One of my guilty pleasures is that I subscribe to Foxtel. My original justification for doing so was to gain full access to coverage of AFL matches and related TV shows.
Being a part-time football journo, this justification was genuine, but my subscription has thrown up a few side benefits as well. One of those is repeats of old – or perhaps more accurately, ancient – TV shows. More specifically, vintage sitcoms.
In the decade or so I’ve had my subscription, Foxtel has cycled through a whole bunch of these shows. Some of them I had not seen for many a long year before being reintroduced to them. And with my reintroduction to these vintage sitcoms, a torrent of ‘after school’ memories have come flooding back in recent years.
My vintage sitcoms awakening
The year 1971 was a transformative one for me, for two reasons. Firstly, mum went back to work. I was the youngest of six kids, and after the eldest was born she took on the full-time mum role. I started primary school in 1970 and that opened up mum’s options. By 1971 she was comfortable that I’d happily made the transition to full-time school kid, and returned to full-time work.
That was fine with me. I had older siblings and neighbours to play with and, of course, there was TV. However, before 1971, there was a slight limitation to our viewing options. These weren’t enforced by our parents, but by the TV set itself. Only Channel 2, the ABC station in Victoria, worked.
So from my youngest days through until the end of my prep grade year, ABC shows were our only choice. For kids that meant Play School, Adventure Island, and a new American show that came along when I started school – Sesame Street. Apart from F Troop (a Channel 2 show), none of the now iconic vintage sitcoms had entered my world.
We were happy enough watching those, but in 1971 our TV world grew much, much larger. It was in that year that Mr Thompson turned up at our house. He was our local TV repair guy. I have vivid memories of him taking the back panel off our giant Admiral brand three-in-one TV. (Our monster-sized set incorporated a record player and radio.)
After Mr Thompson did his thing, he replaced that back panel and switched the TV on. After it had ‘warmed up’ (that’s what TVs did back then) Channel 2 flickered on as usual. But then he put his hand to the knob on the right and turned the turret to ‘7’.
In that moment my life changed forever. There on the screen was Batman. And Robin. And the Riddler. What had I been missing?!
A whole new universe
Batman was just the beginning. The true vintage sitcoms were about to make their mark on my psyche. Next came Get Smart. And then I Dream of Jeannie. Over on Channel 9 there was McHale’s Navy. And Flipper. And the Bugs Bunny Show!
Before long I discovered other cartoons too – Rocky and Bullwinkle, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones, Josie and the Pussycats.
What a revelation this was!
As I progressed through primary, I began to appreciate the sitcoms a bit more. Some of these had slightly more ‘adult’ nuances than I’d picked up on first viewing. On Get Smart, for instance, I loved the slapstick nature of the bumbling Maxwell Smart. As a 10-year-old, though, I was starting to understand the (albeit very understated) sexual tensions between Max and Agent 99.
As vintage sitcoms go, though, Get Smart’s biggest impact on me was an appreciation of various types and levels of humour. And that a joke could still be funny not just on its second telling, but the third, fourth and beyond. If you know Get Smart, you’ll know the iconic phrases like, “Would you believe …?”, “And … loving it”, and “That’s the second time I’ve fallen for that this month.”
We knew the lines were coming, but we laughed anyway. In fact the anticipation of the line added to the humour.
Family vintage sitcoms
There was no shortage of family-oriented sitcoms in the 1960s and 1970s. The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, Leave It to Beaver and the like focused on standard American family life. These families were enough like ours in Australia for us to identify with what they were going through. Sometimes they might have been a little too schmaltzy for my liking, but as long as there were laughs, we watched.
Some of those vintage sitcoms took the classic family idea and twisted it in very weird directions. Think of The Addams Family and The Munsters. And then there was The Beverly Hillbillies, about a yokel family striking it rich and moving into a Beverly Hills mansion.
It was a bizarre concept, but it was funny. Funny enough to last nine seasons and 274 episodes.
A long line of vintage sitcoms
Of course, I’ve only scratched the surface of vintage sitcoms here. Without much thought I can think of several others. The Partridge Family, F Troop, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, Hogan’s Heroes – and those were just the afternoon shows.
In the evenings, there was On The Buses, Are You Being Served, Love Thy Neighbour and a host of other British sitcoms. These may or may not hold up well 50 years later, in terms of acceptable humour.
Regardless, the memories of them remain strong for me. And those memories have been reinforced by reruns on Pay TV. Get Smart’s back on at the moment. Also, in recent times I’ve rediscovered Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, M.A.S.H. and many more.
Some of these vintage sitcoms have held up better than others. But I can still get a laugh out of most. Keep them coming, I say!
Did you switch on the TV after school every afternoon? What vintage sitcoms do you recall fondly? Let us know via the comments section below.
Also read: Ice cream wars of the ’60s and ’70s
Way back in the 50’s (or maybe early 60’s) there was a show on TV called “The Rag Trade”. I’m now almost 74 and that show is still the one I remember as being the funniest show ever.
Geminiwoman, I’m a couple of years younger than you and remember watching The Rag Trade with my mum, it was her favourite. ‘Everybody out’ was the catchphrase I remember!