six successful years in the States. Looking back, 55-year-old Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress who made Maude a heroine to millions of women, believes the series accomplished what it set out to do--put quality into television.

"And for the very first time," she says, "here was a character who wasn't just out to get laughs. We dealt with real issues, and I think we made television a little more adult."

Fifteen million Americans tuned in to Maude each week and watched her get involved in such topics as alcoholism, Women's Lib, race relations--and just about everything from the meaning of life to the meaning of death.

Her fans enjoyed the way she handled touchy subjects with humour; her critics often slated her as stridently vulgar. But her enemies were much in the minority.

Frustrated housewives called her a 20th century Joan of Arc. Feminist groups lauded her as one of the most highly visible symbols of the women's movement.

Bea Arthur was so wrapped up in her job, she didn't have time to explore the controversies in which Maude was involved. But she certainly wasn't a feminist. "I've never felt that being a wife and mother is not enough," she said then. "I've never felt secondary to my husband."

Yet Maude did make Bea very aware of other people's feelings. What had probably the biggest impact on her was the two-part episode in which Maude, at 47, discovers she is pregnant and, after much heart-searching, decides to have a legal abortion.

When the episode was screened it caused a nation-wide furor. Population control, environmental, religious and women's organizations applauded it. Other groups condemned it, and Bea received many letters containing photographs of fetuses.

"I'd never thought of a fetus being an unborn baby," she says. "When the script arrived, I didn't question it. I couldn't imagine anything more heart-breaking in this world than an unwanted child."

"Then after we'd done the show, the mail poured in. Most of it was from very bright, genuinely concerned people. There weren't nutsies writing to harrass me. As a result, all I'd arrived at is a state of complete confusion. If I were given the same script now, I really don't know what I'd do. It would give me pause."

There were times when she did question the Maude scripts, only to be proved wrong. At first glance, she was embarrassed by the ultimately provocative episodes about screen husband Walter Findlay's alcoholism, which she said were little better than soap operas. Critics extolled the finished products.

A script in which she was to sing Hard Hearted Hannah as part of an amateur musical revue seemed terribly dull, a piece of fluff.

"I can't do it," she told producer Norman Lear, "This is ridiculous. The music isn't good enough to carry the script. What are we gonna do?"

"Look," Lear explained, "you can't go on, week after week, hitting people over the head, doing things that are deep and meaningful. You have to do something occasionally that's just fun."

Among the few things Bea has in common with Maude Findlay is toughness, and a sizeable ego. Bea was incensed that the series failed to win her an Emmy in its first few seasons, when it was high in the ratings year after year.

"I was nominated in 1973 and I didn't get it," she recalled, spitting out the words. "The same thing happened in 1974. I assumed I would win because there was no one else like me. I couldn't be compared to Mary Tyler Moore. In 1975, I wasn't even nominated. That was shocking."

It wasn't until 1977 that she finally won the treasured Emmy. Ironically, that was when the series was past its prime.

A year later, Bea Arthur decided she'd had enough of Maude. It had run out of controversy, and stopped being a challange for her. Instead she'd look for new challenges-- in films, and in the theater, her first love.