148 Bonnie Meadow Road

Humor, it is often said, serves us best when it is grounded in reality.  The Dick Van Dyke Show espoused this theorem. Carl Reiner, formerly a writer and performer on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, starring television comedy pioneer Sid Caesar, created a...

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...

Arrividerci, Tony Soprano

Earlier this week, the world lost an icon of television.  And New Jersey lost one of its own. James Gandolfini died from a heart attack during a trip to Italy.  His portrayal of Tony Soprano, indelible in our memories, changed television. After The Sopranos debuted in...

Origins: “The Dick Van Dyke Show”

Carl Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show as a parallel to his own life as a television comedy writer.  Indeed, Reiner initially played the main character, Robert Petrie, in a failed television pilot. CBS rejected the pilot, Head of the Family, but aired it as part...