Hulu Awards Week 4: Sam Christopher's List (Part 1)

This week things really heat up with the selection of the winners for the main tv categories. We also have the second round for nominees for Best Doc, Horror Movie, and Dramatic Short. And then there are the new categories, all of which center around the bane of all “entertainment”, the reality show. I have thoughts on all of this, some of which I borrowed (but we’ll get to that in a later column), but first up are our finalists:

Best Classic TV Show:

I understand completely how anyone could pick any of these. Alfred Hitchcock Presents is easily the best suspense show ever made, and The Dick Van Dyke Show is on a par with The Andy Griffith Show as one of the best two or three sitcoms ever made. But my choice throughout this process has never changed. It is the lightest, silliest, and most fantastical of these finalists, an all-time favorite based not only on the unwavering hilarity of the magnificent regular cast but also the veritable galaxy of guest stars—Paul Lynde alone is worth his weight in platinum. I stand by it:

Bewitched


Best TV Show of the Seventies:

As mentioned before, Barney Miller was just too uneven for me to head this list. Charlie’s Angels was all right—although how any PI show from the ‘70s beats out The Rockford Files I’ll never understand—but hardly the best. I Dream of Jeannie was fun but even a sillier and less comprehensible plot than it’s predecessor by one year, Bewitched (which begs the question of why IDoJ is on the ‘70s list in the first place, but we play by the rules we’re given); on the other hand, Barbara Eden’s “talents” were always much more prominently displayed than Elizabeth Montgomery’s, a situation which couldn’t help but make the show a draw.
Which brings us to the top two. I absolutely adored The Bob Newhart Show. Bob, Emily… Howard, the neurotic and goofy airline pilot neighbor… Mr. Carlin, the just plain neurotic… Jerry, Carol… all of these funny, well-written characters were welcome in living rooms all across America. Too many sitcoms today are populated by characters none of us would really want to know in real life. This show was the familiar old shoe, the one we loved to put on and be comfortable in. But Mary Tyler Moore had all that plus. It had marvelous characters and three of them—Lou Grant, Rhoda Morgenstern, and Phyllis Lindstrom— moved to their own shows, with others—Ted Baxter, Sue Ann Nivens, and Murray Slaughter—who easily could have (and these actors—Ted Knight, Betty White, Gavin MacLeod—all did have their own successful show later). Best show on Hulu? A case can easily be made this was the best sitcom of the ‘70s, period.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show


Best TV Show of the Eighties:

So far this is the worst category for me. I hated Alf. I tried to watch but it just didn’t make it for me. I’ve always thought that Married with Children is easily the worst successful sitcom ever made. To this day I have no idea how anyone could sit through a half-hour a week of this. Benson was watchable. It had a low threshold of comedy, cute without being out and out funny, had characters we could care about, and had Neelix and Odo as regulars—although they were disguised as humans. The A Team was a staple for me in its first season but tailed off thereafter, and the reruns of it now are on a par with Kung Fu: no matter how much I loved them in first run they are both just riddled with unwatchability now. Which leaves us with the one show of all these finalists that was among the best when it was at its best. Faded badly at the end but with an opening that really made us take notice, my choice:

The Facts of Life


As indicated above, I’ll have my picks and reasons for the other, non-finalist categories in a day or so.

(Editor's Note: The general public can participate in the nominations as well. Go to the links above for any or all of the categories you are interested in and cast your vote for the shows you think should win. All of the general votes will be tallied up and count as one panelist in deciding the final winners. PSW)