It was 65 years ago this fall that The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered on CBS. The half hour sitcom was not an instant hit, struggling in the ratings hammocked between Marshal Dillon and Bachelor Father and was canceled at the end of its first season. Executive producer Sheldon Leonard refused to give up on the
It was 65 years ago on today’s date back in 1961 – October 3 – that The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered on CBS. The half hour sitcom, which also aired on CBC in Canada, was not an instant hit. Itstruggled in the ratings between Marshal Dillon (a half-hour version of Gunsmoke) and Bachelor Father
In the very early days of television, there was nobody bigger than Sid Caesar. On Saturday nights in the early 1950s, Caesar’s program, Your Show of Shows, prompted millions of Americans to buy this new-fangled device called a television set. Your Show of Shows, a rollicking variety that combined satire (mostly unfamiliar to American audiences)
UPDATED. When the world goes mad, you have the clowns to give you hope in humanity. John Candy, rising like the warmest summer sun with the recent release of the documentary John Candy: I Like Me. Dick Van Dyke, also beloved. He made it to 100 Saturday, and young and old felt their hearts lifted
Celebrate one of television’s greatest stars a day before his 100th birthday with the American Masters special “Starring Dick Van Dyke.” The two hour presentation premieres Friday night starting at 9/8C and will also be available at pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS App The two hour celebration has no new interview with Van Dyke. The beloved
This Sunday, March 20, would have been Carl Reiner’s 100th birthday. Despite writing a book entitled, “How to Live Forever,” the great writer-producer-comedian double-crossed us by dying nearly two years ago at 98. To mark the occasion of Reiner’s centennial, the National Comedy Center, located in Jamestown, N.Y., will premiere a new multi-media exhibit in
How lucky am I to have a conversation with Bill Persky, the Emmy-winnng writer-producer of, among many other things TV-related, The Dick Van Dyke Show. The spry 89-year-old New Yorker is the latest guest on brioux.tv: the podcast. (Listen now at the link above.) He’s pretty sure that he is the last remaining writer from
The situation with situation comedies today is no laughing matter. When the news shows for fall were announced this spring, there were few comedies on the list – and one was a reboot of The Wonder Years. The best new comedies that are made today, many for streaming services, could compete for awards as dramas,