My parents loved the British series All Creatures Great and Small. I bought the DVD set a few years ago and loved every episode.
I don’t remember my parents being *devoted *to any particular show, but there were some they watched more than others.
My dad would occasionally watch shows like Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, MASH***, and The Rockford Files, but TV was never a big thing with him. These were all shows I enjoyed watching as well, and we would sometimes watch them together.
He was acquainted with Bob Newhart (personally), and particularly liked ***Newhart ***in the '90s. He hated most of the British comedies I would watch on PBS.
For reasons I cannot fathom, my mother liked Lawrence Welk. She was very big on C&W too and liked watching Dolly Parton, whom I cannot stand. She also had a “thing” for Efrem Zimbalist, Jr, and missed very few episodes of The FBI.
We usually watched Carol Burnett together until the fifth or sixth season, I think it was, when they started doing more song and dance numbers at the expense of comedy sketches. We also watched The Beverly Hillbillies, Marcus Welby, Columbo, and Barnaby Jones together.
She loathed Star Trek and would start vacuuming whenever it came on, just to show me who was boss. Late in life, however, she admitted to loving ST: Voyager with Captain Janeway, which I guess she watched all alone in her apartment late at night. You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather: “*You *watch Star Trek?!? Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that!”
I watched a lot of the shows mentioned here with my folks, but the one I like most nowadays is Perry Mason. It’s on MeTV weeknights at 10:30 here and I find I enjoy it more than any of the talk shows. 1950s Los Angeles was just so cool with all the car fins, bulky suits, chainsmoking, and fancy hats!
Funny, my parents have the same thing going on! Except Bonanza/Westerns, thank God…I can’t hang with those.
I’m fine with MASH. We used to watch it a lot more in the 80s. Dad and I actually just sat and watched a few episodes last week.
Mom would probably be in to westerns if my dad was. Her dad was, so I know she’s seen them.
IIRC, wasn’t CBS’ Saturday night line-up for a year or two:
8:00 All In The Family
8:30 MASH
9:00 Mary Tyler Moore
9:30 Bob Newhart show
10:00 Carol Burnett show
I remember that being three hours of solid entertainment that my mom and I on the couch in my youth.
When I moved to Canada, my 'tweenaged daughter and I watched PM every day on AMI, a channel for the visually impaired (which neither of us were). It was fun seeing what was cool in the second half of the '50s, and what they thought was cool in the early '60s. It also rapidly became apparent that the show was filmed on the cheap, because they kept using the same sets week after week.
A lot of the time, the described video was amusing too. My daughter still quotes it on occasion.
Quantum Leap.