When is Classic TV Important?

When is a good TV show also an important one?

I began to ponder that question after reading Mitchell Hadley’s book Darkness in Primetime (reviewed here recently). The book described classic TV episodes like "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" that warned us about future calamities, warnings that were mostly ignored. All these episodes would qualify as they communicated something profound within their stories. But there should be other criteria as well.

What makes a show “important”? I’m sure there won’t be an answer that we would all agree upon. Jean Renoir said, “The only things that are important in life are the things you remember.” But I can’t buy that because I fondly remember when Scooby-Doo met Dick Van Dyke and helped him save his financially strapped carnival. Saying that was an important moment in television would be silly. It didn’t even seem that important to Dick Van Dyke.

Another quote I found in some basic internet research – “The most important thing in life is knowing the most important things in life.” Which not only doesn’t help at all, but it also proves that anyone can say something inane and have it be considered worthy of an online meme.

As with any of these discussions, there will be some choices that are obvious, and some that should incite a lively discussion. It would be hard to find anyone who would say that Roots was not an important show. But so was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and to the uninitiated that might seem like a ludicrous claim.

I think it’s safe to say that every important television series or episode would also have to be good, otherwise it wouldn’t leave an impression on the audience that would endure beyond its initial broadcast. But every good show can’t be considered important, given the definition of that term: “of great significance or value; likely to have a profound effect on success, survival, or well-being.”

I also think that “important” usually denotes “serious,” but we cannot rule out comedies and variety shows from consideration. I Love Lucy was certainly important; so were Your Show of Shows, The Ernie Kovacs Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand, The Carol Burnett Show, and many others.

Another thought – important doesn’t always mean preferable when one is in the mood for a pleasant evening of television. All in the Family is undoubtedly an important series, but I haven’t watched a full episode in 20 years. Rick Nelson and Patty Duke hooking up on The Love Boat could not be more inconsequential; but I watched it again last week and enjoyed it immensely.

I took a long look at all the television series I own on DVD, most of which I consider to be good - the rest are guilty pleasures. Which ones do I think are also “important”? Here’s the list:

I Love Lucy
The Twilight Zone
The Fugitive
Star Trek
The Monkees
Dragnet
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Room 222
Doctor Who
Sesame Street

It’s a short list – shorter than I expected it would be. I would add a few more shows that I don’t own but that would also qualify: The Texaco Star Theater, Howdy Doody, Perry Mason, Julia, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, Hill Street Blues.

But if you consider the sheer volume of television series and episodes from the late 1940s to the present, the percentage that anyone would call important is going to be minimal. And given the fleeting and disposable nature of contemporary television, I wonder if any shows from the last 15 years or so would qualify. Something really can’t be considered important if it is unfamiliar to 99% of the population.

There is one last category to cover, and that is the TV shows that are important to you, but may not have the same prestige with others. Most would agree that Lou Grant was a terrific show but might not consider it important. To me it was one of the most important series ever broadcast, because as a teenager it directly influenced the direction of my life.

If a show helped you to become a better parent, or you were inspired as a kid by Fonzie to get a library card and check out a book, if you became a doctor because of Marcus Welby or a lawyer because of Ben Matlock, if you saved for a trip to Paris after watching the Facts of Life girls travel there, or convinced your parents to pay for tapdancing lessons after watching Sharon Baird on The Mickey Mouse Club, then those were important shows. Television can have that effect on people – or at least it once did, once upon a time.

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Friday Nights, 1976

I've been rough (though not without reason) on NBC during these reviews of network prime time schedules in 1976, so let’s give some credit where it’s due: on Friday night if you were home, you were probably spending at least part of your evening with the Peacock. Some of those props may be by default since ABC and CBS both opted for movies on this evening, but three of NBC’s four scheduled series were hits then and are fondly remembered now.

ABC
Donny & Marie
ABC Friday Night Movie

It seemed like a hit at the time, but the variety show starring Donny and Marie Osmond never ranked higher than #27 during its three seasons. This was the first foray into prime time for Sid & Marty Krofft, after years of unleashing bizarre but delightful Saturday morning shows to confound the children of the ‘70s.

Looking back, it’s even more impressive for an hour of prime-time real estate to be turned over to an 18-year-old Donny and his 16-year-old sister, obviously making them the youngest entertainers in history to host their own series. But they carried it well on shear talent, with able support from the Osmond family, a cluster of ice skaters and appearances from pretty much anyone who was anyone in the 1970s, from Evel Knievel and Andy Gibb to Farrah Fawcett and Kristy McNichol.

The Kroffts would go on to create one more successful variety series featuring Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell sisters but missed with shows built around the Brady Bunch and Pink Lady & Jeff. Yes, I own both of those shows on DVD. Don’t judge me.


NBC
Sanford and Son
Chico & The Man
The Rockford Files
Serpico

In its final season Sanford and Son still drew more viewers than any other Friday series. Chico & The Man was a natural sitcom pairing with Sanford, and while The Rockford Files still ranked outside the top 40 shows, it was already winning Emmy Awards and providing an ideal showcase for James Garner, one of television’s most charismatic leading men. 

Serpico was one of many attempts this decade to adapt a hit film into a successful television series. It rarely worked, and it didn’t in this case either – only 15 episodes were shot before it was canceled. Al Pacino played NYPD detective Frank Serpico in the film, but viewers of the series got David Birney instead.

This was one of many short-lived police shows shown on TV Land, so I’ve seen it but didn’t care for it. Birney’s a fine actor but this was not a role suited to his talents, no matter now they tried to toughen him up with facial hair and a grimy complexion. The whole thing came off like a dinner theater version of the genuine article.


CBS
Spencer’s Pilots
CBS Friday Night Movie

It won’t be long before CBS would dominate Friday nights with hits like Dallas and The Dukes of Hazzard. That winning streak would not begin with Spencer’s Pilots, a pleasant time-killer of an adventure series about a small charter plane outfit in California.

The cast is comprised of familiar character actors that veteran classic TV fans will know by name, and everyone else will recognize as “that guy from…” There’s Gene Evans (the guy from all those old TV westerns!), Christopher Stone (from Bionic Woman!), Todd Susman (from Newhart!) and Britt Leach (from the Partridge Family Christmas episode!). Not a bad show, but no match for Donny and Marie and Sanford and Son.

Shows Missed:
The Don Knotts Show (1970)
San Francisco International Airport (1970)
Nancy (1970)
The Headmaster (1970)
The Man and the City (1971)
Search (1972)
Assignment: Vienna (1972)
The Delphi Bureau (1972)
Jigsaw (1972)
The Little People (1972)
The Sixth Sense (1972)
Tenafly (1973)
Faraday & Company (1973)
Kodiak (1974)
The New Land (1974)
McCoy (1975)
Joe and Sons (1975)
Beacon Hill (1975)
Mobile One (1975)
Big Eddie (1975)
Executive Suite (1976)
Ball Four (1976)

New Book Shines a Light on the “Darkness In Primetime”

It's likely that if you are even a semi-regular reader of Comfort TV you also follow Mitchell Hadley’s blog, “It’s About TV.” We’re both still at it after more than a decade, while so many other blogs once listed at the Classic TV Blog Association have gradually fallen away (where have you gone, Michael’s TV Tray?).

Mitchell’s new book, Darkness in Primetime, is an expanded and more in-depth treatment of some of the shows covered in his blog under the title “Descent into Hell.” It adds several more examples of shows that tried to warn us where our culture is headed, too easily dismissed at the time as nothing more than an hour or so of provocative entertainment.

We really should have listened. 

But then, who could really have guessed where we were headed back then? You wouldn’t think a 1963 episode of The Outer Limits (“The Architects of Fear”) could have foretold how the US would react to the COVID pandemic nearly 60 years later. But the wisdom conveyed in that story had clearly been long forgotten.

From shows both popular (Star Trek, The Twilight Zone) and obscure (Kraft Television Theatre, Mobil Showcase), Mitchell has uncovered insight into the dangerous encroachment of relativism in truth and morality, the inherent bias in media, and what happens when authorities in politics and science play God without any of the necessary qualifications.

Indeed, many of these shows that would fall generally into the science fiction genre may have been viewed as paranoid fantasies when first broadcast. Some of the critics back then certainly thought so (as always, Mitchell brings the receipts for his arguments). But is anyone laughing now about concerns over near sentient computers and artificial intelligence?

Each chapter in Darkness in Primetime had me wondering if some of those errant paths could have been avoided. But an episode like “The Invasion of Kevin Ireland,” about a man whose life is destroyed by a corporate research firm, shows how there is still work to be done.

That episode of The Bold Ones: The Lawyers aired in 1971. In 2025 how casually do we enter personal information into online forms, or share details about our lives on social media, with no thought to how that data in the wrong hands could be weaponized? Another lesson ignored.

The experience of reading this book prompted much regretful head-shaking over our collective societal shortcomings, it also brought renewed appreciation for the writers, directors and performers of these outstanding programs. I’m now looking forward to watching many of them again, and seeking out those I’ve missed.

You can order Darkness in Primetime here

Department S: Binging a Vintage British Import

There's a company in Australia called Imprint that has been putting out some impressive blu-ray releases of classic television shows. I’ve already picked up the first two seasons of Bewitched (the series has never looked better) and I'll soon be ordering the Gidget series with Sally Field.

One of their recent promotional emails announced the release of a British show called Department S, which aired 28 episodes between 1969 and 1970. I had never heard of it but it sounded promising, and thankfully it’s been uploaded in remarkably high resolution on YouTube. I became a fan after watching just two episodes and have since enjoyed several more.

This is a difficult series to describe, which is one of the reasons I enjoy it. We are told that Department S is an elite investigative division based in England. When an international case is too baffling for the experts at Interpol – and presumably when Steed and Mrs. Peel are otherwise engaged – it is turned over to the three specialists that comprise Department S.

Jason King (Peter Wyngarde) is a novelist in the Ian Fleming mode. He’s the visionary – like Sherlock Holmes he can examine a crime scene. spot the clues that others have missed and envision a sequence of events of what may have happened. He envisions himself like Mark Cain, the super-spy hero in his books, and routinely adapts Department S cases into Cain’s adventures. But when fists start flying King is usually on the losing end – he is frequently found unconscious by his partners.

Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols) is the analyst. While she also works undercover in the field, her specialty is using computers to compile data. Stewart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani) is a former FBI agent and the lone American on the team. Sir Curtis Seretse (Dennis Alaba Peters) is the veteran diplomat who runs the department.

Each episode opens with a strange occurrence – sometimes it’s not even clear if a crime has been committed, but the circumstances are so bizarre that answers are elusive. In “One of Our Aircraft is Empty” a plane lands with no passengers or crew aboard. In “The Man in the Elegant Room,” an enclosure that resembles a luxurious residence is built inside an abandoned warehouse, a lavish prison for a crazed young man and a murdered woman. In “The Pied Piper of Hambledown,” the residents of an entire village disappear overnight, leaving one confused girl behind.

The set-ups reminded me of Banacek. While they weren’t locked-room mysteries, they presented a sequence of events so intriguing that you had to stay tuned to figure out what happened, and why.

Clever stories, exotic settings, appealing characters – what’s not to like?

Peter Wyngarde I knew from his dashing portrayal of the head of the Hellfire Club in the classic Avengers episode “A Touch of Brimstone.” He still has that suave, sophisticated quality here, even in later episodes when his sideburns and mustache threaten to engulf his visage. After Department S, he continued playing the same character in the Jason King spinoff, which lasted 26 episodes.

Joel Fabiani had a busy career after this series, appearing in both daytime dramas and in guest roles on prime time shows. Sadly, he never found another signature role that fit him as well as the tuxedos he wore in his Bond-like adventures here. As for Rosemary Nicols, based on the nature of some of her clothing-optional appearances you might think she was just on the team to spike viewership among the lads and the dads. But Annabelle’s contributions to solving cases are the equal of her partners, whom she rescues from dangerous situations on more than one occasion.

That said, it must be acknowledged that Department S was unabashedly salacious, at least in the casting department. Every guest female role was played by a stunningly beautiful actress. British TV fans will certainly recognize names like Fiona Lewis, Sue Lloyd, and Kate O’Mara. One episode was partially set in a hospital and all the nurses looked like they just stepped out of British Vogue. And the series rarely missed an opportunity to show off Nicols’ (admittedly splendid) legs.

I love British TV from this era. It sometimes takes me twice as long to get through an episode as I can’t help hitting the pause button to take a closer look at the cityscapes and the sleek lines on those vintage Rolls Royces and Bentleys, the interiors of the country estates, the red telephone boxes and the Carnaby Street fashions (so many ascots!). For a moment it makes me want to go back to London, until I remember that in today’s UK you can go to jail for a social media post. There will always be an England, but hopefully they’ll get back to being a better one soon.

If any of this has piqued your interest enough to check out Department S, I recommend a visit to YouTube and starting with these three episodes.

“Who Plays the Dummy?”
A motorcycle cop pursues a speeding car on a rural road in Spain. The high-speed chase ends when the car veers off the road and crashes. When the officer approaches the vehicle, he is shocked to find a well-dressed mannequin behind the wheel. Jason puts the team on the right track to a solution by identifying the maker of the necktie on the dummy.

“Six Days”
A plane lands at Heathrow six days after its scheduled arrival, with its crew and passengers none the wiser. How could everyone on board be unaware of the delay – and where has the plane been all this time? The series’ first episode serves as an ideal introduction to our trio of investigators.

“A Small War of Nerves”
From what I’ve read about the series, many fans consider this to be its finest hour. Anthony Hopkins plays a chemical weapons developer who doses himself with a potentially lethal substance, then goes missing with enough poison to kill one million people.

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Thursday Nights, 1976

As we arrive at Thursdays on our journey through 1976 we’ll see that little has changed from previous nights: ABC keeps introducing new hits, CBS proves to be a worthy rival with its own successful shows, and NBC just keeps trying…and failing. It will get better for the Peacock network – eventually – but for now let’s take another look at the series you watched, and the ones you missed.

ABC
Welcome Back Kotter
Barney Miller
The Tony Randall Show
The Nancy Walker Show
The Streets of San Francisco

ABC opened its Thursday prime time lineup with the highest-rated show of the evening, one that launched the career of John Travolta, as well as an array of catchphrases that haven’t aged well. I’m not sure Welcome Back Kotter has aged well either, and I’m usually a sucker for any show about teachers. But the theme song by John Sebastian, which became a last-minute substitute for one they had already selected - still sounds great.

Barney Miller finished at #17 in its second season. Then, proving even the mighty ABC was not perfect, it introduced two sitcoms that did not connect with most viewers. The Tony Randall Show, with Randall playing a retired judge, finished one season, then moved to CBS for a second season before being canceled.

The Nancy Walker Show was produced and co-created by Norman Lear, but his brand of topical comedy had begun to fall out of favor by 1976. It was pulled after just ten episodes, after which Walker was recruited by Garry Marshall to star in another sitcom, Blansky’s Beauties. That one didn’t last either.

In its final season, The Streets of San Francisco also began losing viewers, as Michael Douglas left the series and was replaced by Richard Hatch.

CBS
The Waltons
Hawaii Five-O
Barnaby Jones

CBS wisely countered ABC’s sitcom heavy lineup with three solid and more serious performers: The Waltons ranked #15 for the season, followed by Hawaii Five-O at #18. Barnaby Jones ranked #49 but would rebound back into the top 25 for its final two seasons. Perhaps the addition Mark Shera as the son of Barnaby’s cousin brought in some younger viewers.

NBC
Gemini Man
NBC’s Best Sellers
Van Dyke and Company

I wrote about Gemini Man in my “Terrible Shows I Like” recurring feature. Ben Murphy played Sam Casey, maverick special agent for a government think tank. On an underwater mission to retrieve an atomic-powered laser weapon, Sam is caught in an explosion. He miraculously survives, but his DNA is altered, and he becomes invisible. They find a way to restore his visibility by “building up a counter-field against the invisibility,” which can be controlled by that most futuristic of technology in 1976 – a digital watch.

Of course, there’s a catch – Sam can turn visible and invisible by pressing a button on the watch, but if he stays invisible longer than 15 minutes in one day, he’ll fade away, never to return.

It’s a good gimmick, and as I wrote in the original piece it’s not really a terrible show, just one that never caught on and was dropped after 11 episodes. Like Jerry Lewis, however, it was huge in France.

NBC’s Best Sellers was an anthology comprised of miniseries instead of single episodes. The one you may remember now is Captains and the Kings, which told over nine hours the story of the Irish Armagh family as they sought power and fortune in America.

I’m sure a lot of people at the time were rooting for Van Dyke and Company. Who doesn’t love Dick Van Dyke – whether it’s 1966 or 1976 or 2025? Why wouldn’t he make an ideal variety series host? Why wouldn’t it be great to see him reunited with guest stars like Mary Tyler Moore and Carl Reiner, and sharing a stage with John Denver, Lucille Ball, Chevy Chase, and even Ike & Tina Turner?

If you’re sure you would have loved it, check out any of the full episodes on YouTube, and you’ll likely change your mind. The whole thing just kind of lays there, despite everyone’s best efforts to make it work. Give Dick Van Dyke good material and he’ll make it great. Give him sketches that wouldn’t be salvageable with any performers, and they’ll get the better of him as well. He’d have to wait nearly 20 years for a more successful second act on TV, but Diagnosis Murder would run eight years and more than 170 episodes. And at age 100, I still wouldn’t count him out for one more comeback.


Shows Missed:

The Don Knotts Show (1970)
San Francisco International Airport (1970)
Nancy (1970)
The Headmaster (1970)
The Man and the City (1971)
Search (1972)
Assignment: Vienna (1972)
The Delphi Bureau (1972)
Jigsaw (1972)
The Little People (1972)
The Sixth Sense (1972)
Tenafly (1973)
Faraday & Company (1973)
Kodiak (1974)
The New Land (1974)
McCoy (1975)
Joe and Sons (1975)
Beacon Hill (1975)
Mobile One (1975)
Big Eddie (1975)
Executive Suite (1976)
Ball Four (1976)

10 Reasons To Love “Bupkis”

When fans discuss classic episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, you’re likely to hear titles like “The Curious Thing About Women,” “It May Look Like a Walnut” or “Coast to Coast Big Mouth.” A show called “Bupkis” probably won’t be mentioned, but it’s always been one of my favorites.

Written by Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, the duo behind many of the series’ best episodes, this fourth-season entry opens with Rob listening to the radio before going to work and hearing a song called “Bupkis,” a song he cowrote with Buzzy Potter during his army days. Weeks earlier he unwittingly gave up the rights to all those songs after getting a hard-luck story from his collaborator, and now he’s concerned he made a costly mistake.

It's a good story, but it’s the stuff that happens around the plot that, to me, makes this episode so memorable. Let me count the ways:

Waiting for the Weather
Early in the episode Rob waits to hear a weather forecast. A “Time for the Weather” jingle plays…and plays and plays. It’s an incidental moment but a very funny one, that will resonate with anyone trying to get a weather report or a baseball score from radio or TV before heading off to work.

WIFE
After the weather report, we hear Carl Reiner as the radio announcer for WIFE, “the station most people are married to.”

Blooper
It’s rare for a blooper to make the final cut in any series episode, but that was the case here. When Rob hears “Bupkis” on the radio, he picks up the phone and starts dialing the radio station – and then Dick Van Dyke remembers he was supposed to look up the number first in the phone book. He then makes a half-hearted effort to do so, pretends to find it and says “Right,” but is unable to hide a smile over knowing how he just screwed up.

“Yuk-a-Puk”
At the office Buddy and Sally arrive while Rob is looking at the music trade papers. Buddy says, “I haven’t looked at those since ‘Yuk-a-Puk’ slipped out of the top 50.” Sally responds, “’Yuk-a-Puk’ didn’t slip, it was pushed.” Hopefully viewers back then got the inside joke that Morey Amsterdam wrote “Yuk-a-Puk” and performed it on his 1963 album “The Next One Will Kill You.” It’s a reference that would almost certainly be lost on anyone now, but if you’re curious check out the song here

Middle America Gets a Yiddish Lesson
“I learned a lot of good words when I was in the army from Saul Pomerantz,” Rob tells Buddy, and if “Bupkis” wasn’t enough the episode now continues with more Yiddish vocabulary for America, sharing three more words in rapid succession. “Schlemiel,” “farblondjet,” and “tzimmes.”

References to Previous Episodes
Sitcoms in the 1960s weren’t big on continuity and this one was no exception. But as Rob explains how he might have done something stupid, Buddy and Sally remind him of all the other times that happened, referencing episodes in which he broke a tooth on a turkey sandwich, was hypnotized into acting drunk when he hears a bell ring, and when he left a script at Grand Central Station. It’s a nice trip down memory lane for long-time fans of the show.

The Stationary Box
Laura suggests that Rob write Buzzy a letter congratulating him on the success of “Bupkis,” figuring he'll respond if he has a conscience and offer to split the royalties. This is way before email, which is why Laura then produces a well-organized box of letter-writing stationary, complete with envelopes and a pen. Those scenes always stand out to me, showing how we used to live in a more genteel and less wired world. 

Attila the Hun
In the scene where Rob and Buzzy reminisce about the songs they wrote, they sing one called “Attila the Hun” (“Though he’ll pillage a village and kill everyone, I still love Attila the Hun.”) Like “Bupkis” it was also written by Persky and Denoff. The duo later created the series That Girl and had Ted Bessell sing “Attila the Hun” in the episode “Author, Author.”

Greg Morris
Greg Morris was something of a good luck charm for this series. Not only did he make a strong impression in this episode, but he was also center stage for what most sources identified as the longest studio audience laugh the show ever earned, in the episode “That’s My Boy?”

The Dum-Dums
“Bupkis” aired in March of 1965, a year when Beatlemania was in full swing, Motown was releasing classics from groups like The Supremes and The Temptations, and songs like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” by the Righteous Brothers and The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” topped the charts. But to many in the older generation, rock music was still empty-headed junk, as evidenced from the snippets we hear of “Bupkis,” released by a band called The Dum-Dums.

Spoiler alert: Rob does get credit for his songwriting, and in the final scene proudly shows off a 45 rpm record with his name on the label, along with his first royalty check – for less than ten bucks. 

 

Then, as now, writers just don’t get paid like they should. Yes, I’m still bitter.

The Carefree Era of Commercials

As I've mentioned before, I spend an inordinate amount of time watching commercials from the past. I enjoy them in a way I never did when they were first broadcast and interrupting whatever show I was watching.

A new batch of early 1980s commercials was recently uploaded to YouTube, and of course I had to click on that link to see which ones would greet me like old friends. The video runs about 20 minutes, and the spots are not themed to any one occasion or type of product. Yet there was a common denominator that went through just about all of them – one that seems sadly lacking not only in contemporary commercials but in contemporary television as well – optimism.

If you don’t share my enthusiasm for old commercials at least watch the first one in the video, for Kellogg’s cereal. The ebullient music proclaims, “When that sun breaks out, lift up your head and shout, it’s going to be a great day!” over scenes of people smiling over breakfast and on their way to work, and smiling kids on their way to school.

When was the last time you saw anything on television brimming with that much unbridled optimism? Do we no longer feel the joy of greeting a new day? Are we embarrassed now to be gladdened by something so simple? Are we too cynical now to appreciate such an artless response?

Next up – a commercial for Coppertone, with people happily soaking up rays on a beach, not worried at all about sun exposure. I can’t remember the last time I even saw a commercial for suntan lotion, though you can still buy it everywhere. I wonder if they no longer advertise lest they be accused of encouraging a dangerous activity.

The video continues with many more spots featuring folks of all ages having good times with their family and friends while enjoying whatever product is being advertised – Tab, Juicy Fruit gum, Coors Light, 7-Up, Pop Tarts, Nestea.

Along the way there are also commercials for Sears, which always tug at my heart now that this once celebrated retailer no longer exists. 

Practical as always, these ads promised nice clothes at a fair price. And there’s Barbara Eden, extolling the virtues of control-top panty hose with the slogan “Nothing beats a great pair of L’eggs” – which is probably offensive now, but what isn’t?

And oh, the jingles. The Manhattan Transfer harmonizing for Diet Coke; KFC, back when they weren’t embarrassed to be known as Kentucky Fried Chicken: “It’s so nice, nice to feel, so good about a meal…”; Purina Cat Chow (“Chow chow chow!”), “Fall into the Gap,” and a young couple not afraid to “get a little closer, with the baby fresh scent of Arrid Extra Dry.”

What passes for music in commercials now? “I have Type 2 Diabetes, but I manage it well…” Time to hit that mute button.

Much as I can deceive myself into thinking times were always better during the Comfort TV era, I know that is not really the case. Every decade had its own anxieties. In the 1960s it was the Cold War – would the Soviet Union really fire the first shot? Why did they want to put those missiles in Cuba?

In the 1970s we had the first wave of environmental panic, and one dire prediction after another about the uncertain future of the planet. I’m not sure whether we were supposed to be roasting or freezing or underwater by now.

The thing about TV from the 1960s and ‘70s is that it largely separated itself from current events – which is why we can still watch so many shows from that time without their seeming dated. And the commercials? They were somehow more authentic and less annoying. They were unapologetic in what they promoted, and most of the time their message was simple: “You’ll be happier if you buy this.”

McDonald’s is one of the few brands that may be waking up to this. In 2025 they brought back McDonaldland in spots that are bright, colorful and musical. Now if only they’d do the same with their buildings. The McDonald’s commercial in the ‘80s video features a kid at the beach building a sandcastle modeled after what they looked like back then, with the red roof and big golden arches sign. All the locations now look like they’re trying to avoid attention, with their minimalist architecture and bland earth tone interiors that resemble a hipster coffee house that has seen better days.

Why can’t buildings be beautiful anymore? Or in the case of McDonald’s, distinctive? And why can’t commercials be fun instead of rattling off lists of possibly fatal side effects of prescription medication?

I guess that’s what keeps bringing me back to compilations like this. They remind me that there were nice things in the world, and nice people. I know that’s still the case – but for some reason television doesn’t have much interest in them.