Word: sitcoms
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...directors unmistakably have a theory underlying their spontaneity. "People aren't used to comic theater enough to know what to laugh at," Aron says, explaining why they chose to parody a television show. "A sitcom format can draw on pieces of television culture that people are used to, so they know when to expect the climax and laugh lines...
Aron and Gailiunas decided to create a musical sitcom after staging the well-received musical Daisy, a full-length political satire, last year. "Daisy didn't take us that long to write, and it was frustrating that it took so long to produce," says Aron. The two wanted to emphasize creativity without worrying about perfection...
...Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Last weekend the network launched another classic- TV binge, with homages to M*A*S*H and The Bob Newhart Show, along with a second compilation of Sullivan clips. In June, to much fanfare, the network introduced a new sitcom from Norman Lear. The show, Sunday Dinner, was soundly beaten in the ratings by the program that followed it -- 20-year-old reruns of Lear's All in the Family...
...fresh oldies. Comedy Central, the all-comedy cable network, has resurrected C.P.O. Sharkey, a dog from the mid-'70s starring Don Rickles. Nostalgia Television, a six-year-old network aimed at the "mature" audience, has unearthed such forgotten chestnuts as Date with the Angels, a short-lived '50s sitcom starring Betty White, and The Dennis O'Keefe Show, a one-season wonder from...
...every recycled show holds up so well. Some fondly remembered oldies, like The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, seem dated, and neither time nor camp tastes have improved Mister Ed. But even middling sitcoms like The Patty Duke Show are more effortlessly engaging than most of the nervous joke machines that pass for comedies today. Good ones like The Dick Van Dyke Show remind us that the trivial plot lines of old domestic comedies were often a mask for shrewd satire of suburban neuroses. The best ones, like I Love Lucy, which invented the vocabulary for the modern sitcom, have...