Shows I'd Like To See Again

[RicoGregg]

One thing cable has shown to have in common with regular TV is that their programmers don't get it. I'll bet I'm able to see I Love Lucy, MASH, Cheers, and others on anywhere from three to five different outlets. There's a lot of shows that I'd love to see again before I die. I'm afraid that I've had my life's fill of Vivian Vance, Loretta Swit, Shelly Long, and Kirstie Alley.

Seen any of these shows lately?

Life of Riley
Run For Your Life
Ironside
Route 66
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
Richard Diamond, Private Detective
I Led Three Lives
Mr. Adams & Eve
People Are Funny
Roaring 20's
The Untouchables
Mission: Impossible
How To Marry a Millionaire
The Rat Patrol

These and many other shows languish on a shelf while we get scratchy, grainy prints of overplayed reruns of the above-mentioned shows.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

American Life runs "Mission: Impossible", and had "The Rat Patrol" not too long ago.

You know what other show seems to have fallen into a crater, and I never thought I'd see the day? "Gilligan's Island"!

I would also like to see all the stuff that disappeared from GSN when they found out it was gonna show up on my cable. (Me? Paranoid?)

 

[landtuna]

"Ironside" is currently being shown on RTV.

 

[BRNout]

Car 54 Where Are You? - as they once showed on Nick at Nite.

 

[therealjm12]

Wagon Train - the Ward Bond / Robert Horton years.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

Some of what I wouldn't mind seeing again at least once or twice on TV (and I'm not counting any DVD collections or YouTube clips):

Valerie/Valerie's Family/The Hogan Family
Perfect Strangers
[Unadulterated] WKRP in Cincinnati (I think you probably know what I'm referring to with the word in brackets)
One Day at a Time
Alice
Jeffersons
Archie Bunker's Place
AfterMASH
Brady Bunch
Eight Is Enough
Vega$
Love Boat
Hee Haw
Dallas
Knots Landing
Wonder Years (except for the final episode)
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Late Night with David Letterman
Professional Bowlers' Tour (on ABC with Chris Schnekel)
MLB on NBC and ABC
NBA on CBS ('80s)/NBA on NBC (just during the height of the Chicago Bulls' glory years of the '90s)

And just to see what all the fuss was about: "Joanie Loves Chachi"

 

[landtuna]

With the advent of the cable channels specializing in classic TV I thought I would find nirvana. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened. Although some of those old shows do bring back fond memories (and the ability to see current actors when they were just beginning their careers) most of the shows are horribly dated with questionable acting and musical scores to match. The few shows that remain relatively interesting (The Millionaire for instance) are cut up to provide more commercial time (and the commercials are repeated endlessly). Key segments are frequently deleted.

I have been able to find DVD issues for the few shows I really treasure. The cost is less than the monthly cable subscription and the enjoyment is much greater.

 

[TexasTom]

Some of the shows mentioned in this thread have showed up on local stations in some areas.

For example, both "Mission Impossible" and "The Brady Bunch" have run in the Dallas/Fort Worth market within the past year or so (both on KFWD-TV 52).

I wouldn't be surprised if some others have shown up in markets like LA (KDOC) and Chicago (ME-TV, ME-Too).

In the early days of home VCRs, early videophiles would actually trade videotapes of reruns that were seen in different markets -- one magazine of the era actually had a pretty large classified section devoted to such trades. Nowadays, I don't suppose that is all that likely to happen unless some enterprising individuals records some of their more obscure local reruns and uploads them onto a file sharing service...

(As an aside, in some cases, local reruns *can* be unedited -- when "McHale's Navy" ran here in 2003, the episodes were uncut because there isn't a syndication edit of that show available and local stations no longer have the resources to do their own editing.)

 

[CrankyYankee]

"The Great American Dream Machine"

 

[ercjncpr]

One thing cable has shown to have in common with regular TV is that their programmers don't get it. I'll bet I'm able to see I Love Lucy, MASH, Cheers, and others on anywhere from three to five different outlets. There's a lot of shows that I'd love to see again before I die. I'm afraid that I've had my life's fill of Vivian Vance, Loretta Swit, Shelly Long, and Kirstie Alley.

Seen any of these shows lately?

Life of Riley
Run For Your Life
Ironside
Route 66
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
Richard Diamond, Private Detective
I Led Three Lives
Mr. Adams & Eve
People Are Funny
Roaring 20's
The Untouchables
Mission: Impossible
How To Marry a Millionaire
The Rat Patrol

These and many other shows languish on a shelf while we get scratchy, grainy prints of overplayed reruns of the above-mentioned shows.

Try the Internet Archive or You Tube

 

[DesiArnez6]

Pix Channel 11 in New York still plays the Jeffersons, they recently had a great lineup at late nights, The Jeffersons, Taxi, Welcome back Kotter, and oe of my very favorites, "Good Times", they would rotate vintage shows now and then after awhile, they even started a vintage Saturday Primetime lineup. Now its just more modern comedy shows (Frasier, George Lopez, and Star Trek) Still not bad, Channel 11 has always had the best overnight lineup straight till the morning news.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Try the Internet Archive or You Tube

Hulu has a nice selection of old stuff mixed in with the current shows, too.

 

[stdjsb25]

Here's my picks....

The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Bob Newhart Show (WGN thankfully, reruns the 80s' "Newhart", with four episodes on Sunday nights, 8-9PM, and 12-1AM.)
Rhoda
Lou Grant
St. Elsewhere
Hill Street Blues
Benson
Soap
Father Knows Best
Dallas
Knots Landing (I had the fortune of watching every episode from 1981-83, and 1986-93 during the last days of its SoapNet run.)
The Donna Reed Show
CHiPs (I miss when TBS/TNT ran the holy daylights out of this show)
Emergency!
Dragnet (the original 1952-59 version)
Taxi
Maude
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman/Fernwood 2Night/America 2Night
Remington Steele
Perfect Strangers
Quantum Leap
The Incredible Hulk
Airwolf
The A-Team
Riptide
Hunter

And there's tons more....

 

[jwk1979]

With the advent of the cable channels specializing in classic TV I thought I would find nirvana. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened. Although some of those old shows do bring back fond memories (and the ability to see current actors when they were just beginning their careers) most of the shows are horribly dated with questionable acting and musical scores to match. The few shows that remain relatively interesting (The Millionaire for instance) are cut up to provide more commercial time (and the commercials are repeated endlessly). Key segments are frequently deleted.

I have been able to find DVD issues for the few shows I really treasure. The cost is less than the monthly cable subscription and the enjoyment is much greater.

I agree with you completely. There are a lot of shows that I remember fondly that when I see them again some years later, aren't nearly as good as I remember them being. There are a number of shows that were some of favorites growing up, such as Quincy, Daniel Boone, Emergency, etc., that are currently airing on RTV. While I was off during the Christmas holidays, I got a chance to see some of those shows while I was visiting relatives and couldn't believe how dated those shows were, not to mention how flat the acting was and the lame story lines for the episodes I saw. Dragnet was one of the few shows that I found entertaining (In a campy way. I have to veiw it as a COMEDY now instead of a DRAMA). I have found as I have gotten older that a lot of things that we remember fondly aren't nearly as great as WE remember them to be, especially old TV shows.

 

[TexasTom]

Generally, my take on it is that a lot of the old comedies seem to hold up better with time than do the older action/adventure series.

For example, I think that "Hogan's Heroes" or the early seasons of "Bewitched" compare favorably with any comedies that are currently on the air in terms of production values and humor.

On the other hand, many of the old action/adventure/drama shows seem either cheesy or slow-paced by today's standards. Unfortunately for the older shows, today's dramas are generally better written, better acted, and have higher production values. Which, perhaps, is the reason why these shows cost three times as much to produce (when adjusted for inflation) as did the dramas and adventure shows of the sixties.

Now, I know that the cost for producing comedies has also gone up way faster than inflation, but frankly, I really don't see where the money is going, because these shows don't look any better than old comedies. In fact, I personally like the feel and look of old single camera comedies better than the newer three camera comedies that are shot in front of an audience.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Dragnet was one of the few shows that I found entertaining (In a campy way. I have to veiw it as a COMEDY now instead of a DRAMA).

2 of the funniest were the one with Barney Regal, the con man posing as a forest ranger, who whenever Friday and Gannon would interrogate him, would start spouting off a bunch of statistics about the environment, and the one with "Mister Daniel Loomis", who like the finer things in life.

 

[Stanislav]

Dragnet was one of the few shows that I found entertaining (In a campy way. I have to veiw it as a COMEDY now instead of a DRAMA).

2 of the funniest were the one with Barney Regal, the con man posing as a forest ranger, who whenever Friday and Gannon would interrogate him, would start spouting off a bunch of statistics about the environment, and the one with "Mister Daniel Loomis", who like the finer things in life.

While Jack Webb was very pro-cop and supportive of law enforcement, the often comedic elements of the show were, IMHO, entirely intentional. Any cop will tell you that, while they take their job seriously, they encounter a lot of odd characters and funny situations along the way, and I think Webb felt that incorporating that aspect of public service into Dragnet (and later shows, such as Adam-12 and Emergency!) simply added to the realism. (And Friday's deadpan reactions were in many ways reflective of the kind of weary, jaded, "all in a day's work" attitude that many real cops develop, especially after many years on the job. A later, excellent example of this sort of character would be Jerry Orbach's portrayal of Lennie Briscoe on Law and Order.)

 

[Ultimajock]

Dragnet was one of the few shows that I found entertaining (In a campy way. I have to veiw it as a COMEDY now instead of a DRAMA).

...I'm assuming you're talking here of the 1960s revival; the 1950s original, IMO, has aged much better. The later run was marred by far too much Reefer Madness-type socio-political propaganda (although, being the McCarthyite 1950s, that's sometimes present in the original too, just not quite as heavily). Adam-12 has survived into the 21st Century in much better condition content-wise than Dragnet 196x has...

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Any cop will tell you that, while they take their job seriously, they encounter a lot of odd characters and funny situations along the way, and I think Webb felt that incorporating that aspect of public service into Dragnet (and later shows, such as Adam-12 and Emergency!) simply added to the realism.

You're probably right...In fact, that may have been a big influence on "Barney Miller", too! The mention of "Emergency!" brings that to mind as well; they always had 1 or 2 "silly" rescues before the big dramatic fire/bus crash/whatever.

Earlier, someone said that many old dramas seem really cheesy when seen today; Another topic on this thread brought that up some time ago, specifically how low-budget some shows like "77 Sunset Strip" look 50 years on.

 

[cspotrun]

Twilight Zone holds up well, the special effects are dated, BUT who cares! the writing was amazing, and Serling did it ALL in a half hour! do you think Televsion today could produce a 30 minute DRAMATIC series?