I was watching an episode of F-Troop on METV a few months ago and besides laughing I started thinking, how unique this show was. An American TV Series, most notably a sit-com not set in the 20th Century.
Not using the internet, I tried to remember how many other American sit-coms had been set in centuries prior to the 20th (and yes, that’s American, so Blackadder doesn’t count)
I could only think of four:
The aforementioned F-Troop Best of the West a sit-com on ABC, aired in the late 70’s or early 80’s, set in the wild west. When Things Were Rotten another ABC sit-com, from the 70’s, created by Mel Brooks about Robin Hood (made years before Men In Tights
and The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer a really lousy sit-com starring (I think) Chi McBride about a butler in Lincoln’s White House
I’m presuming The Flintstones doesn’t meet your definition of sitcom. The Jetsons too - would meet the time criterion in the subject header but not as refined in the OP.
When I was 5 or 6, there was a sitcom called It’s About Time, about astronauts stranded back in the Stone Age.
Years after*** Gilligan’s Island***, Bob Denver starred in ***Dusty’s Trail, ***a Gilligan’s Island ripoff about 7 people in a stagecoach, wandering through the Old West.
You’re right, I forgot all about Dusty’s Trail. Officially though, it was’t a network show. It was never carried by a network, only offered in syndication. Ironically, it co-starred (alongside Bob Denver) Forest Tucker the co-star of F-Troop.
I remember It’s About Time though I guess I didm’t consider it though since by episode 19 of it’s first (and only) season, all the characters traveled back into the 20th century, so now the cave people were the fish out of water characters. That change didn’t help the ratings though and the show was canceled.
Zorro And Son was exactly what it says on the tin: Don Diego de la Vega is pushing fifty, so his would’ve-worked heroics fall apart into slapstick. and his kid has no knack for the family business yet – but if they meet each other halfway, and everyone is willing to overlook how the suit doesn’t quite fit right, they could maybe pull this off.
Pistols ‘n’ Petticoats, a short-lived Western comedy that ran on CBS in 1966–67. The star was former glamour girl Ann Sheridan, who was dying from cancer at the time. The change in her appearance from '40s pin-up to terminal patient was both sad and shocking.