Has there ever been a sitcom that was always one hour long?
I’m not talking about the “special episode of Blossom” or season finale of Friends…
The only one I can think of was Lucy Desi Comedy Hour - and I don’t think that was weekly, although I might be wrong about that.
Seems like every drama is always an hour, and every sitcom is always 30 minutes. Any ideas why?
I thought Ally McBeal was described as a sitcom.
Guess not. TV Guide says “comedy-drama.”
Shazbot. Any kindly mods wanna fix that coding for me?
Northern Exposure was a sort of sitcom. But because it was an hour long, people mistook it for drama. They were even nominated for a Drama Emmy, to which they said, “hey, guys, we’re a comedy!”
The Lucy and Desi Comedy Hour. Also, Popular was kinda a sitcom.
Taking the opposite side of the OP, there used to be a lot of half-hour dramas. Some of the more well-known ones include Dragnet, M Squad, Have Gun Will Travel, Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn, the older episodes of Gunsmoke, the older episodes of The Twilight Zone, Adam-12, and Sea Hunt.
I suspect that as commercials began to take up more and more of the show time, it got too difficult to fit a dramatic plot into a 30-minute show. A very short comedy, on the other hand, can still be quite workable. Stand-up comics can tell a funny story in five minutes, so 22-24 minutes of show time can be more than enough for a typical sitcom plot.
But even the comedies are getting longer, in the form of the so-called “comedy dramas” mentioned above.
I would no doubt consider it a dramedy
How do you want to define a sitcom?
I always classed Love Boat as a sitcom, and my “Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows” agrees with me.
Love American Style ran for 60 minutes during several seasons of its run.
There were attempts at “dramedy” in the late 80’s, and while the genre didn’t necessarily succeed, it did give rise to series like Moonlighting, which was always more comedy than crime show.
I know there were at least a couple of attempts at a one hour comedy that fit anyone’s definition of “sitcom” as well as at least one sitcom miniseries (Fresno). I just can’t find the cites right now. If I do, I’ll repost.
Why not a “Comma”??? 
That’s Life – not just a one-hour comedy, but a one-hour musical comedy.
It’s a Man’s World – listed as a comedy. Ran for a short time in 1962.
90 Bristol Court – billed as a 90-minute sitcom, but it was actually three sitcoms strung together.
OMG kunilou, I thought I’d be the only one to consider Fresno for this thread. I loved that miniseries. Also thought of Moonlighting and it always puzzled me why it was considered as a drama come Emmy time.
Do you mean hour long shows that were placed in the “comedy” catagory, or shows that were placed in the “drama” catagory, but you found yourself laughing hysterically the whole way thru?
But Love, American Style was an anthology series, and the hour-long episodes always included two or more unique stories.
I went to full geek mode to research this. My materials are a few years old, so I may have missed a couple.
In the 54 years since the networks started prime time programming, I found a total of 16 hour-long series that were described as situation comedies. As for how successful they were, you can judge for yourself.
Aloha Paradise (ABC, 1981) Love Boat on a tropical resort.
Breaking Away (ABC, 1981) Adapted from the movie.
Enos (CBS, 1980-1981) Spinoff from the Dukes of Hazzard.
Going My Way (ABC, 1962-1963) Adapted from the Bing Crosby movie.
Good and Evil (ABC, 1991) Two sisters, one good, the other evil.
Harts of the West (CBS, 1994) Beau Bridges leaves the big city to become a cowboy.
Husbands Wives and Lovers (CBS, 1978) The lives of five suburban couples.
It’s a Man’s World (NBC, 1962-1963) Four guys on a houseboat
The Last Precinct (ABC, 1986) Adam West commands the worst police officers in Los Angeles.
Lobo/Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo (NBC, 1979-1981) Slow-witted, bumbling country sheriff.
Love American Style (ABC, 1969-1974) and Love Boat (ABC, 1977-1986) We can debate whether these two shows fit the classic definition of situation comedies (and I agree with Walloon that LAS doesn’t), but they are the two most successful series in the entire genre.
Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (CBS, 1957-1967) Not really a series, it was a collection of specials that were brought together starting in 1962, and run as a summer replacement for several years.
Stir Crazy (CBS, 1985-1986) Adapted from the movie.
That’s Life (ABC 1968-1969) Young couple meets, falls in love and marries, also sings and dances. Maybe not really a sitcom, more like a collection of skteches with a common theme.
When the Whistle Blows (ABC, 1980) A bunch of guys do construction work and hang out at a bar.
When you consider that ABC, CBS and NBC have been filling seven nights a week for more than a half-century, then add DuMont, Fox, UPN and WB, the broadcast networks have collectively run something like TWO MILLION HOURS OF PRIME TIME PROGRAMS. Yet, hour-long sitcoms in total have aired less than the newsmagazine 60 Minutes. This has been a spectacularly unsucessful programming style for the networks.
The American sitcom format doesn’t lend itself well to a 1-hour show.
You’ve got your family sitcoms, which either involve cute kids or bickering spouses.
You’ve got your work-related sitcoms, wacky hijinks in the office (I’m even including “Hogan’s Heroes” in this category)
You’ve got your fantasy sitcoms (like “Gilligan’s Island” or “My Favorite Martian”.)
Most are centered around one humorous incident that is the jumping off point for other jokes.
I think it’s just very hard to write a show that can successfully keep an audience laughing for one hour, week after week.
When you have a drama with recurring characters, it’s a lot easier to keep up the pacing with different stories popping up from time to time and not having to make the pace as frenetic as a sitcom. Americans don’t seem to take to the quieter sitcoms, like “Sports Night.”
You got something there BobT… after all, “sitcom” being short for “situation comedy” it would be indeed something of an extended sketch about the cast being put in situations they handle in a silly manner – “one humorous incident”. With only 22 minutes, you can even make it, in Seinfeld’s words, “a show about nothing”. With an hour, you start needing plots of some sort.
I’d say that Boston Public is a comedy, albeit unintentionally so.
Thank you kunilou for going into “geek mode”…I have never even heard of most of the series you mentioned, let alone seen them.
As far as Love Boat and Love American Style…I don’t consider them “sit-coms” as much as “sit-cutes” at best…I also think they are more anthology, with three stories of which at least one always seemed to be semi-serious.
I guess in a way this proves what a lot of people have always said - comedy is a lot harder to do than drama. Which makes me wonder why so few comedies ever get nominated for an Oscar - but that’s another thread.
Thanks all!
And to interface2x…if you want to talk about unintentional hour long comedies…Lost In Space would rank way up on my list!
The San Pedro Beach Bums was an hour long, as I recall.