15 Norman Lear Episodes That Changed TV History
The 1970s is often referred to as the golden age of cinema, a time when filmmakers made difficult classics refusing to indulge, combining a love of film history with modern sensibilities. While it may not look like it from our seat at Age of Prestige TV, it was true for the 70s tube as well. The revival of an era began with The Mary Tyler Moore Show by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, which dared to present a single, professional woman with a career and an active personal life, a stark break from the sillier, safer shows of the previous year. . The series spawned a couple of successful spin-offs, but nothing like the TV empire that grew just months later with the debut of Norman Lear’s All in the Family , leading directly to Maude (six seasons), The Jeffersons (11 seasons ). and Good Times (six seasons). All in the Family creator, producer, and occasional screenwriter Norman Lear had a hand in many other major television hits of the era, including ” Sanford and Son ” (six seasons) and “One Day at a Time” (nine seasons). ). It’s unfair to say it was the only game on TV in the 1970s, but it’s hard to imagine this landscape without Normal Teaching. The conservative 1980s saw the characters having difficult conversations on TV move away from them, and the 90s brought a little more variety and a little more sexual openness to the genre. However, it’s only recently that streaming has finally re-opened the market for content that can be a little more challenging and a little less sponsor-friendly. It’s not just about the creators, it’s about us: the shows produced by Norman Lear and his contemporaries in the 1970s weren’t just smart, they were popular, even if they touched on issues like race, sexual harassment, and abortion. Maybe it’s not really that the creators of TV have changed, maybe it’s that we’ve become smaller.
Lear’s career continued beyond the 1970s, with his various production companies involved in producing some of the most popular shows of the following decades. He has also been active in various initiatives, founding People for the American Image and Make Your Own to encourage young people to register to vote. Over the past couple of years, he has produced the (excellent) reboot of One Day at a Time , as well as several other series and documentaries. He turns 100 this week and has no plans to retire.
Here are the most impressive and forward-thinking episodes from that pioneering 1970s era, written and/or produced by Norman Lear.