A co-worker and myself were discussing this and I was of the opinion that Hogan’s Heroes would never get the green light from network TV. Possibly cable, but not netowrk. I mean, 'Hey, we have a comedy and it’s based in a Nazi POW camp where the prisoners get over on the bumbling guards and company commander! Hilarious!".
His opinion was that if it was OK then then it would be OK, now. While TV standards are more relaxed on certin issues (inter-racial couples, sex, etc.) I think it is more restrictve in other areas and certainly funning about WWII, even if it is at the expense of the Germans, just wouldn’t be well recieved.
And humor has changed since then. I find that, the last few times I saw the show, it wasn’t as funny as I remember it was.
There are a lot of shows from the golden age of televison (and in the '60s) that couldn’t get made now without major retooling. People’s sensibilities, in general, are just too delicate.
Lord, let’s hope not - could that show have sucked worse? :rolleyes:
But that’s not really what you are asking for. Bottom line: I don’t think that particular retarded-concept show could be made for various violations of political incorrectness - but I don’t think that limiting that one type will in any way reduce the networks’ ability to come up with other incredibly stupid shows…
Good Lord – Hogan’s Heroes. When I lived in Salt Lake City this came on right after the late evening news, which was 10:30 in those parts. We didn’t get Nightline, but we got this. It was kind of embarassing to watch, especially because I had a German advisor and several German post-docs.
Nobody thought much of it at the time. Heck, Bing Crosby owned the company that made it. They claimed (as I read many times) that former POWs were fans of the show. It was utrageous fantasy as I, fan of The Great Escape and other POW books, knew. Watch Stalag 17 (itself written by a couple of former POWs) and you knew that carrying out sabotage in Germany which Hogan’s Heroes were onstantly foing) was something they constantly suspected escaping POWs of doing, and theatened to shoot them over. Not a laughing matter.
Mad magazine was ahead of the curve, pointing out how fundamentally tasteless the premise was in its parody “Hokum’s Heroes”. I didn’t apprecdiate it at the tinme, but now I think they were right.
Of course, you couldn’t make most TV series from the past today, and I’d like to think we’re getting more enlightened. I remember one awful comedy series from the 1970s (“Blansky’s Beauties”? I can’t remember any more.) that featured a waitress/hostess who was Eskimo. They gave her a lot of dumb Eskimo jokes, but I thought – “Hey1 An Eskimo character! That would be interesting!” And it was, some 15 years later, when we got Northern Exposure. But you couldn’t have made NE back then, either.
The real problem with doing Hogan’s Heroes today is that WW2 ended 60 years ago.
Twenty years seems to be about the right time period to make fun of a war. (Hogan’s Heroes and McHale’s Navy came along in the 60’s to make fun of WW2, MAS*H came along in 1972 to make fun of Korea.) By my calculations, the time is now right for a sitcom about wacky hijinks during the invasion of Grenada.
However, I’ll bet that someone, somewhere is trying to develop a sitcom with a character who plays the all-American star of a sitcom who divorces his wife, marries his blond co-star and winds up making porn videos at night.
