Maxwell Smart, Spy Extraordinaire

Get Smart parodied the popular spy genre in the 1960s, countering serious offerings, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, Get Smart gave American television audiences a humorous view of espionage during the Cold War.  Don Adams...

“thirtysomething”

Yuppies existed on prime time television before we had a word to describe them.  Yuppie, of course, is a slang word for young, upwardly mobile professional. Dr. Bob Hartley was a Chicago yuppie on The Bob Newhart Show. Rob Petrie was a television comedy writer yuppie...

1960s Sitcom Music

If music be the food of 1960s television sitcoms, play on. In the 1960s, the Beatles captained a British invasion across the Atlantic Ocean.  John, Paul, George, and Ringo inspired sitcom versions of themselves after their first American television appearance on The...

Origins: “All in the Family”

All in the Family dominated prime time programming in the first half of the 1970s.  It was a jewel for the Tiffany Network, a nickname for CBS because of the network’s high quality news and entertainment programming. Created by Norman Lear, All in the Family...