View Full Version : Shows That Were Ahead of Their Time


DeadlyToolTime
10-17-2018, 11:41 PM
Soap
NewsRadio
Arrested Development

opus
10-18-2018, 01:27 AM
Star Trek
Futurama
The Jetsons

(That may not be what you meant.....)

Regulus
10-18-2018, 01:40 AM
:uplol:

PhoenixAcres
10-18-2018, 01:34 PM
Green Acres. Very meta with non-traditional humor. Didn't deserve the reputation of being a "rural show" and getting canceled in the rural purge.

cfr1970
10-18-2018, 04:33 PM
All in the Family. I watch it nightly and marvel at how the issues brought up and argued in episodes from 45 years ago are still so relevant today. Sadly, a show like that just couldn't be made with the same honesty in today's PC era.

DeadlyToolTime
10-18-2018, 05:50 PM
There was a little group of shows, including My World and Welcome to It, the original Bill Cosby Show, the Jimmy Stewart Show, and maybe the early years of The Odd Couple and Happy Days, that had a similar quirky feel to today's single camera shows. They got buried under the broad studio audience shows from Lear, MTM, and eventually Marshall.

Yeah. I can see that with The Bill Cosby Show and The Jimmy Stewart Show. The Partridge Family also kinda had that feel, but there was the whole usage of a laugh track. I always found the usage of a laugh track in The Partridge Family really unfitting.

Green Acres. Very meta with non-traditional humor. Didn't deserve the reputation of being a "rural show" and getting canceled in the rural purge.

Definitely. The only other show I can think of from that time period that was in the same league of humor as Green Acres is Get Smart. Also, I agree with that statement. I'm surprised there's people who never got that the show was literally subverting the whole idea of a "rural show".

All in the Family. I watch it nightly and marvel at how the issues brought up and argued in episodes from 45 years ago are still so relevant today. Sadly, a show like that just couldn't be made with the same honesty in today's PC era.

I really don't believe that's the case. I've always felt like shows like that and the desire for them to come back now have to do more with trying to replicate them. You can't really replicate certain shows and make them your own. There was The Carmichael Show, which was heavily influenced by Norman Lear's shows and that show was pretty bad because it tried too much to be just like Lear's shows. Honestly, if the whole case was "you make this because it's not PC", we wouldn't have shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Also, look at Soap, it was considered politically incorrect for its time and nowadays, it's regarded as groundbreaking and a cult classic.

brtcmfn
10-18-2018, 06:21 PM
The George Burns and Gracie Allen show.

70s show watcher
10-20-2018, 12:40 PM
he and she

tlc38tlc38
10-20-2018, 05:40 PM
Green Acres

Newhart

The Addams Family

Mama's Family: This show always gets a bad wrap. When talking to people they always just see it as a "hick"/stupid show but its humor is timeless and the writing is really good.

stevea
10-20-2018, 08:20 PM
Burns and Allen Show - having George be part of the ensemble and also be the "host"/narrator/stand up comic to us was innovative. Then in the later years they gave him a TV set in his den, on which he watches his show, also novel.

Also echo all 4 on the previous post, particularly Mama's Family.