“You Bet Your Life” (“the one, the only, GROUCHO!”)
“The Honeymooners”
and another vote for “The Dick Van Dyke Show”
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Hows the Muppet Show hold up? Havent seen that since it was originally on and I could see that one going either way.
Insanity always stays current.
My 18-year-old daughter will find Muppet Show clips on YouTube and watch them for hours on end.
It is still very entertaining.
The last DVD of the last season is on its way. You can tell how in the beginning they could only book C level talent (Jim Nabors?) and how some people worked better with the Muppets than others, but it got better and better as time went on. Still worked very well for us.
Night Court has held up very well.
Taxi doesn’t work for me now. I liked it at the time, but it’s very dated to me, and not very well acted (except for Danny D.)
MAS*H - First two seasons especially, I can watch all the time and they can still get a laugh out of me. But losing Trapper and Henry, two of the best characters on the show, put it on a slow decline. When Alda became all-powerful, the show became unwatchable.
I’ll throw a vote for the **Dick Van Dyke Show **as well.
I’ll also throw a vote for The Munsters. I think that show has aged very well.
I’ll also toss out the Little Rascals. They are still funny, and kids can still relate to them.
Today’s shows…
I think Seinfeld will be enjoyed for a long time.
The Simpsons and Family Guy will also be around for ages.
The cartoons have the major benefit of characters never aging, dying, or changing in any way, so they can stay virtually the same forever.
ALL shows from the 60s are “dated.” That’s a pretty silly thing to accuse a show of. Every show from the time will have references to things that don’t exist any more. For gosh sakes, anything that involves a phone ringing, or having to dial a phone, will be “dated.”
The issue isn’t: is this show “dated?” The issue is, does it still make me laugh/cry/be afraid/root for the good guys/emote after all these years? And in answering that question, keep in mind that, if you watched the show at a much younger age, or at a substantially different time in your life (true for almost anyone when talking about a 60s show), how has the change in your age/circumstances changed your outlook on life? Things funny to you as a teen will most likely not be funny to you as a 50-year-old. Themes that resonated with you as a young parent are not so interesting as a retired grand parent.
Now, if a show relied upon things endemic to that particular time for most or all of its laughs/plots/emotion grabbers, then yes, that sort of show will be difficult to watch these days. Most of the spy shows which based their plots on anti-communism are probably something worth laughing at at best these days; the whole topple like dominoes thing seems quite silly at this point. All in the Family isn’t dated so much as it is unfunny because we’ve moved on as a society beyond thinking that the themes Archie Bunker used for laughs are really funny. We no longer (most of us) need to laugh at racism in order to assuage our own internal pangs over race relations. Of course, I never found the show funny to begin with: I always thought the humor was in poor taste, and I’ve never been a fan of shouting as a schtick (which is why I disliked The Honeymooners, even though there were some Jackie Gleason characters I enjoyed).
I have the collection of Soap seasons. I still laugh my head off at quite a bit of the humor: many of the themes are themes we still address in shows today. Infidelity, homosexuality, etc. are just as topical now. But more importantly, the show didn’t rely upon the themes for its humor; it relied upon the interaction of the insane characters. When Billy Crystal is talking about Plato being gay, and Jessica Tate gasps in astonishment that Mickey Mouse’s dog was gay (“Pluto was his lover”, Billy Crystal assures her without missing a beat :p), the funny aspect isn’t the putative homosexuality of Pluto, but rather the ridiculousity of mixing up Plato and Pluto, in that wide-eyed, innocent way Jessica Tate had. That will still be funny 100 years from now.
Of course, kids today watching the show wouldn’t have a clue what the hell it was spoofing, since they don’t generally watch “soap operas” at all. So they might miss that connection, and wonder why the show was called, Soap!
Of the shows I loved to watch as a child, most of the comedies are still funny, and fun to watch (WKRP in Cincinnati, anyone? “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!” :D). Dramas are more prone to losing something with time, though good ones are still worth watching. I love watching old Banacek episodes, and Kojak is just as gritty, just as worth watching as it was in the 70s. I’m not so sure I’d be that interested in re-watching Family; in general I think family drama shows will resonate with you mostly depending upon your place in life at the time. Fortunately, I’ve moved on a bit from the 70s and 80s. 
I don’t think The Addams Family holds up well primarily because it became very formulaic. The early episodes are good, but they always had the same jokes week after week (the same decorative item of the Addams house would be shown, with a cut to the person seeing it an boggling). In small doses, it’s fine, but don’t try to watch a lot of it.
I think the episodes of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show are just as funny today as they were in the 50s; it was the best comedy of the era. Perry Mason holds up as a detective show, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents is, if anything, more attuned to modern sensibilities than it was to the audience of its time.
I love Bonanza. And Ben Cartwright was not the asshole. He was practically the father figure for all of America back then.
Now Adam Cartwright, he was the asshole.
I came here to nominate that show. I first saw “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” a few years ago on Hulu.com. Some episodes are better than others, of course, but as a whole it’s more watchable than many modern shows.
In a similar vein, the original “Twilight Zone” has a number of episodes that stand up quite well.
Most of the *Twilight Zone *episodes are still great . . . except for the few that were crap even back then.
And *Roseanne. *The issues they dealt with are still relevant . . . and an all-time great cast.
And early ER . . . until Dr. Green’s death.
And of course Dick van Dyke.
Maybe I just caught Ben on a bad couple of days…kinda like those few times Sheriff Andy was a turd. I was kinda shocked because I had remembered Ben as being a nice guy and here he was being a jerk. And yeah, Adam was a turd most of the time IIRC. But I’ll stand by my opinion that the episodes overall dont hold up well.
How does Sanford and Son hold up these days?
Very well, IMO. Redd Foxx was a great comic actor, and Fred G. Sanford is one of the all-time great characters. There isn’t really too much to date the show. It’s a guy and his son running a salvage yard. That’s pretty basic for a premise.
I also think The Jeffersons holds up a bit better than All in the Family. Only because All in the Family lasted too long. When Mike and Gloria left, and then Edith died, 3/4ths of the cast everyone cared about were gone. It ran its course and should have been shut down before Archie Bunker’s Place opened its doors.
Watched some episodes on Hulu recently – thought it was holding up well until the one where the woman wanted to charge her husband with rape and hilarity ensued! The female DA wanted to make it a test case but it turned out that she just wanted her husband to pay more attention to her.
Difficult to enjoy it now, unfortunately.
(Side note – what a long way we have come since the 70’s)
The Muppet Show holds up nearly as well as the golden era Warner Bros. cartoons in my eyes…and they both provide me a great big warm nostalgia hug whenever I watch them nowadays.
I always enjoy Maverick when I get to catch in on the western channel. Most of the jokes are still funny and James Garner is a great actor. I also enjoy the Rockford Files for the same reason.
I’m not sure how old old is, but I still enjoy Hill St. Blues.
Shows I loved (and think have aged well):
- The Avengers
- Benny Hill
- Carol Burnett Show
- The Outer Limits
- The Prisoner
- Northern Exposure (my favorite TV show, ever)
Shows I loved (but I think are really dated):
- Get Smart (I Spy during the cold war)
- Star Trek (cheese all around, bad special effects)
- Laugh-In (a time capsule of the 60’s under a glass dome!)
- The Monkees (I don’t know about this one…too much a thing of its time?)
That episode, incidentally, was based upon a real case (Oregon v. Rideout). Still, you are right that a number of comedies during the 70’s dealt with rape in a manner we would find disturbingly flippant today.