My Journey Through 1970s TV: Tuesday Night, 1972

[TMC]

http://comforttv.blogspot.com/2023/0...v-tuesday.html

Temperatures Rising is one of the decade’s more fascinating failures; not because it was a good show that inexplicably never found an audience, but because it was a bad show that ABC inexplicably refused to give up on.



Those who claim vaudeville is dead must have missed how it was briefly revived here through an embarrassing selection of bad jokes and broad caricatures. I don’t like to reference race on this blog because the country is race-obsessed enough already, but it’s hard to avoid when summing up Cleavon Little’s performance as Dr. Jerry Noland. His mannerisms, vocal inflections and expressions evoke the kind of unfortunate stereotype that he would wonderfully shatter just two years later in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.

Give the series credit for assembling a talented cast of likable veterans and promising newcomers – James Whitmore as the seen-it-all senior doctor on the staff, Joan Van Ark as a hook-up friendly head nurse, Reva Rose giving tired lines more edge than they deserved, and adorable Nancy Fox as the student nurse most likely to have her bottom pinched (it was that kind of show).



When the first season floundered ABC brought it back anyway with Cleavon Little and an all-new cast headed by Paul Lynde. While the “everything is funnier with Paul Lynde” rule still applies, it wasn’t enough to attract new viewers, and The New Temperatures Rising likewise flat-lined….until the network brought it back over the summer, with Nancy Fox back on rounds once again.

[jimknut]

I think Tempertures Rising was a good sitcom - at least in its first season. Quite funny and enjoyable.

I really would like to see it brought back into circulation.