My Journey Through 1970s TV: Sundays in 1970

 

I enjoy many shows from the 1950s and 1960s, and a smaller selection of series from the 1980s. But if someone held a gun to my head (an increasingly likely scenario for those of us living in blue states), I’d affirm that the 1970s are my favorite television decade.

 

Were the shows intrinsically better? Certainly not – but they carried me from my sixth year to age 16, a time when television began to consume a substantial amount of my leisure and recreation hours. Viewers often form a special bond with the shows they watch in childhood, which is how I know I’m not the only 50-something who still watches Wacky Races.

 

Not long ago I wrote a piece on 10 forgotten shows from the 1970s that I’d like to check out. That curiosity inspired me to take on a project. The goal: watch at least one episode of every network series that aired in prime time during the 1970s. It’s an opportunity to once again celebrate the classics, uncover a few hidden gems, and try to figure out why the forgotten shows didn’t last.

 

 

Will it be possible? Probably not.  As with any decade there were shows that debuted and disappeared within weeks, never to be rerun or released on home video. But some have popped up on online, or can be obtained through unofficial channels. I’m on a quest now so if there’s a way to see them, I’ll make it happen.

 

Let’s start our journey at the outset of the decade, and look at the network schedule for Sundays in 1970.

 

ABC

The Young Rebels

The FBI

The ABC Sunday Night Movie

 

The 1970s was the heyday of original movies made for television, and I certainly watched my share during that decade, so whenever these listings pop up we’ll just transfer them into the “watched” column.

 

The FBI was about halfway through its impressive nine-year run, bolstered by the low-key but effective professionalism conveyed by Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as earnest Inspector Lewis Erskine. It’s a show I watched back then but have yet to add to my DVD collection. 

 

I’ve seen most of the 15 episodes of The Young Rebels – that’s all they made before it was canceled. Set during America’s war for independence, it starred Richard Ely as the leader of the Yankee Doodle Society, a group of young people who carried out covert missions to disrupt British forces.

 

 

The show is an interesting failure; the colonial setting is unique but some of the stories about outlaws fighting the system were as lightweight as those on The Dukes of Hazzard, with the British as dimwitted as Sheriff Rosco. Most of the actors cast as Redcoats didn’t even bother trying an English accent. 

 

 

Ely was clearly chosen not for how well he could play a charismatic patriot, but for how good he’d look on a Tiger Beat cover. But there were better performances among his team, including Alex Henteloff, Hilarie Thompson, and future Oscar winner Louis Gossett Jr.

 

At the end of each show, a narrator would read text on the screen covering historical events related to that episode’s story, so give the series points for adding to viewers’ American history education.

 

 

CBS
Lassie

Hogan’s Heroes

The Ed Sullivan Show

The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour

The Tim Conway Comedy Hour

 

This was season 17 for Lassie, who by now was a drifter who wandered the West rescuing strangers while keeping her puppies safe from harm. I preferred the earlier episodes with the Martin family, but that counts as another series checked off my list.

 

Hogan’s Heroes sits proudly on my DVD shelf. Still as smart and funny as when it was new, but I wish they had ended the series with an episode in which World War II is won and Hogan’s saboteurs return home as heroes. Since they didn’t, I wrote my own. 

 

 

Ed Sullivan was on TV even longer than Lassie, and I do have memories of watching his show on Sunday nights. My main objective with this quest is to see all of the decade’s scripted shows, but variety series were still popular so we’ll be running into quite a few of them as we carry on.

 

I’ve seen The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour thanks to the Shout! Factory website. As with most of these types of shows it mixes lame comedy sketches with outstanding (and I mean really outstanding) musical numbers. One episode features Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Jerry Reed, and Liberace. You can watch it here. As a Monkees fan I especially enjoyed Ronstadt’s duet with Diamond on “I’m A Believer.”

 

Shout! Factory has also made The Tim Conway Comedy Hour available on its website, but only the guest stars make this short-lived series occasionally interesting. Check it out: 

 

NBC

Wild Kingdom

The Wonderful World of Disney

The Bill Cosby Show

Bonanza

The Bold Ones

 

Four out of five are slam-dunks. Everyone my age grew up with Wild Kingdom and Disney on Sunday nights, Bonanza ran forever so of course I know it well; and The Bold Ones was a remarkable anthology series featuring medical dramas, legal dramas, police stories, and Hal Holbrook in The Senator. I own them all – and paid tribute to one of its best episodes in my first “Unshakeables” piece.

 

That just leaves The Bill Cosby Show, the actor's least-heralded series, in which he played a gym teacher at a Los Angeles high school. Here, even before Fat Albert, Cosby was already trying to communicate lessons in good citizenship to young people, through stories that played without a laugh track (a rarity for a vintage sitcom). The series was gentle and pleasant and lasted two seasons and about 50 episodes. If you’re not in the “I’ll never watch Cosby again” camp, it’s worth checking out. 

 

 

How about that – a perfect viewing record for the first night.  One down, 69 to go.