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Your Top 5 60s Sitcoms (When I Saw #4, I Got Chills)*

C

Corky Marlowe

*Sorry...Seen way too many BuzzFeed lists.

Anyway, in honor of the Top 5 70s Sitcoms thread, let's drop back a decade for another (hopefully) conversation starter...Your Top 5 Sitcoms Of The 60s!

1) The Dick Van Dyke Show...Still a clinic on how to make a funny TV show, IMO.
2) Green Acres...Rural America As The Bizarro World. No idea was too goofy, and they just about all worked.
3) The Andy Griffith Show...It gets dinked a bit for the post Barney/Gomer/Ernest T./Darlings/Fun Girls era, but still great.
4) Get Smart...At least before the network ducks made Max and 99 get married and have kids, it was a brilliant Cold War/James Bond parody.
5) The Beverly Hillbillies...Mainly because without it being a huge hit out of the gate, there wouldn't have been a Green Acres.

Outside Looking In (no particular order): "Car 54, Where Are You?", "The Monkees", "The Addams Family", "The Flintstones", "Hogan's Heroes", and a couple one-season wonders, "He & She" and "My World (And Welcome To It)".

Any you can't believe I forgot? Think my top 5 sucks? Lemme know!
 
I'd replace "The Beverly Hillbillies" with "The Addams Family." If "Green Acres" was "The Beverly Hillbillies" taken to the tipping point of absurdity, then "The Addams Family" was the same to "The Munsters" -- even though, both having debuted in the same season, "The Munsters" didn't make "The Addams Family" possible. So, rather than put two same-genre comedies in the top 5, why not put the best of the horror spoofs there instead?
 
My top 5:

The Andy Griffith Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Get Smart
Hogan's Heroes
The Beverly Hillbillies

And a few extra:

Gilligan's Island
Green Acres
The Addams Family and The Munsters: I liked The Addams Family best but still liked the Munsters.
Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie: I liked Jeannie the best but still liked Bewitched.
 
anotherguy said:
My top 5:

The Andy Griffith Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Get Smart
Hogan's Heroes
The Beverly Hillbillies

And a few extra:

Gilligan's Island
Green Acres
The Addams Family and The Munsters: I liked The Addams Family best but still liked the Munsters.
Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie: I liked Jeannie the best but still liked Bewitched.
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Agreed on Gilligan. But I was pretty young in the 60's. So I probably enjoyed the more childish shows. However, toward the end of the decade, loved Green Acres (totally "out-there" comedy), and The Munsters was my favorite of the creeper comedies, though later I realized Adam's was more intelligent.

I have a theory about late 60's comedies...perhaps I should save it...oh what the heck, my theory is most writers and producers were high on something during this era!
 
Bronx said:
I'd put "The Lucy Show" in there somewhere. Lucy was a mainstay of 50s, 60s and 70s TV sitcoms.

Bronx
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I'm a little meh on "The Lucy Show". "I Love Lucy" was hugely influential, and had the added advantage of being incredibly funny. "The Lucy Show" had some pretty good moments, and while it was nowhere near the phoning-it-in level of "Here's Lucy", "The Lucy Show" just didn't have the magic of the original.
 
Corky Marlowe said:
*Sorry...Seen way too many BuzzFeed lists.

Anyway, in honor of the Top 5 70s Sitcoms thread, let's drop back a decade for another (hopefully) conversation starter...Your Top 5 Sitcoms Of The 60s!

1) The Dick Van Dyke Show...Still a clinic on how to make a funny TV show, IMO.
2) Green Acres...Rural America As The Bizarro World. No idea was too goofy, and they just about all worked.
3) The Andy Griffith Show...It gets dinked a bit for the post Barney/Gomer/Ernest T./Darlings/Fun Girls era, but still great.
4) Get Smart...At least before the network ducks made Max and 99 get married and have kids, it was a brilliant Cold War/James Bond parody.
5) The Beverly Hillbillies...Mainly because without it being a huge hit out of the gate, there wouldn't have been a Green Acres.

Outside Looking In (no particular order): "Car 54, Where Are You?", "The Monkees", "The Addams Family", "The Flintstones", "Hogan's Heroes", and a couple one-season wonders, "He & She" and "My World (And Welcome To It)".

Any you can't believe I forgot? Think my top 5 sucks? Lemme know!
Click to expand...

I have to agree on the top two, but as for the rest...

3) Hogan's Heroes, mainly because of the casting of Jewish actors as the Germans, plus Holocaust survivor Robert Clary as LeBeau.
4) The Beverly Hillbillies, at least until they inherited that castle in England and jumped the shark in the moat. ;)
5) Get Smart, but only the NBC years.

Honorable mention: The Andy Griffith Show (B&W shows only, with Don Knotts), The Addams Family, The Munsters, F Troop, The Flintstones, Bewitched (the Dick York years only), Batman.

You were expecting maybe Captain Nice? Would you believe Mr. Terrific? :D
 
KeithE4 said:
I have to agree on the top two, but as for the rest...

3) Hogan's Heroes, mainly because of the casting of Jewish actors as the Germans, plus Holocaust survivor Robert Clary as LeBeau.
4) The Beverly Hillbillies, at least until they inherited that castle in England and jumped the shark in the moat. ;)
5) Get Smart, but only the NBC years.

Honorable mention: The Andy Griffith Show (B&W shows only, with Don Knotts), The Addams Family, The Munsters, F Troop, The Flintstones, Bewitched (the Dick York years only), Batman.

You were expecting maybe Captain Nice? Would you believe Mr. Terrific? :D
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Was "Batman" considered comedy? It was campy and certainly had funny moments, but was it supposed to a complete spoof or at least in part a superhero adventure series like "Superman"? Thanks for mentioning "Captain Nice" and "Mr. Terrific," if only because you reminded me of "The Double Life of Henry Phyfe," ABC's weak answer to "Get Smart." Come to think of it, just about everything ABC came up with in those days was pretty weak.
 
"My World (And Welcome To It)" was perhaps the best TV comedy in all of TV history but it was perhaps too intelligent for the rank and file viewer and the network thought it was too expensive to make so it lasted only one season. I am only sorry that home recording wasn't possible when it was on because I would sure love to see it again.

Hogan's Heros actor Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink) said he took the job only if he could play the character as an idiot and egotist (which he did, superbly).

I would rate Green Acres right up there due to their impressive comedy cast and wide range of stories centered around a very small town. The pairing of Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor was magic.

I personally liked I Dream of Jeannie because I think Barbara Eden is one of the most beautiful women in the world and I could watch her pitch cow manure but the stories were not very well thought out. In her autobiography Barbara says Larry Hagman was very difficult to work with and basically thought he was too good for the show. Larry said the show only had four basic scripts that were modified constantly and he hated that as well. Like someone else suggested on Get Smart, all was well until the producers married the comic couple. Same was true of Jeannie.

I thought Gilligan's Island and McHale's Navy were both worth mentioning for the diversity of their casts and the plots the writers came up with. McHale jumped the shark with the move to Italy unfortunately.
 
anotherguy said:
I don't know why I missed it but I should have added McHale's Navy to my list as well. :rolleyes:
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I'm not sure why I liked McHale's Navy so much. I have always like Ernie Borgnine as an actor and I absolutely got a kick out of Joe Flynn (Capt. Binghamton). Or perhaps it was because, with my dad, I would watch Sgt. Bilko. Or maybe it was because I was in the navy. Hard to tell.
 
Joe Flynn's Binghamton and Richard Deacon's Mel Cooley are my two favorite sitcom character-actor roles. Of course, Mel depended on Morey Amsterdam's Buddy Sorrell's insults to make the character really work, but I enjoyed Mel's reactions even more than Buddy's jibes.
 
landtuna said:
I'm not sure why I liked McHale's Navy so much. I have always like Ernie Borgnine as an actor and I absolutely got a kick out of Joe Flynn (Capt. Binghamton). Or perhaps it was because, with my dad, I would watch Sgt. Bilko. Or maybe it was because I was in the navy. Hard to tell.
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And of course there was Tim Conway.
 
Joe Flynn was a native of Youngstown, Ohio. After McHale's Navy went off the air he moved back to Youngstown and ran for Congress. He got his head handed to him (he ran as a Republican in a heavily union Democrat district). It would be the worst loss by a former sitcom star until Nancy Kulp came back to Pennsylvania and got her clock cleaned by Bud Shuster a little over a decade later.

Ed O'Neill (Married With Children, Modern Family) is the other sitcom star who hails from Youngstown.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
Joe Flynn was a native of Youngstown, Ohio. After McHale's Navy went off the air he moved back to Youngstown and ran for Congress. He got his head handed to him (he ran as a Republican in a heavily union Democrat district).
.
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In the district later represented by James "Weed Whacker Haircut" Traficant, no less.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
Joe Flynn was a native of Youngstown, Ohio. After McHale's Navy went off the air he moved back to Youngstown and ran for Congress. He got his head handed to him (he ran as a Republican in a heavily union Democrat district). It would be the worst loss by a former sitcom star until Nancy Kulp came back to Pennsylvania and got her clock cleaned by Bud Shuster a little over a decade later.

Ed O'Neill (Married With Children, Modern Family) is the other sitcom star who hails from Youngstown.
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About Flynn...he was also known thanks to the rather strange way he died....found in the bottom of a swimming pool wearing a cast !!

My top 5...

1. Car 54
2. Mister Ed.
3. Lucy Show ( pretty much only the ones with Vivian Vance )
4. Dennis The Menace ( the last season was lackluster though )
5. That Girl ( yes I know that show did last into the 70s )
 
hamster said:
About Flynn...he was also known thanks to the rather strange way he died....found in the bottom of a swimming pool wearing a cast !!

My top 5...

1. Car 54
2. Mister Ed.
3. Lucy Show ( pretty much only the ones with Vivian Vance )
4. Dennis The Menace ( the last season was lackluster though )
5. That Girl ( yes I know that show did last into the 70s )
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The Lucy Show was filmed in color, which it immediately made go to the top of my list. (Though I loved the few I Love Lucy's that were either filmed in color, or colorized.).

Mister Ed was fun, but shallow. Dennis was a continuation of Leave It To Beaver, in my mind, with perhaps better writing.

That Girl was one of the first sitcoms that expressed a new era in women's rights...Perhaps Julia was earlier. It wasn't until Mary Tyler Moore that this segment gained real ground. Of course, Laugh-In was a big influence as well, but obviously was not a sit-com.
 
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