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History of the Sitcom: July 5

This week, Newhart, Hogan's Heroes, Get Smart, Gilligan's Island and more.

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This week on History of the Sitcom, a look at the ‘ultimate comedy comfort food’ includes Newhart, Hogan’s Heroes, Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, and Gomer Pyle.

Episode Seven: Escaping Reality
This episode explores sitcoms as the ultimate comedy comfort food. But what sitcoms offer escape from – and what they offer escape to – reveal a lot about the state of the American mind, and the state of sitcom form itself.

7:30pm Wednesday on SBS.

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  2. I am enjoying this show. Came to it late, but I think the concept is great – tracing society’s progression / regression through the medium of sitcoms. Plus I always think you need the long lens of history to truly make sense of what is happening.

    The only grips I have is they have is:

    . They are putting a lot of emphasis on one chap (sorry can’t remember his name) who revolutionised the whole black / white debate (e.g. All in the family & Standford and Sons, amongst others). But his starting point in both these shows were the English shows Till death do they part & Stepptoe and Sons. Especially all the emphasis on All in the family being so ground breaking – well from my faint memory of Till death do they part it covered the same ground and AITF probably just pinched similar storylines – they certainty just cc the characters.

    . It tends to be a bit repetitive covering the same material over different shows.

    Otherwise interesting.

      1. It was very briefly mentioned that All In… was based on a UK show bur no mention of the name-at the time and for many years after there was no way anybody in the US could see any foreign TV-very different here as we saw most UK and US stuff as well as our own productions,

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