Sitcoms: Eighties Edition

[ClassyCo]

Fourth in the series. Let's look at some of those comedies we love from the 1980s.

This decade gave us THE GOLDEN GIRLS, which is perhaps my favorite television comedy of all time. There were also successes like DESIGNING WOMEN and CHEERS. The NBC hit THE COSBY SHOW finally knocked the prime time soaps off their high horse, and ROSEANNE introduced the TV audience to a new and realistic portrayal of the working class American family.

What's your pick of the tops when it comes to sitcoms from the 1980s?

 

[Karin Schill]

Well the only one I watched at the time was The Cosby Show. I enjoyed it because of Rudy who was close to my age so I could relate to her. My parents used to read me the subtitles when I first watched this one so I wasn't that old. Probably about 7 and 8. I had learnt to read back then but it went so slow that I couldn't read the subtitles fast enough before they changed them.

Oh and I used to watch Alf too back then. I enjoyed the alien figure and what he brought to that family. I think in some ways he was like a family pet but that talked.

However the 80s sitcoms I love the most are Full House (although that is more 90s it started in the 80s) and Growing pains. I watched Growing Pains in the 1990s reruns though and I loved it. The same thing with Saved By The Bell and Family Ties.

I prefer Growing Pains to Family Ties though. Probably because I enjoyed the parents more, I could relate better to Carol than Mallory and I thought Ben was really cute.

On Full House I related to DJ and Stephanie the most and I loved Becky & Jesse. I thought their wedding episode was so excited since I wanted them to get married so badly and after she left him at the altar the first time he tried to marry her I really wanted things to go right on their second attempt to get married.

 

[ClassyCo]

Well the only one I watched at the time was The Cosby Show. I enjoyed it because of Rudy who was close to my age so I could relate to her. My parents used to read me the subtitles when I first watched this one so I wasn't that old. Probably about 7 and 8. I had learnt to read back then but it went so slow that I couldn't read the subtitles fast enough before they changed them.

Oh and I used to watch Alf too back then. I enjoyed the alien figure and what he brought to that family. I think in some ways he was like a family pet but that talked.

However the 80s sitcoms I love the most are Full House (although that is more 90s it started in the 80s) and Growing pains. I watched Growing Pains in the 1990s reruns though and I loved it. The same thing with Saved By The Bell and Family Ties.

I prefer Growing Pains to Family Ties though. Probably because I enjoyed the parents more, I could relate better to Carol than Mallory and I thought Ben was really cute.

On Full House I related to DJ and Stephanie the most and I loved Becky & Jesse. I thought their wedding episode was so excited since I wanted them to get married so badly and after she left him at the altar the first time he tried to marry her I really wanted things to go right on their second attempt to get married.

THE COSBY SHOW was a big hit in its day, and has been successful in reruns, but it's never been my cup of tea. I have casually watched the reruns, but it's not a must-see by any means on my TV radar.

ALF is good, I have a couple of seasons of it. FULL HOUSE always provides entertainment, although it's not really a must-see, either. SAVED BY THE BEL is one of my favorites from my childhood reruns-before-school days, and I have just recently purchased the first season of FAMILY TIES. I have yet to watch GROWING PAINS, and I don't particularly plan to really.

 

[Barbara Fan]

I have never really been a fan of US Sitcoms and never found the Golden Girls remotely funny and I never watched The Cosby show or Roseanne as I found her obnoxious in real life. And all that forced canned laughter - ugh

the one I did watch and really enjoy was Cheers and it was on my list of things to tape when i was out on a Friday night
having seen it repeated a good few years ago, Im not sure if it held the test of time

US humour never really did it for me - sorry!!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Political correctness was kicking in big time at the networks by the early-'80s and "role models" was a big concept and every character had to be seen as a positive representation of their particular demographic. So it killed the genre for a while.

Everything was so stiff and self-conscious and desperate to be important in the '80s, too.

As a result, shows like FAMILY TIES and CHEERS, which both got started in '82, seemed incredibly fresh compared to what was on the air at the time (although I can't watch them in reruns at all). COSBY was the show credited with reviving the genre, but I couldn't sit through it after the first season -- and I didn't like his smug and yucky wife. I never found GOLDEN GIRLS funny (although I liked the cast elsewhere, not including Estelle Getty) plus I knew exactly what the show would feel like months before it premiered -- it being the '80s and all, as well as Susan Harris being the producer. Ugh.

FULL HOUSE and SAVED BY THE BELL just seemed dreadful.

ROSEANNE started out very clunky, very self-conscious like most '80s sitcoms. But despite the bad press she started getting from the very beginning, the more power over the show she had, the better it got.

And while MARRIED... WITH CHILDREN didn't quite work in its first season or two, from around 1988 to 1994, its deliberate "bad family sitcom" approach improved and I rarely missed an episode.

 

[Karin Schill]

Well to be fair I think Saved By the Bell and Full House were aimed more at a younger audience so I am not surprised those shows appealed to me when I was like 12-15 years old.

True about the political correctness. The 1980s seems to have been a time when TV was becoming more aware of the impact it had on society. Probably due to the reception studies that had come out in the late 1970s and early 1980s where scholars were researching how TV violence and sex affected younger viewers perception and behaviour.

Interesting how you don't get US humour @Barbara Fan so does that mean that Dallas wasn't funny to you either then?
Because to me the dialogue on Dallas was hilarious at times.

Anyway I do seem to have a harder time to get British humour than American humour as shows like Mr Bean has just never appealed to me.

Also @ClassyCo I can recommend you to give Growing Pains a try since I do think it was one of the best if not the best sit com to come out of the decade!

 

[Daniel Avery]

Well to be fair I think Saved By the Bell and Full House were aimed more at a younger audience so I am not surprised those shows appealed to me when I was like 12-15 years old.

Saved by the Bell was produced to be aired on Saturday mornings in the period when networks were turning away from having cartoons air at that time. Full House, meanwhile, was produced to air in the so-called "Family Hour" of primetime (8pm), when the networks aired the most innocuous and least-objectionable programming they could muster. The family hour slowly disappeared in the 1990s as more racy content was being aired on cable and the (then-) fledgling Fox Network.

And yes, I also found both to be dreadful and avoided them like the plague.

Among my favorites were Married with Children (which actually straddled the 1980s and 1990s); Murphy Brown (another "straddler"); Designing Women; Night Court; The Golden Girls; Benson; Mama's Family; and mostly-forgotten shows like Mr. Belvedere and Gimme a Break! (I would especially love to see this one again).

I was rather neutral on Family Ties but there is one episode I would love to see again, where Constance McCashin was a guest star in an episode where she played the grieving mother of a recently-deceased friend of Mallory's.