Let’s bring back those classic tv shows you loved, ranking the best of them, covering different decades and themes. Let’s go to the list!
10 – I Love Lucy (1951)
Cuban Bandleader Ricky Ricardo would be happy if his wife Lucy would just be a housewife. Instead she tries constantly to perform at the Tropicana where he works, and make life comically frantic in the apartment building they share with landlords Fred and Ethel Mertz, who also happen to be their best friends.
9 – Mork and Mindy (1978)
Mork & Mindy is a spin-off from an episode of Happy Days seen in February 1978, in which an alien from the planet Ork lands on Earth and attempts to kidnap Richie. Mork is a misfit on his own planet because of his sense of humor, so the humorless Orkans send him off to study Earthlings, whose ‘crazy’ customs they had never been able to understand. Mork lands, in a giant eggshell, near Boulder, Colorado and is befriended by pretty Mindy McConnell, a clerk at a music store run by her father. Mork looks human, but his strange mixture of Orkan and Earthling customs leads most people to think of him as a nut.
8 – Cheers (1982)
Sam, a former pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, owns and runs Cheers, a cozy bar in Boston. Somewhat snobby, beautiful and intelligent Diane — forced to become a waitress when her fiance jilts her — constantly bickers with Sam. Eventually, they fall in love. Several wacky characters make the bar their home-away-from-home, including sarcastic waitress Carla, beer-loving Norm and Boston letter carrier Cliff.
7 – Alf (1986)
The Tanner family is an average American family. One day, they discover that they have a visitor. He’s small, he’s furry, he’s arrogant, and he’s an alien from the planet Melmac. Unsure what to do, they name him ALF: Alien Life Form. Alf soon decides that as much as he misses his home planet, there’s a lot to be said for Earth: the Tanners are willing to concede anything as long as he doesn’t announce his presence. Oh yeah, the Tanners also have a cat, which looks rather tasty.
6 – Dragnet (1967)
Dragnet 1967-1970 was the second run of the Dragnet series. It began in January of 1967, and ran to September of 1970. The lead character, Sgt. Joe Friday, was played by Jack Webb, who also directed and produced the series. The show’s focus is on two detectives, Sgt. Joe Friday, and Officer Bill Gannon, played by Harry Morgan. The two track down criminals all throughout the city of Los Angeles, California. The original “Dragnet” was the grandfather of ALL of today’s police drama shows. This was the first time a cancelled network TV series was successfully revived. In late 1965, Universal and NBC hired Webb to revive “Dragnet” as a made-for-TV movie. This was filmed in early 1966, but didn’t air until January 1969. Titled “World Premiere: Dragnet,” the well-made film has Friday and Gannon linking the slayings of photographer’s models to the disappearance of a war widow, while Gannon prepares to retire.
5 – Columbo (1968)
Many criminals made the mistake of underestimating Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide investigator with a crumpled trench-coat and a beat-up car, who certainly acted as an incompetent bumbler. But he was so polite to every suspect, and he talked so much about his wife (who we never got to see on any episode, but who many believe later had her own show, starring Kate Mulgrew, later of Star Trek: Voyager fame) that he lulled even the shrewdest murderer into a false sense of security. And although the audience had witnessed the murder in the beginning of each episode, it was still a surprise to see what mistakes the killers had made during the seemingly perfect murder.
4 – The Munsters (1964)
At 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Mockingbird Heights, lived one of America’s strangest sitcom families, The Munsters. Strangest looking, that is, for beneath Herman’s Frankensteinian facial features, Lily’s vampiric visage, Grandpa’s Dracula countenance and Eddie’s Wolfman looks, lurked possibly the sweetest and most sensitive sitcom family ever to grace the small-screen. This, of course, was the nub of the series: that a family so weird could overcome the everyday problems of modern living – and the fact that people ran away from them, screaming – by their generosity, gentleness and belief in traditional American values.
3 – The Addams Family (1964)
The Addams Family is the creation of American cartoonist Charles Addams. A satirical inversion of the ideal of the perfect American nuclear family, they are an eccentric wealthy family who delight in everything grotesque and macabre, and are never really aware that people find them bizarre or frightening. In fact, they themselves are often terrified by “normal” people.
2 – Kojak (1973)
Kojak is an American television series starring Telly Savalas as the title character, bald New York City Police Department Detective Lieutenant Theo Kojak. Taking the time slot of the popular Cannon series, which was moved one hour earlier it aired on CBS from October 24, 1973, to March 18, 1978. In 1999 TV Guide ranked Theo Kojak number 18 on its 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time list.
1 – Family Ties (1982)
In this family sitcom, former 1960s flower children Steven and Elyse Keaton raise their four kids Alex, Mallory, Jennifer, and Andrew, who was born in 1985. The show revealed the changing values during the Reagan era as the 1960s hippie parents clashed with their 1980’s conservative son, Alex. The show also tackled a number of serious issues ranging from suicide to racism to drug dependency.
