I saw an ad for the new Showtime series “The Tudors” today. Cable TV also has Deadwood and Rome. But other than that, I can think of very few shows set in the past. There have been a handful set in the very recent past (Mash, Happy Days, That 70’s Show), and a bunch of Westerns, many of which bore only a vague resemblance to any actual time period, but little else.
Why is this? Since the very start of the movie industry, there have been epics set in ancient Rome, Biblical times, the Civil War, etc.
2 Questions:
Why the relative paucity of historical TV shows?
Can you think of some examples of shows set in various eras?
British television does this more often than American. House of Elliott, various iterations on the Robin Hood theme, Blackadder, etc. On American TV, probably the oldest period you get is WWII (Homefront), other than Westerns. Once you hit the 50s and 60s, there are more choices (Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, American Dreams, I’ll Fly Away).
In the last ten years the US has had two awful sitcoms. One was set in Lincoln’s time and the other was set aroung the time of the Salem witch trials. Both had “What were they thinking?” premises.
Well, Mel Brooks offered When Things Were Rotten, and Covington Cross lasted all of 13 episodes. Medieval just doesn’t resonate with the veiwing public.
Also shows about WWII, such as Combat!, 12 O’Clock High, The Rat Patrol, and McHale’s Navy.
I’d say TV shows about actual historical persons and events may be a bit of a hard sell for American audiences. Twenty six episodes about Louis XVI and Marie, and you know they’re going to get topped in the end anyway.
I believe the first was called The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, often listed as one of the worst ideas for a sitcom ever.
And then there was the British sitcom about the Jewish couple who moved in next door to the Hitlers, whose title is one of my all-time favorites: Heil Honey, I’m Home! (No, this is not a joke.)
Parts of Dark Shadows the 60’s/early70’s soap opera, were set in the 1800’s and I think also the 1700’s.
There was an Australian show called Luke’s Kingdom that got airplay here around '79/'80. It was set during the settlement era - 1800’s? There’s also a Canadian show called The Campbells, which is about settlers. We also had The Whiteoakes Of Jalna which ran twenty-odd episodes on the CBC in the early Seventies and covered 1850 to 1950. Don’t forget umpteen episodes of The Road To Avonlee about Anne of Green Gables. It’s set in the very early 1900’s.
Hey, what about Little House On The Prairie?! Can’t believe I’m the first on that one! Oh, and Dr Quinn. That isn’t really a Western.
Finally, what about all the various Agatha Christie series and Sherlock Holmes?
Argh! Almost forgot all the Ancient Hero stuff! You know, Xena, Hercules, Beastmaster, all that stuff.
As I’ve mentioned before, I think that the Judge Dee TV movie was made as a pilot for a TV series that, if made, would’ve been set in T’ang period China, which would have been a radical departure for TV. But I suspect the TV executives balked at the idea (and imagined expense, although I bet they could’ve done it cheap) of a weekly costume drama. More’s the pity. They tried to reset the idea in the modern day, with the same star as a detective in modernm-day San Francisco Chinatown, but it flopped.
There have been several mini-series about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War – Adams Chronicles, The Bastard, The Rebels, The Seekers, George Washington, etc.
For regular series, there’s Little House on the Prairie, Dr. Quinn, and a vast number of westerns –
**Gunsmoke
Bonanza
Have Gun, Will Travel
Rawhide
Broken Arrow
**etc., etc. ad nauseum (I didn’t care for Westerns)
a four-part serial about the life of King Charles II
a two-part drama portrays the wildly excessive Lord Byron as the ultimate rebel
Carrie’s War, which tells the story of London evacuees in Wales during WW2
He Knew He Was Right, from the novel by Anthony Trollope
To The Ends Of The Earth a three-part adaptation of William Golding’s sea trilogy
Just prior to that:
The Other Boleyn Girl takes a fresh look at history with the story of Mary Boleyn
Cambridge Spies is a fresh take on the Cambridge spy ring
Servants, set largely below stairs in an English country house
The Lost Prince tells the little-known story of Edwardian royal, Prince John
Off the top of my head, previous shows include:
Chelmsford 123 (comedy v Roman occupation)
The Onedin Line (sailing line)
Poldark (Cornish mining saga)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Le Carre spy story)
The Forsyth Saga (family drama - emptied the pubs)
Upstairs, Downstairs (Family + servants)
Tipping the Velvet (Victorian lesbians)
Bleak House (Dickens)
David Copperfield (Dickens)
Pickwick Papers (Dickens)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
Treasure Island (Stevenson)
and come to think of it, you’re right, let’s just skip westerns, there’s too many of them to mention. I only brought up the above because some of it takes place in China.
I Claudius, the benchmark for any imperial Rome series.
Here Come The Brides, set in 1860’s Seattle but not quite a western.
There was The Americans, set in the Civil War about two brothers; one fought for the North, the other for the South.
The Roaring 20s was about the era in its title. On a lower level of quality, there was the dire comedy The Chicago Teddy Bears, which showed us what Sgt. Shultz did before the war. (Though he knew nothing.)
