I’m British and over here, old sitcoms like Dad’s Army, Only Fools and Horses, Fawlty Towers, Porridge and Steptoe and Son are still prominent in the public consciousness. They continue to be repeated on national television (I’m in my 20s and I don’t know anybody my age who hasn’t seen Only Fools), revived in stage productions, chronicled in documentaries and docudramas and even revived in cartoon form. Moments from these shows are still universal reference points.
I’m wondering if the USA, with its more splintered media, has the same thing. Are half-century old sitcoms still a common ground for Americans? Everyone loves Frasier, sure, but is your average 30 year old familiar with Taxi, All in the Family or Gilligan’s Island?
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Some do some don’t. I’ve also tried to watch a few older British sitcoms and some seem good and some don’t hold up, but I might have a cultural bias of not understanding as much.
Personally my favorite oldie is Cheers. Holds up so good. There’s definitely many that pockets of people enjoy. The Jeffersons. The Brady Bunch. Older ones like I Dream of Genie and Lucile Ball’s show. Oh, let me change my favorite to The Three Stooges, that’s funnier than anything on Tv today. I’m not a big fan of Golden Girls but people are definitely obsessed and watch it frequently.
Some did, some didn’t.
I was born in 1994, and grew up watching Good Times, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, All in the Family, etc. I’m not sure how well known they are with kids today, but I still hear references like “I’m comin’ Elizabeth” once in a while.
I feel like 70s/80s sitcoms still get referenced a lot in pop culture, but I don’t know if people in their 20s are actually sitting down to binge watch them.
We know the characters of Gilligan’s Island and the general premise, but I can’t tell you anything about any specific episode.
There’s a few touchstones, but most have largely faded from the social consciousness. The few that remain, like I Love Lucy and MASH, are largely known by younger generations due to shorts on Facebook and Youtube.
Friends in the 90s is still popular in many circles.
I’m in my 50s, an old fart now, and my wife and I just rewatched Barney Miller. It was an incredible show. We are going through an 80s detective show now, Simon and Simon.
There was just a lot more hope for the future back then. The modern shows are of course technically much more proficient, but as media has exploded the writing is often hit or miss, and quite often it’s dystopic. While that reflects the issues we are facing currently in society, some of us older folks have nostalgia for when we believed the future would be better, and that’s a compelling reason to occassionally escape to that older media.
You’re spot on mentioning Frasier because I do think the 90’s were a heyday for still-beloved sitcoms here – also Seinfeld and Friends. Do people still rewatch Cheers? That I don’t know. Once upon a time people still definitely knew about shows like the Andy Griffith Show, but I’m not sure your average 30-year old today does.
Btw Frasier is such an amazing show – I got on a rewatch/clip routine for a bit last year, and from the farce to the slapstick it’s just perfect. It feels like a great sitcom like that is a lost art.
In general probably not, but Three’s Company is one of the greatest shows of all time.
We watched Seinfeld a lot as a family, even after it ended. But I was more into teen sitcoms like Lizzy McGuire and Sister Sister.
As an adult, I don’t watch sitcoms at all. I think most people my age prefer mockumentary style comedy like What We Do in the Shadows, The Office, Abbot Elementary, ect.
I’m 33 for context.
Yes, there a TV channels that do nothing but play these old shows
I can’t speak for Gen Z, but Millennials grew up with things like Nick at Nite, which is a channel that airs old TV shows. Some shows are immortalized in memes, like the “Sure Jan” meme and I Love Lucy. Betty White and the Golden Girls had a resurgence in the 2010s, I believe.
Surprisingly Golden Girls has lasted, they just named 4 hatchling Galapagos Torturous at the Philadelphia Zoo Blanche, Rose, Sophia and Dorthy.
Mainstream TV channels don’t really show older shows like that nearly as much as they used to. Very few shows from before the 90s get shown on the big channels anymore. They’re kind of relegated to much more obscure places like digital sub-channels these days.
That, plus the diversity of choice you get with streaming I think has caused a big drop in familiarity with older shows among the younger generations.
Here in New York there are reruns of The Honeymooners on channel 11 around Christmas and New Years. It’s a classic sitcom set in Brooklyn and also a way to give the staff some time off during the holidays.
At least a show like Friends or The Office looked decent enough in their heyday that they don’t look extremely dated now, but shows like Dick Van Dyke or Mary Tyler Moore look very dated now.
When I was a kid, Nickelodeon aired Nick At Nite on the primary Nick channel so I did grow up watching those old shows. But by the time I was a teenager, Nick At Nite was its own channel, and now like…no one watches TV anymore anyway. They aren’t going to be exposed to this stuff unless they go searching for it.
The stereotype is that kids have no interest in things older than themselves, dismissing it as old people stuff. Otherwise, I know Columbo became popular with younger people in recent years, and I think The Twilight Zone is still a classic. Granted, those aren’t sitcoms.
Are they still on television? Some yes. However, most young Americans only use streaming services. So kids today are likely not being exposed to these classics in the first place. As a millennial, I often watched reruns on TV Land and TBS of MASH, Cheers, Frasier, Seinfeld, Home Improvement, Gilligans Island… and probably a dozen more I can’t think of at the moment. The Nick at Nite programming block on otherwise kids’ channel Nickelodeon also showed sitcoms like this. Brady Bunch was a favorite of mine there!
Pre-streaming syndication kept many alive, but I wonder how the decline of television as you got it versus streaming what you want when you want will affect future generations. I watched MASH in my 20s even though they had ended, it was just something that was on and then I got invested.
Culturally, MASH, I Love Lucy, Golden Girls, Cheers, and Friends all remain relatively pop culture relevant.
And though it’s sketch comedy and not sitcom, your guy’s Monty Python is still incredibly popular over here and just as relevant to pop culture as any of our comedies despite being 50yrs old. I think I see at least one reference every time I come on Reddit.
They do among the 30+ crowd since they grew up with these shows. As someone slightly younger I can imagine that this will start to fade.
Zoomers definitely have a little nostalgia for kid/teenager sitcoms like Drake and Josh.
Some shows became comedies, although they didn’t start out as them. For instance I love Dragnet, an overly melodramatic and moralistic 1950s to 1970s cop show. It is hilarious.
British comedy, particularly of that era, is a genre unto itself so this absolutely makes sense to me. I would consider American sitcoms to be more cookie cutter in their formula than splintered which over the course of a century just sort of feels like the same shit but lower production quality and as a result many people my age (29) and younger refuse to watch older media, which as a fan of most of the cult catalog is disappointing.
Are the young ones/ league of gentlemen fandoms still going strong over there?
Not long ago, a young soldier came to Reddit wondering about the intricate morality of war. I directed them to MASH.
I’m 46, and even though it peaked before my time, All in the Family still holds up.
I’d also say that Cheers holds up as well. If we can extend the time to the 90s, I’d say Frasier holds up as well.
amos and andy is smart and hiliarious
I think Married With Children would still hold up well, even with some jokes that would never fly today
Gen Z here, and I know a lot of people that like MASH.
Personally, it was to my utmost displeasure when my roommates deleted Paramount Plus on our fire stick to make room for something else due to my loss of Star Trek binges.
Some do some don’t. It depends on the show…mork & Mindy didn’t last because the jokes were very topical. Tried to rewatch but couldn’t. Hogans heroes and get smart – hilarious and timeless
There are US basic cable channels that focus on TV programs from the 1960s-1980s, sitcoms included. These are targeted mainly towards older folks who watched the programs when they were on network TV.
The number of vintage sitcoms that are also popular with younger folks is much smaller, as far as I can tell. “The Golden Girls”, “Frasier”, and “Cheers” are examples.
They sure do!
Taxi was a show of its times, and is not that well known these days. But All in the Family and Gilligan’s Island are well known even by kids these days; they have a universal appeal.
I’m pretty sure you can find an episode of M*A*S*H playing somewhere in literally any time slot.
They do endure, yes. I’m a millennial with boomer parents. We had one TV. So, I have a lot of experience with watching much older shows because they liked to tune into them when it was their turn with the remote. We’d watch older talk show hosts, too, especially Johnny Carson.
Then of course some have mentioned that millennials also had Nick at Nite, which showed a lot of these shows.
So, these days yes, I still watch them. Maybe less often than Frasier or Golden Girls, true.
My dad and I always enjoyed watching the old British shows too! I credit him with introducing me to Monty Python. We also liked Are You Being Served. Lol
I would say yes. By the way, I love all the British shows you listed
During the pandemic lockdown my millennial stepdaughters both “discovered” Golden Girls, WKRP and the Carol Burnett show. There were a lot of tv shows that disappeared in oblivion, but the best ones persist.
There are some that have stellar comedic talent that are timeless. My faves are Frasier and WKRP in Cincinnati.
Looks like most of the comments aren’t really answering your question. Old shows are not common ground, or prominent in the public mind. New shows aren’t either. Sports aren’t. Nothing is. We are completely splintered. Thanks to streaming, you can just watch Fraiser over and over if you want, and be ‘siloed’ 30 years behind the present. Americans in general are siloed. Our language has become much less idiomatic, and we don’t make references to pop culture. We don’t have much that unites us, and that includes entertainment.
Fawlty Towers is a classic on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in the U.S., some people still watch classics like “Taxi,” “All in the Family,” and “M*A*S*H*,” but I think more people watch “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” and “The Office.” (I mean the one with Michael Scott and Dwight Shrute.) Older sitcoms are more of a generational thing; Gen X might have fond memories of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” but those shows don’t mean anything to younger people.
The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres are two shows that always make me laugh. They’re both kind of the same “fish out of water” idea, but in different directions, and the absurdity of it all is what makes it funny.
For military comedies, I liked Hogan’s Heroes better than MASH.
I Love Lucy is a timeless classic.
I also recently discovered F Troop. I’ve only seen one episode of it, but it was also pretty funny. I plan to watch more.
I was born in 1986, for the record.
Mid 30s here. We have segmented things in such a way that these items are available but on specific platforms.
Growing up I had an antenna with poor reception. Ironically I spent more time watching old British sitcoms on Public Television more than anything. Last of the summer wine, keeping up appearances, Mr bean, Are you being served and so on. I did not have access to cable so no classic American sitcoms.
However things like The Andy Griffith Show, I Dream of Genie, Bewitched, Original Batman and such were definitely still in the public consciousness in the 90’s. Less so today. But my wife has finished Bewitched on streaming services just recently and she loves Little House on the Prairie. You just have to locate who has it these days.
MASH holds up, despite all the hilarious (/s) workplace sexual harassment (which was a staple of sitcoms until not really that long ago).
Most shows don’t hold up as well.
Faulty Towers is a staple in our household
Just yesterday my wife made a comment about “were they O’Reilly men?” to me
IMO no. American sitcoms are nowhere near as good as British sitcoms. The American sitcom that holds up the best is I Love Lucy.
The Honeymooner’s is a show from the fifties that was before my time, however I think that it has held up well.
The basic theme of a less than successful husband who’s always looking for a get rich quick scheme and a sassy wife that puts him in his place has been copied too many times to be count.
>Taxi, All in the Family or Gilligan’s Island?
Bud, you’re a British person in their 20s who has heard of these. I think that should answer your question.
As someone who was raised by parents at either end of the Boomer spectrum (in terms of age) I’ve been exposed to lots of those. I’d say in my experience that most (but not all) of those shows fall into a category where people who like them at this point are stuck in the past. There’s some that hold up, but most are unrelatable these days.
Reruns of older sitcoms were really common daytime filler for a lot of TV stations for a long time. If you were a child at that time you wound up watching a lot of them almost by default. I feel like that starting petering out in the 90s as talk shows started to be the go-to cheap daytime programming. Now kids mostly just stream so they aren’t going to come across anything they aren’t already looking for. And most kids aren’t going out of their way to watch Bewitched.
My Gen Z kid used to put herself to sleep at night to I Love Lucy before finally moving on to Friends. They don’t know all the touchstones, but they know some.
You’re right, even in the old days we had more than BBC4 or whatever it’s called so the TV is less universal.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show has aged incredibly well in spite of how “fresh” and groundbreaking it was when it first aired.
It’s a shame that it never reached modern demographics the way other older shows have, but then again, maybe that’s a good thing.
In general, no, old sitcoms are not common anymore in the US. Most of those shows are not politically correct in 2025, so I don’t think any network would dare show them, except for maybe pay services.
I’ve been watching some old Cheers and Taxi recently. In the past week I saw Danny Devito met Rhea Perlman’s parents, I saw Latka meet Simka, and I saw the whole crew go on strike. Cheers is in the Rebecca years so I’ll have to wait a few months for it to run to the end and restart.
We have entire channels dedicated to old sitcoms. Old cartoons, too. Of course, the channels that I get all have old people commercials on them. I guess kids just aren’t using antennas these days. Right now, Good Times is on one channel and My Three Sons is on another. I’m watching Casper.
No. The world has long since changed in my opinion, as someone who didn’t live through the era and holds no nostalgia.
I don’t know about people in their twenties now, I am in my early forties, but I grew up loving a lot of “before my time” sitcoms, sometimes as someone else mentioned through Nick at Night (it had children’s programs in the day and old sitcoms at night) and others through regular reruns. I became familiar with 50s through 70s sitcoms like Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke, I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeanie, Happy Days, Mary Tyler Moore, etc.,etc.
I think media in the US is roughly as splintered as the UK at this point so the cultural attitude/knowledge toward old TV shows is about the same, but Sitcoms in the US tend to have more episodes per season, so the writers have to work harder to come up with new situations to put them in. Fawlty Towers had 18 episodes, I Love Lucy had 150.
The result is that in the US most people have watched reruns of I Love Lucy but not the whole show end to end, whereas a lot of iconic British shows like Blackadder people can pick it up on a streaming service and finish it in a day or so.
Early US sitcoms tended to be more hijinks based while UK sitcoms were more dry situational. Between that and the # of episodes, US sitcom tropes tend to be recycled a lot more. That doesn’t mean they’re bad or uncreative but I think a US newcomer is more likely to watch I Love Lucy and think “They did this on [banal modern sitcom]” vs a British newcomer doing the same with an old British show.
The ones that have survived tend to be the ones that still work with modern culture and aren’t cringingly offensive, even if a large amount can still be hand-waved as “of it’s time.” Golden Girls, Cheers, MASH.
Some of our 70s and 80s sitcoms are just as good today as they were originally.
WKRP in Cincinnati, Barny Miller, Taxi, Night Court, and MASH are all timeless for me. They’re period pieces now, whereas MASH is the only one that was a period piece as it was made, but the situations are understandable, the jokes still land, and the situations can often be seen even in contemporary society.
I feel like there’s a cutoff for each generation. I never really watched anything from the 50’s or 60’s but I was aware of many shows from that era. I think people mostly watched stuff from an era about 10 years before they were born, but that could be changing. GenAlpha will probably watch way less TV than any other generation due to social media apps/technology. There’s also access to media like never before, and TV doesn’t need to be scheduled which will change viewing habits. I dunno if this will expand what people watch or limit it even more though.
Overall though I don’t think older shows hold up in the US. The only pre-80’s show that I still think holds up today is The Twilight Zone. There’s a lot of shows from the 90’s that may also hold up long term (eg The Simpsons), but it’s still pretty hard to predict that. Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and The Jetsons seemed like they could have stayed relevant but didn’t really catch on w/ genZ.
I’d say they have endured, though I would still categorize them as niche in modern times. Movies endured better than television for sure. I, personally can’t get into old films and television because I think they just suck. It’s too old. The acting sucks, the effects suck, the audio quality sucks, video quality sucks. Even when it’s remastered. I just can’t do it. 90s is the best I can do.
When they end up on streaming services I’ll see guys at work watching older shows on their lunch break. Not necessarily sitcoms, but it wasn’t uncommon to see a dude watching MASH or Sanford and Sons or Happy Days.
I think certain ones yes. The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy will never leave the American pop culture zeitgeist. For the 60’s and 70’s, Happy Days, the Brady Bunch, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and All in the Family. 80’s? Definitely M*A*S*H, Cheers, the Cosby Show (we have big feelings about this one), the TGIF trifecta (Full House, Family Matters, and Perfect Strangers)
I dare say most old sitcoms have endured if they were ever popular enough to make it to syndication/reruns. That doesn’t mean they are any good to the younger audience, but they have endured.
I’m Gen X and my daughter is Alpha, and the only 80s/earlier sitcom she’s really familiar with is Golden Girls, but even that has some humor that kind of flies over her head. But I still get a laugh out of it, even if its cultural references are more than a bit dated at this point.
Not much else from that era or earlier is really all that popular, even for me and my husband (also Gen X).
Other people have mentioned the hold Nick at Nite had on Millenials – Jetsons, Flintstones, and Scooby Doo aired during the day when I was growing up. I distinctly remember talking with my uncle at length about WKRP in Cincinnati because it was the show I liked the most during my insomnia phases in high school. In my late 20s, I actively sought out watching the Mary Tyler Moore show and Dick Van Dyke. Golden Girls has reached camp status and is still incredibly popular; I put it on when I need noise in the background while working.
Now that cable is less prominent than it used to be I have no idea if Gen Z or Gen Alpha feels as connected to pop culture that they didn’t actually live through. It’s weird to think there’s an entire generation not bonding with their dad over how weird H.R. PufnStuf was, but I assume this is how my kids will feel watching Pokemon with me or whatever.
I think as media splinters more and people aren’t consuming the same content, the ones that endure are the ones that have crossed over into meme territory or are referenced in so many other TV shows/movies that they’re unavoidable. Gilligan’s Island is probably most recognizable of the ones you listed, if only because it has been parodied so much. Even if someone can’t name a single character, they’d recognize the costumes and maybe the theme song. Or, you describe a bit from a sitcom and someone goes “Oh, yeah, that explains that cutaway joke on Family Guy that I didn’t realize was a reference to something else.”
I don’t think Taxi ever had a huge impact the way All in the Family did. All in the Family was controversial and groundbreaking, like Maude or MASH, so they stick around at least in public discourse. Shows like Three’s Company or Laverne & Shirley were popular in their time, but weren’t exactly setting public discourse ablaze.
The further back in time you go, the less likely they are to be recognizable. I doubt you’d find many 30somethings that are familiar with Father Knows Best or The Danny Thomas Show or The Partridge Family. Meanwhile, The Brady Bunch has been memed and has a bunch of catchphrases and parodies, so that is much much more of a cultural touchstone. I think shows like Cheers or MASH have a good chance of going through cycles of rediscovery, where a new generation “discovers” them and posts think-pieces that are akin to “can you believe this well-regarded show still holds up X years later?” But unless a new meme surfaces, I don’t think most thirtysomethings know a thing about Cheers.
TL;DR: If it ain’t memed, it’ll probably drop out of public consciousness
I don’t think I Love Lucy will ever be forgotten.
Fawlty Towers is still enjoyed here, but mostly by more bookish, college-educated types.
I’m Gen X with Gen X kids. My Gen X kids liked I love Lucy and the Brady bunch but haven’t really seen the others.
MASH still holds up
I was born in the 1970s, and old sitcoms reruns from the 1960s were a staple of regional UHF channels daytime broadcasts well into the 1990s- Leave it to Beaver, McHale’s Navy, Gilligan’s Island, The Andy Griffith Show, The Munsters, Gomer Pyle USMC, I Dream of Jeannie, The Dick van Dyke Show, Bewitched, Dennis the Menace, The Beverly Hillbillies, etc. The only two shows from the 50s that I regularly saw rebroadcast were I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners sketches.
Then in the 1990s, Nick at Nite (the same channel as the children’s cable network Nickelodeon) basically started showing almost every old sitcom that lasted for more than a few seasons. This eventually evolved into the TVLand network.
So, at least into the early 2000s, I would say we remained very familiar with older sitcoms, at least the ones that lived on in syndication. I’m pretty sure Millenials know most of these shows too, but I wouldn’t know for generations younger than that.
All in the Family does kind of hold up.
I’m in my mid 30s and my Dad showed me Taxi a while back and I didn’t care much for it. Cheers was a light watch but just don’t see the mass appeal at the time. Even Friends which I remember seeing is massively overrated. Humor is just a little too basic overall.
MASH is one of those shows that keeps getting rediscovered by newer generations. Most of the stories are funny, but there a lot of good life lessons in there that still hold up even now.
I always loved watching MASH and Hogan’s Heroes, even though they were pretty antiquated by the time I was born
Beverly hillbillies is still the best ever, but that may be because I’m a hillbilly as well.
Well first… I wouldn’t say everyone loves Frasier, especially the younger people. I feel like they are certain shows that carried over and are still watched…. I love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, All in the Family, Golden Girls, The Brady Bunch, Sanford and Son, The Jefferson’s.
GenX here. I grew up on old sitcoms (old at the time) and I would still watch them if they were available on Hulu or other platforms. The UHF stations in my area used to show classics like The Munsters, McHale’s Navy, Hogan’s Heroes, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle, and others. I used to watch (Nickelodeon’s?) TV Land evening block which had shows like I Dream of Jeannie, Green Acres, and others as well.
They’re all classics for a reason. They still hold up.
Where I’m from EVERYONE, regardless of age, has seen the Andy Griffith show and still loves it.
I think this has changed a lot in the past 20 years. Americans until the 2000s grew up immersed in TV from earlier eras and like you said culture was less splintered. You could assume that people you were talking to had some familiarity with I love Lucy, the honeymooners, the Brady bunch or MASH.
Currently though I think the earliest sitcom you could refer to with any confidence would be Seinfeld (we have ads for a cell phone company with a slogan that plays off an episode for example). Even with that show, most people younger than 30 haven’t seen it.
There are entire cable channels dedicated to old cartoons, sitcoms, and westerns.
MWC is still hilarious
70s and 80s is the rise of quality television so absolutely.
I think usually in the US, old sitcoms are only re-aired on stations that pretty much only show old sitcoms.
I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Golden Girls, MASH, are all ones I go back to a lot. I think they stand the test of time – and it’s surprising how many people younger than me love MASH, actually. I am barely old enough to remember its first run.
Sorta kinda not exactly.
Some sitcoms have faded, if only to come back later. For me, it’s deeply weird seeing reruns of Night Court running on IFC (which was originally a cable channel dedicated to independent film).
People have mentioned “Nick At Night,” which used to be the “evening” block on Nickelodeon (a kid’s channel). With the switch to digital TV signals, some broadcasters have “sub-channels” of sorts playing old shows. They’re out there, but I genuinely don’t know how much the younger set watches them.
My husband and I discovered Me TV once we gave up cable, and have gotten completely hooked on Barney Miller and The Rockford Files. We’ve also recently started watching Wiseguy (though that was more of a 90s show).
As for your question about All in the Family, I haven’t watched it in a while. I think it would be very relevant today, but a lot of the content falls under “they couldn’t get away with that now.”
Sanford and son and others are still watchable. There’s probably a lot of em
I work for a media company that owns an extremely successful oldies channel called MeTV. Americans love television more than anyone else in the world, especially nostalgic television.
Gen z here (24 yo), I don’t know if I’m in the minority but I do not watch television. Streaming services and YouTube only for me since I stopped watching Nickelodeon and cartoon Network like a decade ago.
Not really. Golden girls is an exception.
So All In the Family, Family Ties, MAS*H, Laverne and Shirley, I Love Lucy… plenty of old sitcoms are still prevalent to some degree or another, though it seems they become increasingly esoteric with time
I have the general passing knowledge I think many people born in the mid 90s would have, like names of shows and maybe a couple jokes, quotes or references, but I don’t think I’ve sat down and watched the entirety of a show from that era before. Maybe the Adam West Batman or Get Smart because my mom and grandma liked those.
The original Star Trek is from that era is definitely known and watched in more nerdy circles, and I think most people my age and up would be passingly familiar with it. Same with the Twilight Zone.
I would assume that in America most millennials and up are familiar at a broad stroke with many older shows, but we don’t seem to have the reverence and direct familiarity you seem to be describing.
Millennial here. I’m familiar with probably way more shows than I need to be, but mostly because my parents were culture hounds and we had channels like TV Land.
So, naturally I became a huge fan of shows like MASH, Seinfeld, I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith Show, Leave it to Beaver, Happy Days, Bonanza, things like that.
I don’t know if many of my contemporaries are equally familiar – judging by the number of obscure references I make to these shows that they completely miss… I’m guessing they’re not familiar with them at all.
Yes. Pluto TV offers dozens of old American sitcoms every day of the year.
I still love I Love Lucy its a classic
dick van dyke show held up extraordinarily well
Not so much the 50’s or 60’s but the 70’s had some excellent shows that still hold up well.
I can tell you that my children (born between 2006 and 2014) are not really familiar with shows like that. And keep in mind, we’re talking about shows that were anywhere from ten to thirty years old when I was a kid, in the eighties. I grew up watching them, but the kids didn’t. And I think that’s mainly because of the switch to streaming…those shows are still in reruns on broadcast tv, but we haven’t had cable in probably a decade.
A number of shows from that period still endure on cable thanks to the Boomers.
My dad was born at the tail end of the Boomers and I was born at the tail end of the Millenials (similar situation for my wife and in-laws). When I was growing up and my dad was working evenings/nights, he’d always have TV Land on during the day and we’d watch the shows he grew up on… and even when I got older and he started working days we’d still watch some of those old shows.
Two of my favorites are “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Hogans Heroes“. I like it when I can find some of those old shows on a streaming platform. My wife and I will still put on Hogans Heroes from time to time, and we’ll typically go to bed with M A S H playing in the background.
Oh yeah the old sitcoms are in constant reruns.
Some are less known or less popular than others. See I Love Lucy vs Hazel. A lot of people haven’t heard of Hazel.
Hardly anybody knows what Frasier is tbh. Besides Seinfeld, most of them are forgotten or at least not intergenerationally relevant.
Taking just one example, I think the first five seasons of The Andy Griffith Show hold up better than most any sitcom since.
I Love Lucy is fucking timeless, and The Andy Griffith Show holds up really well, too.
MASH still holds up to this day.
Yes! A lot of streaming channels, free play a popular selection of characters who are still popular today.
It really depends on the show. I’ve been rewatching old stores off and on for the last 7 or 8 years.
For some, the issue is that it doesn’t fit in today’s society for whatever reason, usually gender or race stuff.
Others you just sit and marvel and how horrible the production was and hand no clue how it was ever popular.
But, many still hold up just fine (at least for the most part).
The ones that have held up all get watched or referenced at least by segments of the population.
I watch a 70s sitcom right now, but that’s if