Monday, July 04, 2011

Colgate Comedy Hour

Why don't they make shows like this anymore? I've talked about variety shows before and the popular response as to why they don't do variety shows anymore is that they aren't very popular. However, back in the day, virtually every star had a variety show at some point. Some were better than others, but I realized after a time that what killed variety shows was Sid and Marty Krofft!

Up until S&M got their mitts on a variety show that became popular, there was no stopping them. Unfortunately, after their first success with "Donny & Marie", it was all down hill from there and strangely, the networks kept calling on them to produce lousy variety show after lousy variety show.

There follow-up shows included: "Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters", "The Brady Bunch Hour" and "Pink Lady and Jeff", the latter two effectively killing off the genre.

We need a variety show to break up the monotony of so many reality shows and so-so sitcoms and crime dramas.

1 comment:

Bishop said...

I remember watching the Carol Burnett Show with alarming regularity. No one left like Harvey Korman, I tell you. (Phil Hartman was up there, and oddly had his own variety show axed "[b]efore production began, however, the network decided that variety shows were too unpopular" (w'pedia). Which begs the question, what'd they consider SNL?