AustLit

A spin-off from the highly successful My Name's McGooley - What's Yours?, Rita and Wally represented a re-structuring of the original series after Gordon Chater (the titular McGooley) decided not to continue in the role. As Don Storey notes in his Classic Australian Television, McGooley had departed from the series three episodes before the actual final episode of My Name's McGooley (apparently visiting an old girlfriend in Queensland, from which location he sends word that they've decided to elope to the United States). Meanwhile:

Wally has received a promotion to an office job as a 'junior salesman' - in fact, he is the oldest 'junior' salesman in the firm - and he becomes desirous of moving to a more exclusive suburb befitting his new 'executive' status.

Selling the Balmain house, Rita and Wally move to the Sydney North Shore, where the plotlines are focused largely on 'keeping up with the Joneses' scenarios. It was never as popular a program as its predecessor. As Storey notes:

Although Wally had become the focus of the McGooley series, the character of McGooley was nonetheless an important ingredient. And Wally had changed - now he was in a white-collar job, and the emphasis had changed from 'battler' Wally in working-class Balmain to 'fish-out-of-water' Wally in his new 'executive' job and residence on the North Shore. Without McGooley, and with the other characters in a North Shore setting, Rita and Wally began to drift into middle-class dullness.

The program was wrapped up after twenty-three episodes, in a scenario that represented a return to the show's beginnings: to quote Storey, 'Wally had just given himself the sack from his job, and the outlook for the future was looking bleak for the Stiller household. Then McGooley and his mates turn up on their doorstep', facilitating a move back to Balmain (albeit outside the actual program).