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The 20th Century Called … And They Have the TV Remote
Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with daughter Candice on The Charlie McCarthy Show 1952 (Photo: CBS)
CBS announced on Wednesday that they have reached a deal with creator Dianne English and star Candice Bergen to revive Murphy Brown, a 10-year hit for the network that first debuted in 1988. It is just the latest in television’s zombie lineup of shows that been repeatedly stabbed, shot, blown up and generally worn out but simply will not die.
Bergen, who debuted on her father’s radio show at age 6, is now 71. The fictional baby that riled the 1992 Presidential campaign when then-Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the glamorization of single motherhood would be 26. Don’t struggle trying to remember the sex of the baby because, by now, nine chances out of 10 the kid is probably transitioning to something else.
According to the network the revival will be set in “a world of cable news, fake news and a very different political and cultural climate.” In other words, like the cast of Will & Grace, they are itching to get into the game of bashing one Donald J. Trump.
There are very few fictional characters that once they’ve left the culture I’ve pined to learn their fate. I really don’t care to know what cable network Murphy Brown is reduced to working at. After the disaster that was the series finale for Mad About You (also slated for revival), I don’t care to revisit the domestic life of Paul and Jamie Buchanan. I don’t care if the truth is still out there nor does the prospect of John Goodman pulling a Patrick Duffy in the mind of Roseanne Barr send a thrill up and down my spine. What’s next? Does anyone want to know if Sam Malone of Cheers fell off the wagon and is dealing with the devastating effects of an STD?
Rule One of show business used to be “Don’t stay on the stage too long.” Rule Two should be “Don’t force your way back.” The Golden Rule was “Always leave them wanting more.”
Published in Entertainment
Dailymotion seems to have several episodes.
Remember when It’s Gary Shandling’s Show was lauded as “groundbreaking” in the late 1980s because Gary would break the 4th wall and address the audience directly in the middle of the show?
George Burns was doing that on the Burns and Allen TV show in 1952.
I don’t know I think seeing a follow up on some shows would be great. Don’t we all want to know what actually happens to ALF?
Dunno. I did watch the show when it was on late-night reruns. For me, it was when Garry Marshall stepped in as Stan Lansing that I really got a kick. When he played off of Candice, I always got the sense that there was some inside baseball / inside jokes going on, but they were still hilarious. Seems several from the original are gone, and I couldn’t see the program’s revival as a successful venture.
Even then I could recognize the show’s liberal leanings, but there was always a sense that comedy has to be based in reality, so there was the attempt to tell the truth even if seen through a liberal lens. The problem now is that so many Hollywood leftists seem convinced of their own moral and political superiority that they don’t know where the truth is.
Having him around at the table reads didn’t hurt either. One of the great comedy minds. His book Wake Me When It’s Funny is one I always recommend to students of writing technique.
Hell yeah, baby!!!!!
OK, but only after he does the same thing for Quantum Leap.
And a cage match between Roper (Stanley, not Helen) v. Furley to see who gets to manage the building.
I watched that Murphy Brown episode. It was actually funny, meaning I laughed out loud. Contrast this with current popular shows, which I only sample on flights: not even a chuckle.
Directed by Peter Bonerz (Jerry the dentist from The Bob Newhart Show)
There are a lot of cops in my family, and we’ve often talked about cop shows. The old guys (that is, as old in the Seventies as I am now) liked Kojak for its droll, big city humor, but grew tired of Telly’s hammy-ness in the later years, though it must be said that at least the later years filmed in New York; Universal Studios’ fake-looking sets cheapened the show. Kojak was the first of the cynical, post-Dragnet shows that assumed the press was always trying to crucify the cops, the DA would not back you up, and the police worked in dismal surroundings. For some people it would be their permanent image of New York.
The other Seventies shows also mostly played off a French Connection/Death Wish atmosphere in the culture. By the Eighties, something new was added–women–in Hill Street Blues, a little more realistic and less corny than Kojak at its worst, but not as true to cop life as Kojak at its best. Hill Street was always too soap opera-ish for actual police. (You know what they did like? Barney Miller. It was a lightweight comedy, but many swore it had real insight into the job.) Hill Street did get superior marks for one thing: the randomness of violence and sudden death. Social issues were in the background but politics rarely intruded on that show, at least as compared to today. Hill Street was also bluntly honest about the number of street crimes committed by Blacks; even in rough tough Kojak‘s day, street gangs were still an absurdly sanitized multiracial rainbow.
NYPD Blue was another milestone, the Hill Street of the Nineties. It was more realistic in several respects, didn’t have a shot-inside-a-studio look, and its characters were, to put it mildly, less inclined to be role models. From the viewpoint of today it was a transitional show. Andy Sipowicz, in beefy middle age in 1997, could easily have been one of the young cops of the decaying early Seventies, and he learned some bad habits back in the bad old days. Andy’s methods would not get by today, but in the Nineties he was still a familiar type around urban precincts.
I’ve heard that same comment from many people — that it was the most realistic of the cop shows.
It also holds up incredibly well. There’s almost no topical material, other than NYC going broke, and that still works now. The only thing that stands out is the funky Ron Glass wardrobe.
How do you spell Wojciehowicz? “Just like it sounds.”
Now, that’s funny.
Buchman. Or maybe Buckman.
?
I want Carol Burnett back…
I just watched that episode, and it brought back memories of the character. They’re going to have to completely neuter her personality. She was constantly zinging someone using race, gender, religion etc. She can’t have the high ground to bash Trump and also be even remotely as she was before.
You’re correct. My mistake. I was traumatized by that last season. I’ve got PTSD – Primetime Television Stupidity Disorder.
I loved her so much! Remember “Rebecky”? haha!
I honestly must have missed the last season. Ill take your word for it.
Murray. The dog…he wasn’t deranged, was he? And I liked the musical theme, so there’s that.
<smile>
Funny, I don’t have specific memories, but whenever I see clips I say, “oh, I love this one.” I grew up on that show, until about age 12, when our family went cold turkey no tv. At least I only watched decent stuff, like CB, Bob Newhart. Omg, Laugh In…I’m not sure how that one got through the parent controls.
Haha.
Laugh In is pretty weird when you think about it. Doesn’t hold up well at all, because it was mostly up-to-the-minute topical. Most of the parts that are still funny are Rowen and Martin hitting on the young babes, and talking about getting laid. Dick Martin was a blatant horndog. But so was Rowen; he was just more dignified about it. But there’s no doubt that they couldn’t get away with most of that now, with the Harvey standard.
And the fun part is that the show was aimed specifically at the very people who are now the old guard of progressive thought. Somewhere along the line they sat down very hard on a stick.
Couldn’t find a clip of Rebecky, but I never saw this one…
This is what I’m saying, I wonder how it got past the parental controls.
I just remember it being ridiculous and cartoonish as a kid. It was all flower power. All the inappropriate stuff went over my head. ✈
When I watched Star Trek Carol, I thought, huh, this was ahead of its time, thinking it was from late 60’s or early 70’s. Kind of surreal til I found the feature date was from the 1991 revival that I never even heard about.
Explains why none of those people were on the show I remember.
“Get the Mouse”.
Loved Murray.
You beat me to it, @rightangles! I was not in spot to look up how to spell Wojciehowicz.
Maybe towards the end of the run it tended to the soapy, but in the beginning it was more truly ensemble and more about the writing than the actors. My impression from the cops I knew was that Hill Street Blues had the settings right, the interaction between the cops right (sanitized for tv), and the almost pointless struggle of it all right.