I still think Seinfeld is the best written American comedy I know about. I can’t recall a single episode of the show that I didn’t enjoy, even years later (though not that many years later), and many are comedy masterpieces. I know lots of people who don’t share that view. I don’t quite get it, but know there are many sitcoms others liked far more than I do.
Returning to the OP, I liked Cheers quite a lot.
Given your argument in the third paragraph, I assume that the second instance of “1990s” in your first paragraph is a typo for “1970s”. In which case I must disagree with you: That '70s Show had a great deal of humour and plot points that were based on events, cultural norms, and societal issues specific to the 1970s: the illegality of marijuana, second-wave feminism and the drive for the Equal Rights Amendment, and ebbing taboos concerning homosexuality and interracial relationships. Many of the characters were created and paired up specifically to generate running tension (and therefore humour, when the tension is resolved) involving these issues. (Consider how often over the course of the series Jackie and Donna, or Bob and Donna, or Bob and Midge, disagreed on issues of the role of women in society.) As with Family Ties, these characters and jokes wouldn’t play out if you simply re-cast and re-set the show in the present day.
No, it wasn’t. You could absolutely recast that show in the present day and set it in the 70s. It was set in the past, even in the 90s. Family Ties was set in the 80s during the 80s. Remaking it would require a show made in the 2020s and set in the 2020s which could not simply be a re-cast remake. Making it in the 2020s and setting it in the 80s would be result in a very different show - you could only reference things in the 80s that would still be known in the 2020s.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, which is to say I disagree. “Married with Children” is still being watched to this day. Admittedly, I don’t watch the episodes like I used to, perhaps because I’ve seen most of them so many times, but I still find them very funny when I do. “The Cosby Show” was another great product of the 80’s.
No… I meant 1990s, and what you’re saying is exactly what I’m saying actually. Since the show was set in the 1970s, addressed 1970s issues, etc… it wasn’t a product of its time (the 1990s), and that’s a big part of why it’s still funny.
I’ll vote for this-- especially since Mork and Mindy premiered in 1978, when I was 11, but halfway through the series-- which only lasted 4 seasons, I was 13, and was disgusted with it.
Yes, it had declined in quality a little, but it also continued to appeal to a preadolescent audience-- my 8-yr-old brother still liked it.
It was basically a Saturday morning kids show somehow airing in primetime.
“Married With Children” is one that while set in the 80s and produced in the 1980s, didn’t actually address very much in the way of 1980s issues. It was all about more time-agnostic stuff- marriage difficulties, mid-life crises, stupid children, and so forth. About the only really glaring anachronism that stands out in my mind about the show is that Al was a shoe salesman at the mall, which is something that in a modern-day remake could be changed to some other thankless customer service job- maybe a IT support person or something like that.
Otherwise, the vast majority of the humor in the show wasn’t actually 80s-centric, which is why it could be remade without much trouble. Of course, I think that the cast chemistry and skill was a big part of its success- Ed O’Neill & Katey Sagal have both gone on to much more acclaim in their careers, and Christina Applegate turned out to be so much more than her bimbo character.
Yep. Mork & Mindy was hilarious to six year old me in 1978. But watching it in reruns just makes me wonder just how high Robin Williams and the writers were.
Robin Williams was a total coke fiend during the whole run.
Some really good shows don’t, on a technicality, count as sitcoms (Tracey Ullman Show, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Adventures of Briscoe County Jr) but deserve to be mentioned. The two big innovations of 80s TV were the “dramedy” (Stephen Bochco’s whole 80s output) and the Cosby backlash shows (Roseanne, Simpsons, Married w Children, Unhappily Ever After, et al). There were a lot of really shitty 30-minute sitcoms, but there always have been and still are.
I hated that show, but I will agree that it captured some very talented people before they were famous, and they probably rose above the material-- didn’t watch enough to see. However, all three you mentioned have been superb in everything I’ve seen them do since.
Was a huge fan of both Futurama and Modern Family. RE: Modern Family, I actually believed Jay was a guy Sofia Vergara could be attracted to.
I think that occupation works even better if the show were done today to demonstrate that Al’s life hadn’t turned out how he expected.
The obsolescence of his job was apparent when the show was made. Malls were being abandoned and self serve discount shoe stores were the new trend. That’s what made it such a loser job. Today, he would probably work at a video store.
Not even that , really - both in 1987 and now there were two types of shoe stores. The old-fashioned type where someone measures your feet and goes to the back room to get the styles you want in your size and the DSW/Fayva/Payless type, where all the shoes are on display and you try them on yourself, which still have some people working on the sales floor , to retrieve the high boxes and such and sometimes they even measure feet. I’m not sure which type Al worked in - but both exist then and now.
Al was the older style- where he tried to fit the shoes to people’s feet. That was part of the joke- stinky feet, ugly women, etc…
A modern remake would potentially have to clean up some of the sexist elements like the bimbo of the week, although Al’s sexism wasn’t indicative of men of that era- it was something obnoxious about him that was played for laughs, mostly IIRC, as a source of comedic tension between Al and Marcy & Steve, and a reason for Peg to roll her eyes at Al.
I wonder how much of an effect this has on current day watching of these shows.
Back when they aired an episode once per week, for about half the year, with a large break between seasons, and only limited opportunities for seeing re-runs, it was a lot easier to re-use the same basic plots year after year. But now, with binge-watching, especially several seasons’ worth, the repetition become much more obvious.
Those shows that strove to avoid repetition probably look a lot better to modern viewers.
Yes, but those issues were written about by people who knew what the outcome would be of a lot of those arguments. So we can see Bob and Midge arguing about if the wife should get a job, or something, and laugh at Bob’s over-reaction, because we know that, for a lot of women in the 1970s, they did end up going out and getting jobs, no matter what their husbands thought. Part of the humor is in our expectation that Bob is going to lose this argument, no matter how hard he tries to win.
You couldn’t do that with Family Ties in the mid-80s, because we really didn’t know if the Republicans would stay in power, or what the long-term effects of their policies would be. Same thing today. If we rebooted Family Ties today, with Gen-X parents arguing with a MAGA son, well, we have no idea if Trump is going to become president again, or if he will completely flame out and end up in prison or a mental institution, or if some other MAGA type will depose him, or what.
That’s right. In the UK, in the Eighties we had The Young Ones and Blackadder, and crap like Are You Being Served represented an outdated sexist and homophobic world-view.
Speaking of UK shows
When i was younger, I despised the AB Fab characters and quite liked the poor daughter. These days, Im neutral to the main characters.