Word: sitcomming
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...state of the sitcom is no laughing matter. Though half-hour comedies still make up a considerable chunk of the network schedules-22 will be on next fall, compared with 24 last fall- the attrition rate has become alarming. Of the 20 sitcoms introduced by the three networks in the past year, only four-CBS' Kate & Allie and After MASH, ABC's Webster and NBC's Night Court-were renewed for next season. In the ratings for the 1983-84 season, the genre made its worst showing in 30 years: not a single sitcom that...
What has happened? For one thing, most of the formative creative figures from the 1970s have either left the field or lost their touch. Norman Lear, who revitalized the sitcom in 1971 with All in the Family, flopped with his comeback series earlier this year, a.k.a. Pablo. Alan Alda's The Four Seasons, his first effort since M*A*S*H (which he helped shape as a sometime writer and director), also failed to catch on, and has been canceled...
This month's developments have already been excruciating. Sam and Diane, the stormy leading couple of Cheers, split up on the sitcom's concluding episode of the season. Webster's uncle (Ben Vereen) suddenly reappeared on that show's finale, setting up a custody battle for the fall. On Dynasty's season ender, the jailhouse door clanged shut on sultry, scheming Alexis (Joan Collins), who is charged (gasp!) with murder, while a car driven by a delirious Fallen Colby (Pamela Sue Martin) on her wedding day careered out of control, heading (gulp!) straight...
...play therefore, is somewhat inaccessible to present day sensibility Composed in the far away dawn of the television era, the play juxtaposes how oppressive the deadening hilarity of sitcom is next to a drama which probes the validity of all its characters feelings. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry impresses any audience with her command over an astonishing range of feeling, she recalls I M Forster at his best and least boring. But immediately one wonders if a Black playwright today, writing after the tumults, disillusion, and stilling of the last two decades, could afford the humanity which Hansberry so richly displays...
Director Patrick Bradford deserves much credit for not forcing the play into the shape of a comedy, melodrama, or sitcom, because Hansberry's plot resists constraints of form, narrowly understood. Avoiding the two temptations attendant on staging a classic. Bradford neither lets the play pull all the weight of the production, nor reinterprets the play in silly ways--making everyone wear parachute suits, for instance. Bradford's active good judgment, dramatic flair, and sense of timing preserve the thoroughness and unsentimental freshness of the original...