Best US Sitcom of the 1970s

Apropos of nothing, "Hi Bob" was a great drinking game when I was in college, early 80s.
1. The Bob Newhart show was in reruns on WTBS in the afternoon during most bars' happy hour.
2. Whenever anyone says "Bob," drink.
3. Whenever anyone says "Hi Bob," drain your glass.

was sanford the only one of these shows on nbc? what were the other nbc sitcoms of the early-mid 70s?

CHICO AND THE MAN.

http://i.imgur.com/zYL9Sra.jpg

I must've read this book 10000 times, backward and forwards, until it finally fell apart on me about ten years ago.

I wasn't really watching "Chico and the Man" when I was two, much less knowing what network it was on.

thank you for lending a helping hand

I was very much alive during the 70s and even had a television during a small part of that decade. (I was very poor when I first lived away from home.) My impression of all these sitcoms at the time was [shrug] they're ok I guess, if you like that sort of thing. I was pretty disengaged from mass market entertainment.

haha now i want to watch some of these episodes

Other notable guest stars included:
Cesar Romero as Chico's absentee father
Tony Orlando as Chico's look-alike, the ex-fiance of a hostile woman he wants to date
José Feliciano, who wrote the theme song, as Chico's womanizing famous-singer cousin Pepe Fernando
Sammy Davis Jr. as himself
Herbie Faye appeared as Bernie in the 1975 episode "Louie's Retirement"
Shelley Winters (reuniting with Albertson, with whom she'd costarred in The Poseidon Adventure) as the owner of the local bakery, Shirley Schrift (her real name)
Rodolfo Hoyos, Jr., three guest-starring roles, including Hector Ramirez in "The Third Letter" (1977)
Jim Backus as Ed's friend who uses him as a beard, pretending to be playing cards with him when cheating on his wife (Audra Lindley)
Silent-film actress Carmel Myers as a former star who has fallen on hard times, brings in her car for repairs, and stays in the garage while looking for work
George Takei as Ed's supposed long-lost son from his time in Japan during World War II
Cesare Danova as Aunt Connie's Spanish aristocrat boyfriend, the Count de Catalan, in the second episode in which she appeared
Comedian Joey Bishop as an inept robber
Bernie Kopell as a plastic surgeon
Rose Marie as a CB radio enthusiast with whom a lonely Ed connects on New Year's Eve
Penny Marshall, as a waitress
Football star Rosey Grier as himself, Della's date for a charity benefit dance
Larry Hovis as a customer in the second episode of the first season
Jim Jordan (of radio's Fibber McGee and Molly) as a mechanic who used to be a big businessman, until he was victimized by his own company's retirement-age mandate

xxp
I think you mean "Thank you for being a friend."

MASH was somewhat compromised from the start -- nearly all the docs in the novel (and Hawkeye in the film i think?) are married, including Our Heroes, so they're serial adulterers; none of that for Alan Alda. And Larry Gelbart's sensibility is wisecracking NY liberal as opposed to Altman's anarchic stoned pranksterism. (Gelbart pointedly less sexist, after the first 3-4 seasons anyway.)

And since it was filmed one-camera style, half on the Fox ranch in Malibu i think, it had that goddamn laugh track.

For whatever reason NBC had very limited success with sitcoms in the decades before their famous mid '80s Thursday night lineup. In the 1960s their only hits were Hazel, I Dream of Jeannie and Get Smart. Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man were their only remotely successful ones from the 1970s until Diff'rent Strokes at the very end of the decade. NBC came close to going out of business around 1981-1982; all of their shows, new and old, were unsuccessful at that point.

thats basically why Letterman got a late night show, and they mostly left him alone

TMI: My mother went into labor with me while watching the latest Sanford & Son.

Hope it wasn't one of the Grady episodes

George: You know, my mother used to walk around on our apartment just in her bra and panties. She didn't look anything like you, she was really disgusting, really bad body. If you could imagine uglier and fatter version of Shirley Booth. Remember Shirley Booth from Hazel. Really embarrassing, cause you know I had only mother in the whole neighborhood who was worse looking than Hazel. Imagine the taunts I would hear.

Woman: Like what?

George: Like a "Hey your mother is uglier than Hazel. Hazel really putsyour mother to shame"

yeah, didnt watch that much either

Strange that I have no attachment to any of these, despite most of them being in heavy rerun circulation during my prime TV watching years. I wonder if there was something distinctly adult--for lack of a better word--about them that made them impenetrable to me; I distinctly remember lunging for the channel changer whenever an All in the Family or M*A*S*H rerun was about to come on. I don't know if Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, The Honeymooners or I Love Lucy are necessarily *better* shows than the most beloved 70s stuff, but they certainly strike me as being far more kid-friendly and accessible. I do have some mildly fond memories of watching Happy Days, which I think fits in more with the older shows than any of its contemporaries.

For what its worth, I don't recall ever having seen an episode of The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Odd Couple or Sanford and Son, and Maude I only ever saw an episode or two of rather recently.

I really loved AitF when i was ten.

Wow yall are old. I have never seen a single minute of any of these shows.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/91/The_Ghost_Busters_%28TV_series%29_cast_photo.jpg

― F♯ A♯ (∞), 10. maaliskuuta 2016 0:41 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

didn't know Neil Young was in a sitcom!

xpost

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 10. maaliskuuta 2016 0:46 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me neither, but who are the two guys with hats?

Wow yall are old. I have never seen a single minute of any of these shows.

Not even Happy Days? I was born in 1979, so I'm too young to have seen any of these in the original run, and some of them were never shown in Finland, but even I haven't managed to avoid seeing bits of Happy Days reruns.

And since it was filmed one-camera style, half on the Fox ranch in Malibu i think, it had that goddamn laugh track.

It's one of those 'use other facts', but when M*A*S*H was shown on BBC2 (the 'upmarket' BBC channel at the time) they removed the laughter track entirely (I guess because canned laughter was considered too vulgar for the British middle classes)

Couldn't believe it ever had a laugh track tbh! Is M*A*S*H is the only long running US sitcom the BBC has ever shown from start of series to end of series? I can't think of any others.

The BBC didn't show a lot of US sitcoms, I suppose M*A*S*H was worthy enough for the Board of Governors.

How could I forget Kotter? That show was the bomb. Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, John Travolta.

I was born in 1971 and have seen everything listed. But since everything was still in constant syndication I couldn't tell you whether I watched a given show in 1975 or in 1980. And I'm not sure how much it matters.

Bewitched/I Dream of Jeannie felt more late 60s than 70s; they went well with Gidget/Flying Nun. Lucy and Honeymooners felt 50s-ish, just as Mork and Cheers definitely felt like 80s shows. But WKRP and Taxi had a 70s vibe and should imo be considered with the 70s shows regardless of what year they were made.

Evening shows were palatable to both adults and children circa 1978 - Burnett, Muppets, PM Magazine. One misses

I see "Soap" ran from 1977 to 1981, so misses out too.

Tough call between Sanford & Son and Jeffersons. Went S&S.

Couldn't believe it ever had a laugh track tbh! Is M*A*S*H is the only long running US sitcom the BBC has ever shown from start of series to end of series? I can't think of any others.

― A Fifth Beatle Dies (Tom D.), Thursday, March 10, 2016 11:41 AM (6 hours ago)

sgt bilko/phil silvers show is pretty popular in the uk, isn't it? it's oddly ignored and forgotten here.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Dunno why but I was perusing a list of all the TV shows that were around in 1981, and god what a dismal bunch. 2 or 3 of the shows listed above were still around though, plus Three's Company.

One cool thing I noticed was that Andy Kaufman's guest spot on Fridays was the same weekend Charles Rocket said "fuck" on SNL.

voted jeffersons

Love "The Jeffersons" for the Marla Gibbs-Helmsley repartee, unusual for being devoid of sexual tension.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Really...zero for Laverne & Shirley? I loved the first few seasons but it did get sloppy and weary once they moved.

And thank you for bringing up PM Nagazine! Flood of memories....

Sparky Marcus was a fave anytime he made an appearance in a sitcom.

As far as I'm aware, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Maude were never been shown on British television

Strange, someone could have given a go at showing a re-make of Steptoe and Son