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| Harper, Moore and Leachman: made it after all |
Farrell pointed out two things: sitcoms are shorter today by at least three minutes, which cuts out any time for texture. Writers have to serve the A-, B- or C- storylines and that’s it, he says. There are modern exceptions like The Office and Craig Daniel’s animated sitcom King of the Hill. Farrell noted how Daniels likes to take his time and focus on one story per episode, which might be a formula to follow in order to leave room for texture in today’s TV comedies.
There probably is a happy inbetween when it comes to today’s TV comedies. I sometimes find the Seinfeld-inspired woosh-woosh of speedy scene changes a bit forced. It feels like a trick to keep my attention, which it often is.
On the other hand, there are moments watching MTM or Newhart when you can go out and make a sandwich in the middle of a scene and come back and not feel you’ve missed anything,
On another topic, I wish all these nostalgia channels–TV Land Canada, TVTropolis, Deja View and now Comedy Gold–would mix up their offerings once in a while. How many times can you rerun the same Three’s Company episode?
Best left in the vault, as far as I’m concerned, is Designing Women, which today for me is like watching a party go bad. Murphy Brown is also deadly dull in reruns.
Deals with studios get made and shows get locked in for years, it seems, on nostalgia channels. They don`t draw huge ratings so networks like Global and CTV keep costs down by trotting them all out forever–which is maybe why they don`t draw bigger numbers. I’d love to see some less obvious shows from the past make the nostalgia channel cut in Canada. A few suggestions:
- The Larry Sanders Show. As funny and savage today as when it first aired on HBO in the ’90s. Loving it now on DVD (the extras on the Shout Factory release are worth the price alone, which, by the way, I saw at half the suggested retail price at Costco last week).
- The Courtship of Eddie`s Father. This early ’70s sitcom, which starred Bill Bixby as a single dad to young Brandon Cruz, was one of a handful of shows which launched in 1969 that were HBO before HBO. Thoughtful, about something, subtle, nuanced, they deserve to be rediscovered. I have one episode of this series on 16mm and it is a quiet revelation, especially when you consider that the No. 1 comedy in America at the time this series launched was Gomer Pyle USMC.
- Room 222 and My World and Welcome To It (starring William Windom as a character based on cartoonist James Thurber) were two other too smart for the room comedies launched in ’69 that should be on TV Land or whatever today.
- You don`t have to go back to the ’60s to find deserving reruns. One of these networks should rotate one or two season wonders into the mix. I’d nominated several recent Fox shows, including Wonderfalls, The Tick and Keen Eddie, all brilliant in their way.
- A Judd Apatow block combining Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared would also be welcome. Throw My So Called Life in to pad things out for a fuller “teen angst” run.
- I wish Canadian stations like CHCH had not erased almost the entire run of Party Game or Tiny Talent Time or virtually all those Canadian kids shows from the ’60s had not disappeared, but a regularly scheduled wheel of “Lost Canadiana” would definitely get my attention.
- Finally, I miss those old “overnight, black and white” game show reruns they used to show on GSN. Bring back Whats My Line?, a true time capsule with all those famous panelists and guests of the era. I`d like to see more b&w TV pried out of the vault, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Honeymoorers, and I Love Lucy, but less obvious choices, too, like Ernie Kovaks shows from the ’50s or reruns of Jack Paar or Steve Allen’s old talk shows.
Have other favourites you’d like to see resurrected on Deja View, Comedy Gold or where ever? Feel free to add your choices at the comment button below.
7 Comments
Hi Bill – just a heads up that GSN is bringing back What’s My Line and I’ve got a secret on Black and White Overnight as of December 13th. Source: http://buzzerblog.flashgameshows.com/drew-carey-and-black-white-shows-come-to-gsn/
Enjoy!
My mom would probably vote for HeeHaw. At the downtown HMV store, individual episode discs were selling for $20 a piece – and available were “highlight artist” episodes rather than the plain ‘ol run of the mills.
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I don’t understand TV syndication circa 2010: Station A orders a show from Label B or C or D. Airs it 5 days a week, and often back to back for sitcoms. These few Major Labels own everything and everything is on digital whether publicly released, remastered, of not.
TCM should be a model station for retro TV: fresh content 24/7 and even then profitable without padded commercial breaks (or any commercials).
Every retro channel should have a unique 8 hour block for each weekday: so that’s 40 one hour dramas or 80 different sitcoms per. It’s all the same anyway for a turnkey ‘warehouse’ label. Not just to repeat a few “big hits”.
A lot of time honoured classic films were box office disappointments in their day.
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p.s. Last week I bought two British seasons of Man About the House: $2.99 at a Zellers.
Do Canadian stations actually show Designing Women & Murphy Brown? I can’t find them in the US (DVDs are even scarce), and I’d kind of like watching them again.
The US version of TV Land is a screaming disappointment lately – they’ve dropped the “classic” shows and have started showing stuff like Scrubs. They actually started running Scrubs while it was still in production, for crying out loud, and at the time, I could find 40+ episodes per week on basic cable and local channels.
I’ve got the DVD sets of MTM and the Bob Newhart show, we need to finish MTM and start Newhart.
Christi–I know Shout! Factory offers the first two or three seasons of Designing Women and that Fox now has all seven season of MTM out on DVD. Check out http://www.shoutfactorystore.com
Kind of late but I came across your blog while trying to find where to stream golden oldies TV shows… I subscribed to Déjà view a few months ago and got to see a few episodes of All in the Family, Three’s Company and even a bit of I love Lucy (I think, unless it was on Comedy Gold). Then in the fall they removed all of these shows and replaced them with stuff like Blossom and Everybody loves Raymond, which mean nothing to a 60 year-old like me. So, bring back Lucy, Archie Bunker, and why not the Honeymooners! And I would also like to see the *original* version of the Odd Couple, not the pale imitation DV runs… I unsubscribed from both DV and CG and am looking for something better… Anyway this is the internet equivalent of a message in a bottle… Why not!
And yes, bring back MTM, Newhart (the psychologist, not the writer in Vermont… Then again, why not both…) and why not Adam-12…!
Your messages in a bottle welcomed anytime here Daniel. We’re about the same age and I, too, want that Lucy, Honeymooners, Archie Bunker channel.