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The Classic TV Thread - 50s, 60s, 70s
LibraryBoy
Posts: 1,803
I've been on an old TV kick lately. The other night I stumbled across the pilot for The Beverly Hillbillies on a Roku channel called Pub-D Hub... though I certainly knew the Clampetts' backstory from the song and have seen many reruns through the years, I had never seen the first episode before, so that was pretty cool. I've also been watching episodes of You Bet Your Life on Netflix, and it has been a blast watching Groucho talk to people... never realized the quiz show portion of the program actually made up so little of its content! :))
Also found a big box set of Ernie Kovacs's stuff at the library today, and I'm really looking forward to tucking into that... I've only ever seen miscellaneous clips on YouTube.
So what classic TV shows do you folks enjoy and recommend? And more importantly, where can it be found so we can go and watch it ourselves?
Also found a big box set of Ernie Kovacs's stuff at the library today, and I'm really looking forward to tucking into that... I've only ever seen miscellaneous clips on YouTube.
So what classic TV shows do you folks enjoy and recommend? And more importantly, where can it be found so we can go and watch it ourselves?
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I did catch some Honey West reruns super late one Saturday night when I couldn't sleep. Fun show, though I think I'd like it better if Honey didn't constantly need rescuing! She's the title character, let her get the big action scenes, 1960s TV producers!
I'd watch Get Smart, because damn do I love that show, but it's in a pretty terrible time slot. And, unfortunately, it's not available through any of the streaming services! Damn shame, that's what that is.
With my dad, we hunt down Welcome Back Kotter, WKRP, Happy Days, Lavernne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Sanford & Son, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers and of course BJ and the Bear.
Part of my dissertation looked at Happy Days so that always provides some good memories. Really love 50's America in general, so this is another favourite of mine. And, hey, come on, who doesn't love The Fonz!
Also loved watching Cheers re-runs. This is something me and my bro always watched before bed when we shared a room as kids. Cliff and Norm always made me laugh. The whole "NORM!!!" When he entered the bar everyweek always made me smile. Top tele!!!
At the moment, I'm watching classic SNL, Hawaii Five-O and the '60s Spider-Man cartoon. I wish The Odd Couple was available streaming. I've had an urge to watch that again, but last I checked, no one was carrying it.
I also have become a HUGE fan of Peter Gunn, a true noir private eye TV show. MeTV is getting more of my time than I thought it would, but the ads make me feel very old...they are all for assisted living, scooters and other things that retired people care about.
I'm almost tempted to get an antenna for my TV to pick up some of these classic TV channels, but I watch pretty much everything through my DirecTV DVR or my Roku, and I don't feel like dealing with the hassle.
Another classic we watch together is Lost in Space. Who isn't a fan of Dr. Smith? Or the Robot? And I've always been an I Dream of Jeannie fan...crushed majorly hard on Barbara Eden as a boy.
Do I even have to mention the Adam West Batman show in this group? :)
Moving into the 70s I had WKRP and M*A*S*H as my two main loves, with an admitted guilty pleasure in Three's Company (two reasons - John Ritter was great at slapstick comedy and I had a thing for Janet (Joyce DeWitt)). WKRP and Three's Company moved into the 80s a bit, but I still consider them more 70s shows.
The Monkees, I Spy, Route 66, Green Acres, Mr. Ed, Car 54 Where Are You?, The Fugitive
There's some kind of a DVD release for each of these shows.
@LibraryBoy I'm jealous of the Ernie Kovacs boxed set. That's one of the shows that Letterman and his staff took some inspiration from.
Leave it to Beaver (1957), My Three Sons (1960), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), The Bob Newhart Show (1972), and of course, M*A*S*H* (1972).
Love MeTV...but get a little tired of the catheter commercials.
Dragnet, Adam-12, and Emergency are my wife's favorites. She sees them as high comedy.
Comedy Central used to run Kovacs episodes late Sunday nights, back when they had a Golden Age of Comedy block. They also aired Jack Benny and Abbott & Costello at some point. Hard to imagine, but there was a time when Comedy Central actually did that. And they showed some pretty obscure stuff, too, like him hosting morning news programs and filling in on other people’s talk shows.
That was around the same time (early 90s) that PBS was airing a lot of stuff on Kovacs, so between the two of them, I saw a sizable chunk of it back then, and it’s interesting stuff. I doubt it would make people fall over laughing today, but if you watch it with an eye for how far ahead of his time he was, you’ll enjoy it. It’s a shame he died so suddenly, it would have been interesting to see what he might have done in the late ‘60s/early 70s, when shows like Laugh-In, Monty Python and Saturday Night Live all did things similar to what he had done. I like to think that there’s an alternate universe where Kovacs lived to host SNL one day.
:))
And if you love the Blue Boy episode of 60s Dragnet, you really owe it to yourself to check out the punk rock episode of Quincy (which you can watch on Netflix Instant Watch). It is just as wrongheaded in its goodheartedness, and therefore just as funny.
It's strange, Netflix has tons of 70s crime dramas, but so few classic sitcoms.
Fawlty Towers. Another great sitcom. Made all the better because there were only 13 episodes. All if which are TV gold.
Monty Pythons Flying Cirus. The first and arguabley best sketch show. Paved the way for so many greats to follow. And that dead parrot sketch still makes me laugh out laugh just thinking of it.