Hawkins Falls, Population 6200 is the first successful American television soap opera. Sponsored by Unilever's blue detergent, Surf, the program began as a one hour comedy-drama on June 17, 1950, and ran in prime time on the NBC network until October 12, 1950.
On April 2, 1951, the series was moved to a fifteen-minute daytime slot, where it was retitled Hawkins Falls: A Television Novel, and developed into a soap opera format. Hawkins Falls ran until July 1, 1955, making it NBC's longest running soap opera until The Doctors exceeded it in 1967.
The town of Hawkins Falls was patterned after the real-life town of Woodstock, Illinois.
The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised on CBS between October 3, 1960 and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays the widowed sheriff of the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina. His life is complicated by an inept, but well-meaning deputy, Barney Fife, a spinster aunt and housekeeper, Aunt Bee, and a precocious young son, Opie. Local ne'er-do-wells, bumbling pals, and temperamental girlfriends further complicate his life. Andy Griffith stated in a Today Show interview, with respect to the time period of the show: "Well, though we never said it, and though it was shot in the '60s, it had a feeling of the '30s. It was when we were doing it, of a time gone by."
The series never placed lower than seventh in the Nielsen ratings and ended its final season at number one. It has been ranked by TV Guide as the 9th-best show in American television history. Though neither Griffith nor the show won awards during its eight-season run, series co-stars Knotts and Bavier accumulated a combined total of six Emmy Awards. The show, a semi-spin-off from an episode of The Danny Thomas Show titled "Danny Meets Andy Griffith", spawned its own spin-off series, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., a sequel series, Mayberry R.F.D., and a reunion telemovie, Return to Mayberry. The show's enduring popularity has generated a good deal of show-related merchandise. Reruns currently air on TV Land, and the complete series is available on DVD. All eight seasons are also now available by streaming video services such as Netflix.
Ichabod and Me is a 36-episode American situation comedy series set in a small New England town and starring Robert Sterling and George Chandler. It aired on CBS from September 26, 1961, to June 5, 1962, and was produced by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, in association with Jack Benny's "JaMco Productions".
Photos are not of George Chandler or Robert Sterling; Leon Ames is one of those pictured.
Bus Stop is a 26-episode American drama which aired on ABC from October 1, 1961, until March 25, 1962, starring Marilyn Maxwell as Grace Sherwood, the owner of a bus station and diner in the fictitious town of Sunrise in the Colorado Rockies. The program was adapted from William Inge's play, Bus Stop, and Inge was a script consultant for the series, which followed the lives of travelers passing through the bus station and the diner. Maxwell's co-stars were Richard Anderson as District Attorney Glenn Wagner, Rhodes Reason as Sheriff Will Mayberry, Joan Freeman as waitress Elma Gahrigner, Bernard Kates as Ralph the coroner, and Buddy Ebsen as Virge Blessing.
Like the novel and film of the same name, this nighttime soap opera is set in the small New England town of Peyton Place, whose quaint charm masks a complicated web of extramarital affairs, shady business deals, scandals, even murder.
Camberwick Green is a British children's television series, originally seen on BBC1, featuring stop-motion puppets.
Trumpton is a stop-motion children's television show from the producers of Camberwick Green. First shown on the BBC in the 1960s, It was the second series in the Trumptonshire Trilogy, which comprised Camberwick Green, Trumpton, and Chigley.
Trumpton was narrated by Brian Cant, animation was by Bob Bura, John Hardwick and Pasquale Ferrari. Scripts are by Alison Prince; all other production details were identical to Camberwick Green.
After resigning, a secret agent is abducted and taken to what looks like an idyllic village, but is really a bizarre Kafkaesque prison. His warders demand information. He gives them nothing, but only tries to escape.
The story takes place during the weeks before Christmas, in the small mining town of fictitious Granhyttan in Bergslagen, Sweden. One day a suspicious couple, Signe and Orvar, arrives in the small town and retires in an abandoned hut. Nobody knows what they up to; but strange things starts to happen as Staffan finds a gold nugget while playing in a disused mine at the Kråkberget Mountain during a skiing trip with his schoolmates. Staffan believes the nugget is a part of Skarp-Erik's gold, as his grandpa had told exciting stories about. The news about the gold discovery spread quickly and Staffan and his friends are soon pursued by curious schoolmates, school staff and also the mysterious strangers. All this happens as the students are rehearsing for the nativity play before Christmas break.
Historien om familien Walton finder sted under deppresionen og frem til anden verdenskrig.
The Beachcombers is a Canadian comedy-drama television series that ran from October 1, 1972 to December 12, 1990 and is the longest-running dramatic series ever made for English-language Canadian television. In all, 387 episodes were produced.
Unencumbered by wives, jobs or any other responsibilities, three senior citizens who've never really grown up explore their world in the Yorkshire Dales. They spend their days speculating about their fellow townsfolk and thinking up adventures not usually favored by the elderly. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse in 1973. The show ran for 295 episodes until 2010. It is the longest running comedy Britain has produced and the longest running sitcom in the world.
Apple's Way is a television dramedy which aired on CBS from 1974-1975. It was created by Earl Hamner, Jr..
Petrocelli is an American legal drama which ran for two seasons on NBC from September 11, 1974 to March 31, 1976.
Tony Petrocelli is an Italian-American Harvard-educated lawyer who gave up the big money and frenetic pace of major-metropolitan life to practice in a sleepy city in the American Southwest. He and wife Maggie live in a trailer in the country while waiting for their new house to be built, and travel around in a beat-up old pickup truck. For a quiet rural area, Petrocelli seems to have no trouble running into his share of murderers to defend.
Gibbsville is an American drama television series starring John Savage and Gig Young that aired on NBC from November 11 to December 30, 1976. The series centered on the activities of two reporters for a newspaper in a small Pennsylvania town in the 1940s.
A New York commercial artist and his wife and daughter move to a quiet, rustic New England village they visited during their travels, only to find themselves mixed up in ritualistic lifestyle full of foreboding secrets.
Terre humaine is a French-Canadian soap opera TV series written by Mia Riddez-Morisset which originally aired between September 1978 and March 1984. The series totaled 229 episodes.
The show takes place in rural Quebec in the late 1970s where conflicts between generations build scenes for a good novel.
Shillingbury Tales was a British television sitcom comedy-drama series made by ATV for ITV and broadcast 1980-81.
Comprising a single feature length pilot and six one-hour episodes, the series deals with life in an idealised fictional English village and stars Robin Nedwell, Diane Keen, Nigel Lambert, Jack Douglas, John Le Mesurier, Bernard Cribbins and Trevor Howard.
It was preceded by a feature length pilot episode The Shillingbury Blowers starring Trevor Howard, broadcast 6 January 1980
The series was written by Francis Essex and directed by Val Guest. Unusually for a British situation-comedy at that time it was recorded entirely on location on 16mm film and consequently there was no laughter track. Much of the filming took place in the village of Aldbury in Hertfordshire.
The show ended when ATV lost their licence to broadcast and their replacement Central declined to continue production of the series. The series was broadcast in a number of countries around Europe.
Harper Valley PTA is an early 1980s American television sitcom based on the 1978 film Harper Valley PTA, which was itself based on the 1968 song recorded by country singer Jeannie C. Riley, written by Tom T. Hall.
Dick Loudon and his wife Joanna decide to leave life in New York City and buy a little inn in Vermont. Dick is a how-to book writer, who eventually becomes a local TV celebrity as host of "Vermont Today." George Utley is the handyman at the inn and Leslie Vanderkellen is the maid, with ambitions of being an Olympic Ski champion; she is later replaced by her cousin Stephanie, an heiress who hates her job. Her boyfriend is Dick's yuppie TV producer, Michael Harris. There are many other quirky characters in this fictional little town, including Dick's neighbors Larry, Darryl, and Darryl...three brothers who buy the Minuteman Cafe from Kirk Devane. Besides sharing a name, Darryl and Darryl never speak.