When I first scanned the network schedules for Wednesday nights in 1973, what stood out were two unlikely attempts to adapt popular movies into television series. Neither was successful, but that’s not surprising with this particular transition. For every M*A*S*H there are five Baby Booms.
Let’s dive into the schedules and, as always, see if my quest to watch at least one episode from every 1970s prime time series will be dealt another setback.
Wednesday, 1973
CBS
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
Cannon
Kojak
CBS delivers another winning lineup of top ten shows. Sonny & Cher moved from their previous Friday night slot, replacing The Carol Burnett Show, which at last moves to Saturdays where, if you’re old enough, you most fondly recall watching it every week.
Cannon, now in its third season, ranked #9 for the year, just behind Sonny & Cher and newcomer Kojak, which tied at #7 in the ratings.
Telly Savales won the Emmy in this, the show’s inaugural season, which must have been hugely gratifying after a decade of guest-starring as the heavy on other people’s shows. Like Dragnet, Kojak won praise from real law enforcement officers for its no-nonsense depiction of crime and punishment in south Manhattan, and Telly became the forerunner to Jean-Luc Picard as television’s first bald sex symbol.
ABC
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Wednesday Movie of the Week
Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law
Much as I love the 1970s, there was one aspect of that decade that, looking back now, seems even more embarrassing than some of the fashions. It began when the sexual revolution birthed by the counterculture in the 1960s finally reached the suburbs, ushering in all manner of silliness, from new age spirituality retreats to key parties to the EST movement.
These activities were explored in Paul Mazursky’s 1969 film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, best remembered now by the suggestive photo of its two couples in bed together.
It wasn’t the kind of movie that seemed adaptable to prime time, but perhaps ABC hoped it would catch the zeitgeist, even if the frankness of the film would have to be toned down for television. In the roles played by Robert Culp, Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon, the series cast Robert Urich and Anne Archer as Bob and Carol, the more freewheeling couple, and David Spielberg and Anita Gillette as Ted and Alice, their older best friends open to exploring new personal and sexual frontiers. The entire first episode has the quartet deciding whether to go naked swimming together.
These are likable actors playing likable characters, but that can’t fully offset how the show often seems more dated than the sitcoms from 20 years earlier. There are episodes on YouTube if you’re curious.
Owen Marshall moves from Thursday to Tuesday for tis final season. Like Judd For the Defense, it’s a fine courtroom drama that deserves to be better remembered.
NBC
Adam-12
NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie (Madigan, Tenafly, Faraday & Company, The Snoop Sisters)
Love Story
Both Adam-12 and the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie return in their same time slots, but from the latter only Madigan earned a second season. New to the lineup were Tenafly, starring James McEachin as a Los Angeles cop turned private investigator. It was created by Richard Levinson and William Link, whose prestigious track record includes Columbo and Murder She Wrote.
Faraday & Company, like Tenafly, goes on my list of shows I’ve never seen. But from the descriptions and clips of both online, I think I’d have enjoyed Tenafly more.
Dan Dailey stars in Faraday, and he’s such an amiable fellow that it’s hard for me to see him as an embittered man who serves decades in a South American prison for a crime he did not commit, who then reunites with his adult son after his release. Of course I could be wrong and hope to find out for certain if an episode ever becomes available.
I have seen The Snoop Sisters, with Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick as mystery writer sisters (yes, their actual last name is Snoop) who solve crimes faster than their police detective nephew (Burt Convy). In this case two Miss Marples are not better than one, and all of the lineup changes did not work. While the network’s Sunday Mystery Movie was a hit at #14, the Wednesday version still couldn’t crack the top 30.
Love Story was one of the most popular films of 1970, and according to Wikipedia was for a time the sixth highest-grossing film in history. But if you’ve seen it, or even heard about it, you understand the chief obstacle in continuing the story it began. The TV version didn’t even try – it kept the title and the theme song, while opting for an anthology approach of different stories about couples in love. Sort of like The Love Boat without the ship. It was canceled after just 12 episodes.
Shows Missed:
The Don Knotts Show (1970)
San Francisco International Airport (1970)
Nancy (1970)
The Headmaster (1970)
The Man and the City (1971)
The Chicago Teddy Bears (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)
Love Story (1973)
Oopsie ...
ReplyDeleteBanacek was the Wednesday Mystery Movie that made it to a second season.
Richard Widmark quit Madigan after one set of six.
(Check your own sidebar.)
Wow--I'm surprised how little I knew what was on ABC & NBC, but can remember CBS' lineup on Wednesday night like it was 10 years ago. This was also interesting as I only remember Carol Burnett at 10pm Sat nights, but we never missed it. Glory Days :^)
ReplyDelete