Wow Paul, what a great whoosh of a practical joke. I took your post seriously until you said:
Good one.
Jim 
Lucy was groundbreaking, but darn near everything shot in that era was groundbreaking.
The supporting cast of Nanny was much stronger than that of Lucy, who used the neighbors (and even the husband as props for Lucille Ball. In The Nanny the entire cast was allowed to develop into real characters.
Great show. It ran almost as long as The Golden Girls, that should tell you something. One of the best things was how strong almost all of the supporting roles were. No single performer was dwarfed by another.
I agree with the Lucy parallel. Niles & Cece did a fine Fred & Ethel. Sylvia was my favorite character. Most incredibly, the three kids managed not to make the show suck. One of my biggest turn-offs in sitcoms is when they try to bring in a kid for the cuteness aspect but almost always the kid ends up over-acting and trying to steal the scene.
WKRP, eh. I watched it from time to time but I can’t recall a single episode off the top of my head. I can’t fathom how it lasted 10 (?) seasons. Maybe because I was only in my teens in the late 70’s and early 80’s so I didn’t get a lot of the humor. Loni Anderson was clearly hired for no other reason than to hook the male audience using the same formula as “Stacked” - a show centered around (and named after) Pamela Andersons breasts.
I’d place WKRP in the same category as Barney Miller - good for a chuckle or two but neither or them really grabbed me.
Oh, and regarding Lucy, I’m know I’m in the minority here, but FRED MERTZ made that show.
Now that I think about it, he’s kind of the 50’s version of Red Foreman (That 70’s Show).
Let’s try putting these in order:
WKRP
The Nanny
A test pattern
I Love Lucy
Yep…looks right to me.
Those great legs in those super-short dresses… still couldn’t make up for the bad plots and that grating voice.
And the late 90s/early 00s version was “Will & Grace”, even down to the red hair.
I’ve been watching a lot of The Nanny lately. It is NOT one of the best sitcoms ever.
The plots are recycled from Laverne and Shirley. The dialog is cheap punch lines. The two younger kids are straight out of the eye-rolling, wisecracking school of juvenile acting.
I could go on, but there is one area where I have to give the show its propers.
In the category of “theme songs that recapitulate the premise every week for viewers who are too dumb to remember,” The Nanny wins hands down.
The music is great, the lyrics are clever and witty. If it were an advertising jingle, I’d run out and buy a nanny right now.
The only other theme song in the category that comes close is Flatt and Scruggs’ Ballad of Jed Clampett.
I never once wanted to watch the show, based on the ads. And never did.
Although I did (and maybe still do) find Fran Drescher very sexy.
Wow. It was the supporting cast that made I Love Lucy. As she lost strong support with each new series, the series got worse & worse.
I find The Nanny pretty unwatchable. Way worse that WKRP (which was worse than Barney Miller).
It’s a “butter voice”. Nice face, great body, “but her voice”.
Maybe that’s what they intended, but that’s one mean, mean Lucy. I can’t stand “Will and Grace” because of how vicious the chracters are.
When I first saw this thread I thought it was meant as a joke. But now I’m starting to believe that some of you actually think The Nanny was one of the best sitcoms of all times. Huh. I’m half-tempted to give it another look but…nah. In all honestly from what I remember it was pretty run of the mill, but no where near classic status. Not even really worthy of being released on DVD. It’s the kind of show I’ll watch if I’m unable to sleep late at night and every other channel has infomercials.
I liked The Nanny very much, though I don’t think it’s in the list of great television comedies. I’ll always have a soft spot for this line (paraphrased):
Fran (trying to pronounce it correctly): “I’m going to pick up some croissants at the bakery.”
Niles: “I never thought I’d say this, but you have to speak more nasally.”
I was going to stay out of this thread as it seemed to be mercifully sinking beneath the waves yesterday but seeing how it has come up for air I must weigh in.
The Nanny falls far, far short of being a great or even a good sitcom. kunilou’s post above best sums it up. I would also add flat, two dimensional characters to the criticism.
My wife would occaisionally watch the show and one thing the bugged the living %$*! out of me was the predictable rhythm of the “dialog”. (kunilou alluded to this as well):
Straight line.
Straight line.
Straight line.
Punch line! (Audience, er, laughtrack laughs).
Straight line.
Straight line.
Straight line.
Punch line! (Laughtrack again).
Repeat for 22 minutes.
Sometimes when the writers really extended themselves they might vary it with:
Straight line.
Straight line.
Punch line!
The next time you watch the show you’ll see what I mean.
The Nanny might be fondly recalled for camp value, say, 20 years from now but that is about it.
(I agree Fran Drescher is quite hot BTW. The shows only redeeming value).
I used to watch it pretty regularly. Don’t think it was one of the best sitcoms ever, but it was often extremely funny. Niles and Cece? Great stuff.
It’s her real voice in that it’s really her speaking but it’s not her normal speaking voice–Fran’s a female version of Gilbert Gottfried. Her normal speaking voice is heard in the episode with the sushi bar, she uses it after eating wasabi.
In other words, what we hear on “The Nanny” is an exaggeration of her normal voice.
Not according to her book “Enter Whining.” She took lessons to get rid of that distinct voice, but as her ex-husband once said “You’ve got a body out of Vogue and a voice like Selma Diamond.” They created The Nanny to take advantage of her natural abilities.
“Great” may be a stretch, but I thoroughly enjoyed “The Nanny”: it was pleasant, consistent, unpretentious. Although a lot of the humor seemed more aimed at women, I couldn’t get tired of looking at Fran in a million years. When it debuted, the Washington Post reviewed it and said something like: “It’s mostly old hat, but those snap brim numbers can be damn stylish”.
I met her a book signing, and it’s actually just the opposite: her normal voice (which I heard when she spoke with her handlers – I was at the front of the line) has even more nasally high overtones than what you hear on the relatively low-fi TV audio.
Yeah, no other sitcoms ever to that!
The Nanny was filmed before a live studio audience.