It's Wednesday, and that means it's one of my favorite days of the week. Not only is the weekend in sight, but it's also Blog Me MAYbe's "May I ask something about you?" day. Today's topic is childhood TV.
I was born in the early '70s and did most of my childhood television-watching in the '80s, a time I consider to be the Golden Age of TV. So many great shows came out of that decade, including several of my all-time favorites:
Beauty and the Beast (1987): My mom and I never missed this show about a man-beast who was in love with an assistant district attorney. I think the show probably appealed to the side of me that loved fairy tales, but when I think back on it now, the premise does seem pretty ridiculous! Take a look at the show's intro. I thought it was really cool back then, but when I watch it now, "cheesy" is the word that comes to mind. What do you think?
Best of the West (1981): This show was a spoof of westerns. I was around nine years old when it first aired, and I don't remember much about it except for the theme song, which I loved so much then that I taped it and played it over and over:
It's kind of catchy, right?
Charles in Charge (1984): This comedy was about a college student who moves in with a family and babysits the kids. I admit that I might have had a tiny crush on the show's star, Scott Baio.
The Cosby Show (1984): My list wouldn't be complete without this show that was based on comedian Bill Cosby's real-life family and was about a doctor, his attorney wife, and their children. My favorite character was the second oldest daughter, Denise, but I was (and probably still am) more of a Vanessa.
Designing Women (1986): This comedy about a group of women who work in an interior design firm will always rank among my top shows, mainly because of my favorite character, the outspoken Julia Sugarbaker. Oh, how I wanted to be as fearless as she was! Check out this clip of her in action as she defends her sister Suzanne against the current Miss Georgia World:
The Golden Girls (1985): Dorothy, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia--who can forget them (or Rose's St. Olaf stories)? One of my favorite scenes is the one in which Sophia and Dorothy dress up as Sonny and Cher and sing "I Got You, Babe." The look on Rose's face as she plays the piano for them is priceless:
There are so many more: Full House (1987), Kate and Allie (1984), Magnum P.I. (1980), Roseanne (1988), The Wonder Years (1988), Newhart (1982)... There's no doubt in my mind that the 1980s were a great decade for TV.
Now I want to hear about some of the TV shows you enjoyed when you were growing up. What was your childhood must-see TV?
Mine would be late 60's/early 70's I remember my mom watching Dark Shadows and Peyton Place. I remember watching the Friday Night Weird Tales (old b/w horror flicks) Perry Mason, Love American Style. As a kid I grew up on Captain Kangaroo and Mr Green Jeans, Flintstones, American Bandstand :)
ReplyDeleteI loved Captain Kangaroo! I remember watching it every day before school. The Flintstones was great, too.
DeleteSo many of those shows are on my list of favorites! But my sisters and I (thanks to our Mom) had a serious love of one hour mystery solving shows like Remington Steele, Magnum PI, The Rockford Files. Our favorite was Simon & Simon. We were going to grow up and marry those guys! I picked Gerald McRaney and I'm still happy with my choice!
ReplyDeleteSimon & Simon was great! Gerald McRaney was my favorite of the two as well. :)
Deletei loved charles in charge and my daughter who has seen it in dvds--loves it--she even teases her boy---friend----that he is charles-----iloved the waltons, american bandstand, gidget--and the horror movies that were shown on saturday afternoons, we would watch them in my friend's creepy basement---love this post!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lynn! Watching horror movies in a creepy basement sounds like so much fun.
DeleteI remember watching The Waltons with my family: "Goodnight, John-Boy..." LOL
I grew up watching TV in the 90s. I loved Eureka's Castle and Fraggle Rock. Later in my TV-watching career I enjoyed Gullah Gullah Islands. I loved Johnny Quest because I watched it with my dad.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite two shows, by far, were Sailor Moon and Reboot.
I feel old. ;) I only remember watching one of those shows, Fraggle Rock, although I've heard of two of the others.
DeleteThanks for the memories about these shows; I hand't thought of some of them in years, like Kate and Allie. My sister liked Beauty and the Beast but she was into themes like that. LOL, I'm trying to remember the 80s and what I really liked, there was a show later 80s, Thirty-Something, I liked that. Later years I liked ER, ALF, Chicago Hope.
ReplyDeletethis is going to be fun to talk with hubby about with different shows we liked over the years :)
betty
I was a big fan of ER.
DeleteHave fun talking with your hubby! :)
Ahh! Great post! Do you know what? I just started watching The Golden Girls a couple of weeks ago. I love that show! I'm already on the second season. Of course Rose is my favourite, especially due to the funny Scandinavian references she makes!
ReplyDeleteI loved Little House on the Prairie and Dr Quinn when I was little! Every Saturday night my little family would sit down and we'd watch Superman followed by Gladiators. TV was so much better back then!
That's funny! I was actually thinking about you when I watched that clip with Rose.
DeleteI remember watching Little House on the Prairie at my grandma's house. Yes, there were some great shows in the past.
I loved the Designing Women clip!!! I wish I could say exactly what I wanted to say at the moment I want to say it!! (sigh)...
ReplyDeleteI didn't watch a lot of TV in the eighties... I didn't own a TV set! I'm making up for it now, though... ;)
I do, too. I want to be Julia Sugarbaker. (I was sad when Dixie Carter, the actress who played Julia, passed away two years ago. From all I've read, she was a pretty cool person.)
DeleteWhat do you watch nowadays?
Ha! I watched most of those (I missed beauty and the beast though):)
ReplyDeleteBack then, I would have said, "Shame on you for missing such a great show."
DeleteToday I say, "You didn't miss much." ;)
I loved Charles in Charge! Charles was such a hunk! ;) I was also a big Saved by the Bell fan, and I adored Full House. Fun question, Dana!
ReplyDeleteYes, Saved by the Bell was great, too!
Deleteawesome picks! never saw beauty & beast, but the rest are faves of mine too!
ReplyDeleteand happy days & cheers & mork & mindy, then facts of life, family ties! different strokes! flood gate opening, i'll stop there!
LOL Too many great shows! I wonder if we could list this many great current shows?
DeleteI watched almost all of those shows and loved them. Thanks for the trip down memory lane! :O)
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! I had fun with it. :)
DeleteLol what a coincidence, I also did a tv post for Blog Me MAYbe!
ReplyDeleteA lot of those shows you mentioned I also watched growing up although they were re-runs. My young tv days were during the 90's back in Disney and Nickelodeon's hey days. Here are a couple of carttons I can think of off the top of my head that I used to watch: Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Goof Troop, Darwing Duck, etc.
Great minds, huh? ;) I'll check out your post.
DeleteI remember hearing about those cartoons. Man, I'm starting to feel old today... :)
What a fun post! I remember all those that you mentioned, that was during my newlywed years lol. Growing up my favorite was Then Came Bronson, Peyton Place, Green Acres, Petti Coat Junction, Dark Shadows, The Adams Family, Bonanza and of course The Waltons, and Little House On The Prairie. Good memories!
ReplyDeleteuntil next time... nel
Thanks, Nel. Those are good shows. I remember watching some of them at my grandma's house. (She had cable, and we didn't.)
DeleteI was born in 1979, so I watched a lot of the same shows you did. Looking back on some of them now, it's hard to believe I found them entertaining, like the dreadful Full House. I quit watching that cold turkey back in '93, during the Disney episode, and never looked back. Since I have rather dinosaur tastes in everything, I also watched a lot of the shows on Nick and Nite (back when it actually played vintage shows instead of stuff that's only 10-15 years old). My parents were always horrified at how addicted I was to shows they never liked when they were current, and now I agree that some of those old shows I loved haven't aged very well.
ReplyDeleteI was a pretty faithful watcher of Full House. I haven't seen it in years, though. It'd be interesting to see how it aged. I think my main motivation for watching was John Stamos! ;)
DeleteI loved watching The Dick Van Dyke Show on Nick at Nite. Wonderful show!
I grew up overseas, so I missed out on a lot of American TV. In Germany, very little was in English, so I watched The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Burke's Law. Belgian tv had more in English, so I watched Happy Days, Fresh Prince, and British sitcoms like 'Allo 'Allo and Only Fools and Horses.
ReplyDeleteLoved Happy Days and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air!
DeleteAs a little kid it was Captain Kangaroo and Mickey Mouse Club. Saturdays were cartoons all day -- Tom & Jerry, Mighty Mouse, and hmm can't remember. Saturday afternoons also had good westerns like Annie Oakley and Sky King. As a teenager -- Dark Shadows, Laugh-In, Hullaballoo and Shindig. Oh, and Batman! Holy memories, Batman!
ReplyDeleteLOL You know, speaking of cartoons, I'd forgotten all the great ones from my childhood--like Bugs Bunny. I have wonderful memories of waking up on Saturday mornings and racing out in the living room to watch those shows. :)
DeleteI missed most of these. The only one I'm familiar with is the Cosby Show. I guess I was too busy watching Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street!
ReplyDeleteI missed those too and I am sure it was b/c I was watching Mr Rogers and SS -- with my kids!
Delete:)
DeleteAh, memories. Beauty and the Beast was one show that my mom and I both loved to watch. One of my favorite childhood shows was The Littlest Hobo (a Canadian show about a dog that went around helping folks).
ReplyDeleteYay, another Beauty and the Beast watcher! I don't think the show translates well today, but I did love it back then.
DeleteHi Dana! I loved watching the videos - how on earth did they string the Beauty and the Beast idea into a series? It's very Phantom of the Opera with him living below the city! I'm still humming the Western theme tune! Most of these programmes unknown to me, living in the UK, except for Charles in Charge, The Golden Girls (which I didn't watch but have heard of) and, ofcourse, The Cosby Show! Great post!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Linda!
DeleteI have no idea how they were able to string that story out so long! I'm tempted to watch it again so I can figure it out. I've forgotten lots of it already--except for how I really loved spending that time with my mom.
I watched a lot of the same shows. Loved Facts of Life--that was probably one of my favorites. Little House on the Prairie too when I was younger.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes. Facts of Life was a great show!
DeleteI had to watch the Beauty and the Beast trailer. I watched a lot of the same shows too. Little House on the Prairie was a love and hate show. The night a house burned on the show, so did our neighbor's house. I always remember that.
ReplyDeleteWow! That's some coincidence. I hope everything turned out okay for your neighbor.
Deleteoh my gosh....look at those styles we thought were so cool!!
ReplyDeleteLOL I know!
DeleteBest question EVER. All I did in the 80's was watch TV. I'm pretty sure I didn't even go to school! (J/K, of course;)
ReplyDeleteMy favorites growing up were Family Ties, The Golden Girls (same as you), Growing Pains, Mr. Belvedere, Silver Spoons, Charles in Charge (same as you), Punky Brewster, Perfect Strangers, Cheers, Three's Company, Bewitched reruns, I Dream of Genie reruns, Gilligan's Island reruns, The Brady Bunch reruns, The Monkees reruns.... This list barely scratches the surface.
I also loved cartoons like The Smurfs, She-Ra, He-Man, Scooby-Doo, The Transformers. If the 80's really was the Golden Age of television, then that explains why I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen for very long. Although, so many of these shows seem rather ridiculous when I watch them today. Yet, others are classics and will never get old.
Did we grow up in the same house? ;) We watched and enjoyed so many of the same shows. I agree--some of them seem pretty ridiculous today, but I have to say that the child-me still loves watching them. :)
DeleteLove this post! I was a total TV addict growing up (and I still am now! lol) Your post brought back so many memories. I loved Full House, The Wonder Years, The Golden Girls, Night Court... The 80s was indeed a great decade for TV! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Cat!
DeleteI saw that Dallas is coming back.
DeleteI saw that, too. I probably won't watch it. The remakes just never seem as good as the originals to me.
DeleteThe only one I recognize is The Crosby Show....I was too busy raising you all!
ReplyDeleteLOL
DeleteOur family loved the one with Tony Danza, what was the name of that show? Who's the Boss! And we loved Dallas.
ReplyDeleteOh, those were good ones, too! And I loved the theme song for Dallas!
DeleteCharles in Charge!!! I loved so many of these shows but especially that one!
ReplyDeleteWas it Scott? ;) For me it was! LOL
DeleteMy mom and dad both loved Beauty and the Beast. I thought it was so-so. You named all of my favorite tv shows then. Golden Girls was so funny!
ReplyDeleteGolden Girls was the best! I've been watching clips of it today--so funny!
DeleteI loved Crosby and Beauty and the Beast. GG was a hoot too! My favorite though, was Home Improvement. I still watch re-runs when I spot them. And Tim Allen's new show, Last Man Standing, is pretty good too. So much of TV these days is junk. I like Blue Bloods and Dancing w/ the Stars. That's about it. These days, I spend more time in front of another screen....blogging on the computer!
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, Home Improvement was great! I've never seen Tim Allen's new show; I'll have to check it out. I agree that a lot of today's TV is lacking. There are only a handful of shows that I watch regularly. Like you, I tend to spend a lot of my time in front of the computer!
DeleteMy Mom used to love Beauty and the Beast. I Loved, LOVED Designing Women. Dixie Carter is my Idol. She Knew how to put someone in their place!!
ReplyDeleteDixie Carter is the only actress who could have played that role! She was absolutely amazing. :)
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