A great ERA

[Kevin in California]

Was perusing the TV shows and came across Rifleman episodes. I'm just amazed on how far this country has fallen. Back in the Rifleman era, there was law and order, no DEI, no LBGTQQAD (whatever the hell it is), men were men...women were woman, no AOC's, no Antifa, no this, no that....just a great era to be part of.

I pray for this country and the men and women who fought for it.

[Angelino97]

In his 1981 nonfiction book, Danse Macabre, Stephen King lambasted that episode for its ending ... the couple turns out to be named Adam and Eve.

King said that ending was already a sci-fi chiche in pulp magazines long before The Twilight Zone ever did it.

[Dr. Sivana]

I don’t find the production values cheesy. You can keep the sets simple like “The Honeymooners”, or put a lampshade on it like Burns and Allen. Good acting is more important than modern production values. Gilligan’s Island worked because of the chemistry of the cast, and that even characters that shouldn’t be so likeable(the Howells) remain somehow endearing. Perry Mason holds up well today. Great cast. Tight writing.

[Dr. Sivana]

King said that ending was already a sci-fi chiche in pulp magazines long before The Twilight Zone ever did it

And waywardorphan boys with good hearts being helped by mysterious benefactors was a trope for 70 years beforeDavid Lean ever directed a movie. Pulp stories are fine, and TZ was happy to make TV versions of good ones. I normally like to read stories, but “Two” has almost no dialogue,and CharlesBronson /Elizabeth Montgomery with the visuals provided by TV gives the cliche a new dimension.

[Angelino97]

A lot of the non-sitcom TV shows were shot on the Universal lot. Always the same streets. And all those car chases in the same Los Angeles canyons.

I loved The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman when they first aired .Over a decade ago, I bought the DVDs. Hadn't seen the show in over 30 years.

Jamie Sommers helps a scientist defect from East Germany. They have a car chase in dry canyon country (obviously Los Angeles, not East Germany). An East German helicopter chases them with a machine gun (though no machine gun is visible on the helicopter). We cut to the helicopter's interior -- and see rice paddies below -- obviously stock footage from Vietnam. And the same exterior shot of Stasi hq is used three times -- with the same people walking by the building.

[Dr. Sivana]

OK, the crime-action shows will always suffer from cheap production values compared to sit-coms. So yes, many scenes in Mannix take place in the Brady household. A lot of the rich people's houses in Columbo also seemed familiar, as did the Rolls-Royces. The Fugitive and the Rockford Files are two action dramas that disguised the cost cutting fairly well, and remain quite watchable. For shows like "Get Smart" and "Batman" the cheese is a featured ingredient. Oddly, an attempt to revive the formula in "Sledgehammer!" in the '80s failed, and I blame the lack of chemistry between the leads. Also, the short-lived Logan's Run TV show also failed as Gregory Hines and Heather Manzies (sp?, RIP) had limited acting chops and les chemistry, unlike Michael York and Jenny Agutter in the big screen version.

Contrast that with the Odd Couple, where I believe Tony Randall/Jack Klugman exceeded the chemistry of Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau and far-surpassed the likeability (which is necessary in a long-running sitcom vs. a 90 minute movie).

[Angelino97]

Crime-action shows of the 1970s seem cheesy today largely because of the improved production values for TV in the ensuing decades.

Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice far surpassed the cop shows of the previous decade (the former introducing that annoying documentary shaky-cam, and the latter embracing music video aesthetics).

Then David Lynch raised the TV bar (both creatively and production wise) with Twin Peaks, followed by such innovative TV epics as The Sopranos, Lost, and Game of Thrones

Sitcoms didn't evolve so extensively, though after the BBC's The Office, many now also use documentary shaky-cams.

[Dr. Sivana]

Sitcoms didn't evolve so extensively, though after the BBC's The Office, many now also use documentary shaky-cams.

I find shaky-cams unwatchable, and FAR cheaper looking than a two-camera kinescope recording of "The Honeymooners". When I saw Shaky Cams used on soap operas, I assumed that Soap Operas are too expensive to make for the audience size, and will go the way of the broadsheet newspaper.

[equaviator]

Adam-12 was brilliant. It shows how criminals should behave when they’re approached, questioned and/or arrested by the police. It shows how police should behave in the course of doing their jobs and the importance of knowing their jobs in the first place. It also shows how law-abiding citizens should behave when they deal with the police, and it even shows how not to behave. As a nice side show, there are classic cars all over the place!