I guess the half-hour drama was common in the 50’s and 60’s, but been mostly out of favor since 1970’s, with a couple notable exceptions.
Holy Priceless Collection of TV Shows, no one has mentioned Batman, which I guess was a comedy, of sorts, and not a drama.
Doctor Who used to be in 30 minute episodes.
The Bold & The Beautiful has been a half-hour drama since it began 24 years ago. That’s more an artifact of available network time slots (back when each network had 3 or 4 soaps to cram into a 3 1/2 hour slot) than of some sort of artistic device, though.
On U.S. prime-time network TV, that does appear to be true. The more recent examples which have come up here have mostly been:
Tim Reid’s Frank’s Place from that same season too. Since there were (at least) two shows of that vein, I guess they had to invent “dramedy” to describe them.
I’m inclined to agree. There were plenty of half-hour dramas on old-time radio, including radio versions of some shows that have been mentioned in this thread (like “Dragnet” and “Gunsmoke”).
I wouldn’t mind seeing an efficient, fast-paced half-hour drama.
It was also basically a one-hour show split into two halves shown on consecutive days.
if you get broadcast (over the air) tv in the USA many of these shows are on digital subchannels such as Retro Television Network, MeTV, This TV, MyNetworkTV
i think that regular nonserial radio dramas were half-hour.
some serial radio dramas were quarter-hour or half-hour. some starting at 1/4 went to 1/2 and then to 1/4 before their end.
i think people were too busy to spend an hour, on their butt, at a time back then.
adaptations of plays or movies as anthology series would go an hour on radio. there were a few of these that ran for years though maybe only one or two might be on in a week.
Not quite on-topic, but some fun reading anyway:
I’d put The Venture Bros. in as not straight comedy. It is at least action comedy, and several of the ongoing stories (and a handful of the episodic ones) have all the dramatic elements.
Of the standard four genres lawyer/cop/western/doctor, cop worked best within half-hour. Watching NYPD, character development is jettisoned for action. Who cares why the bad guy is bad? This is NYC in the 1960’s: crazy, evil people are a given, so just show how the cops stop this week’s specimen.
I don’t find ‘Cougartown’ or ‘New Adventures of Old Christine’ funny at all, does that count? Actually, I came in here to say ‘Adam 12’ but on preview someone beat me to it. shakes fist
It’s animated, and very few animated shows, of whatever genre, are hour-long. (Some of the Scooby-Doos and Superfriends?) There have indeed been half-hour animated dramas (e.g. superhero cartoon shows), but they tend to be kids’ shows (or parodies of them, in the case of Venture Brothers).
As the World Turns was expanded to an hour on Dec. 1, 1975.
Lassie was meant to appeal to kids, although, it probably appealed to everyone in a simpler time.
My guess would be that back in the 1950s, they kept a show that would appeal to kids at 30 minutes because kids wanted to do other things, like play outside. They weren’t likely to sit in front of a TV for 3 or 4 hours, or at least, mom wouldn’t let them.
Two that tried, and failed, were Chopper One and Firehouse, in 1974. Each lasted only 13 episodes.
How I remember these, I’ll never know.
Also The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, which is the one I always think of when the word “dramedy” comes up.