A surprising example, but one the Brits chose over “Fawlty Towers” in a recent poll.
I watched a “marathon” of them and found them perfectly funny and not at all dated. A GREAT series.
During the recent election I had an email exchange with one of the Mavericks. In Texas politics the Mavericks have been staunch Democrats for decades and the latest Mater of the clan was no exception and she protested the use of their good name by a Republican. However, she and I agreed that James Garner carried the family name forward most effectively.
Otherwise, the Garner “Mavericks” are surprisingly good. Same with “Rawhide” and “Combat.”
In our infatuation with the New we forget that talented people were making TV not so long ago, and many of them were so close to Today that they are still working, while others helped lay the ground rules for later productions.
Pre Fawltey Towers John Cleese.
Some of the sketches are more dumb than funny, but that was true in the late 60’s and early 70’s
Buying an Ant
Election Night Special
Confuse a cat
Scott of the Sahara " the lion is in the contract"
Cheese Shop
Spam
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
Crunchy frog
AND The fish slapping dance
Enjoy
Pinky and the Brain continues to speak to me.
I couldn’t disagree more. I think that we HAD progressed as a society to laugh at racial stereotypes in the 70s, but we have since regressed to make such talk not proper in polite society. There are a hell of a lot of people I know that still think like Archie did. Just watch the movie Gran Torino. That pegs every cranky old fart that I know.
Red Dwarf and The Brittas Empire are both around 20 years old at this point and still hold up pretty well. Brittas looks like it could have been filmed in the last year or so, with the exception of Brittas’ car.
“Seinfeld” is odd in that it actually seems dated now, but I have a feeling it’ll actually hold up well over the next few decades. The reason being that today’s sitcoms are, largely, a reaction to the formulae that “Seinfeld” pioneered - instead of rapid-fire dialogue in a 3-camera format with no real attempts at episode continuity, most modern sitcoms have heavy story continuity, feature more naturalistic dialogue, and are shot single-camera-style. As a result, today’s viewers used to “The Office” or “30 Rock” watch “Seinfeld” and find it hopelessly “90s” in feel. Give it a few more years, though, and the current sitcom style will become similarly passe. At that point, I suspect viewers will be more willing to overlook the 90s filming style of shows like “Seinfeld” and enjoy the underlying quality.
“The Simpsons,” absolutely. “Family Guy,” hell no. Any show in which 95% of the humor comes from pop culture references will inevitably date poorly. Any show in which 95% of the humor comes from ironic use of pop culture references already 20 years out of date ever moreso. “Family Guy” is the “Shrek” of sitcoms: it’s funny if you watch it the year it comes out, and then loses all humor value shortly thereafter.
I still enjoy the comedies I grew up on “Hogan’s Heroes, F Troop, I Love Lucy, Dick van Dyke Get Smart”.
“Combat” holds up pretty well.
One recent show that I find myself watching before it disappears from Hulu in May (anybody know why?) is “Stargate SG-1”. Of course you have the problem after (after the first two episodes) where everyone in the universe speaks English. But the interplay between the characters and the use of mythology is amusing. Amanda Tapping and Teryl Rothery (doctor) are both attractive and intelligent.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe Cleese was in the buying-an-ant episode. Or were you citing him as a writer, rather than as a performer?
Could you be getting it confused with the “call the next deaf-end-ANT” courtroom sketch?
The Flintstones, original run. Television animation in general and H-B animation in particular never quite got this good again.
Maverick has aged very well for a western, as has Kung Fu. As enjoyable as Garner is to watch, Jack Kelly was wonderful too as Bart Maverick. Bret was a bit predictable. Bart always a little too smart for his own good.
I started a thread about it, but WGN America will have a Barney Miller marathon on New Year’s Day.
The Wonder Years popped up on cable a few years back. Watched pretty much the whole series. Probably because it was supposed to look dated when it was filmed, the show has aged very well.
-R. Incognito
Damn straight. And transforming from a 20-29 year old single viewer during the original run, to an early 40’s married father of three watching again has just added a whole new layer to the show.
Well, if by “aged well” you mean, “it didn’t stink any worse than when it was on originally”, OK.
But it stunk on ice from the very first broadcast.
Ben Cartwright was obviously the progenitor of a family of serial killers. How many women died “mysteriously” soon after becoming romantically involved with one of the Cartwrights ?
Funny that so many folks are offering comedies as examples of what’s held up well. I had actually intended to offer them as the opposite, based on my experience with old time radio–the crime and sci-fi dramas, while prone to occasional cheese, generally hold up well, while the comedies are terrible clunkers.
On the other hand, screwball film comedies of the same era hold up quite well for me, so it’s likely more a matter of the particular style of humor than humor in general.
By the way: As a casual fan of Bonanza, I think you might have been watching some earlier episodes, billfish678. I seem to recall (and it’s been a while since I’ve seen any Bonanza, much less the specific episodes I’m thinking of) that in the early days of the series, the whole Cartwright clan was a bunch of jerks. Wikipedia only says that “[o]riginally, the Cartwrights tended to be depicted as put-off by outsiders.”
Really. 
Maybe it’s because you know the story line. I think a new viewer would still enjoy it as much as we did. Babylon 5 is a show that should never be spoiled for a newbie. The plots unexpected twists and turns are what makes it fun.
The plot is fine.
However, I think a lot of things seem kind of hackneyed - like a good chunk of Sheridan and Ivanova’s speeches, for example. Or really clumsy stuff like Clarke’s evil diary, “With Santiago out of the way, I’m the boss, wahahahahaha!” somehow being recorded because he was apparently dumb enough to broadcast it…
-Joe
I don’t know that I watched the same show that you were watching…to suggest that Judd Hirsch, Christopher Lloyd, and Andy Kaufman were not acting well is, imho, ludicrous; not to mention Carol Kane, or even memorable guest stars like Ruth Gordon, Wallace Shawn, Ted Danson, Jeffrey Tambor. It remains, to me, the gold standard for sitcoms.
I can’t resist watching Hogans Heroes anytime I find it airing. For me, the humor holds up well. They’re wear WWII uniforms so it doesn’t look dated like other shows from the early 70’s.