The Honeymooners
The Ultimate TV Network
July 21, 2009
by David Krell
david@davidkrell.com
If I created the ultimate television network, the prime time program lineup would probably look like this:
On Sunday, I would start with the legends. I Love Lucy at 8:00pm followed by The Jack Benny Program at 8:30pm.
The pairing makes sense since Lucille Ball and Jack Benny were not only show business icons, but also neighbors in real life. They lived next door to each other on North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills.
Then, we turn to the rural heavyweights. The Andy Griffith Show at 9:00pm and The Beverly Hillbillies at 9:30pm.
Sunday nights should be nice and easy, after all. And what's nicer and easier than our friends in Mayberry and the hillbilly transplants to the land of Rodeo Drive?
At 10:00pm, The Sopranos.
On Monday nights, I would pair The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Tyler Moore in the 8 o'clock hour, followed by M*A*S*H and Murphy Brown in the 9 o'clock hour.
At 10:00pm, St. Elsewhere.
Tuesday nights would start with family comedy. The Cosby Show and Family Ties 8:00pm and 8:30pm respectively.
Everybody Loves Raymond at 9:00pm and Two and a Half Men at 9:30pm.
At 10:00pm, Law & Order.
Wednesday nights would start with sophistication.
Frasier at 8:00pm and The Odd Couple at 8:30pm. I'm sure Felix Unger would have enjoyed talking wine, opera, and art with the Crane brothers.
The 9 o'clock hour would consist of You'll Never Get Rich starring Phil Silvers as Sergeant Bilko and The Twilight Zone.
At 10:00pm, Hill Street Blues.
Of course, Thursday nights would truly be Must See TV with Cheers, Taxi, Seinfeld, and Friends followed by ER at 10:00pm.
Friday night would be another family-friendly night, starting with The Brady Bunch at 8:00pm and The Wonder Years at 8:30pm.
At 9:00pm, Friday Night Lights, a depiction of a west Texas town obsessed with high school football.
At 10:00pm, The Wire.
Saturday night begins with cartoons.
The Simpsons at 8:00pm and King of the Hill at 8:30pm.
The Honeymooners at 9:00pm and Curb Your Enthusiasm at 9:30pm.
At 10:00pm, Homicide: Life on the Street, an undervalued, underrated, and underwatched program during its tenure on NBC in the 1990's.
Reasonable minds can differ.
Should Happy Days be in the lineup instead of The Brady Bunch?
What about L.A. Law, thirtysomething, Scrubs, or All in the Family?
What's the standard for making the linuep?
All good questions.
For now, it's merely instinctive.
Programs can be replaced.
Or I can start another network.
david@davidkrell.com
If I created the ultimate television network, the prime time program lineup would probably look like this:
On Sunday, I would start with the legends. I Love Lucy at 8:00pm followed by The Jack Benny Program at 8:30pm.
The pairing makes sense since Lucille Ball and Jack Benny were not only show business icons, but also neighbors in real life. They lived next door to each other on North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills.
Then, we turn to the rural heavyweights. The Andy Griffith Show at 9:00pm and The Beverly Hillbillies at 9:30pm.
Sunday nights should be nice and easy, after all. And what's nicer and easier than our friends in Mayberry and the hillbilly transplants to the land of Rodeo Drive?
At 10:00pm, The Sopranos.
On Monday nights, I would pair The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Tyler Moore in the 8 o'clock hour, followed by M*A*S*H and Murphy Brown in the 9 o'clock hour.
At 10:00pm, St. Elsewhere.
Tuesday nights would start with family comedy. The Cosby Show and Family Ties 8:00pm and 8:30pm respectively.
Everybody Loves Raymond at 9:00pm and Two and a Half Men at 9:30pm.
At 10:00pm, Law & Order.
Wednesday nights would start with sophistication.
Frasier at 8:00pm and The Odd Couple at 8:30pm. I'm sure Felix Unger would have enjoyed talking wine, opera, and art with the Crane brothers.
The 9 o'clock hour would consist of You'll Never Get Rich starring Phil Silvers as Sergeant Bilko and The Twilight Zone.
At 10:00pm, Hill Street Blues.
Of course, Thursday nights would truly be Must See TV with Cheers, Taxi, Seinfeld, and Friends followed by ER at 10:00pm.
Friday night would be another family-friendly night, starting with The Brady Bunch at 8:00pm and The Wonder Years at 8:30pm.
At 9:00pm, Friday Night Lights, a depiction of a west Texas town obsessed with high school football.
At 10:00pm, The Wire.
Saturday night begins with cartoons.
The Simpsons at 8:00pm and King of the Hill at 8:30pm.
The Honeymooners at 9:00pm and Curb Your Enthusiasm at 9:30pm.
At 10:00pm, Homicide: Life on the Street, an undervalued, underrated, and underwatched program during its tenure on NBC in the 1990's.
Reasonable minds can differ.
Should Happy Days be in the lineup instead of The Brady Bunch?
What about L.A. Law, thirtysomething, Scrubs, or All in the Family?
What's the standard for making the linuep?
All good questions.
For now, it's merely instinctive.
Programs can be replaced.
Or I can start another network.
Boston TV
June 03, 2009
by David Krell
david@davidkrell.com
Boston is a terrific site for television programs.
Where do you go when you want to be where you can see the troubles are all the same and everybody knows your name?
Cheers in Boston -- Cheers.
Where do you go when you want to hire Spenser, the private investigator?
A revamped firehouse turned living quarters in Boston -- Spenser: For Hire.
Where do you go when you need Dr. Marc Craig, an egotistical, egocentric, and egomaniacal heart surgeon who is also a leader in the field of cardiac care?
St. Eligius Hospital in Boston -- St. Elsewhere.
Goodnight Beantown is also set in Boston. This mid-1980's sitcom revolved around a male-female television news anchor team played by Bill Bixby and Mariette Hartley.
Boston Common enjoyed a coveted role on NBC's Thursday night Must See TV lineup in the mid-1990's. The show features stand up comedian Anthony Clark, familiar to fans of Yes, Dear as good-natured, hard-working, and fun-lacking Greg Warner.
Crossing Jordan stars Jill Hennessy of Law & Order fame as a coroner who goes beyond the obvious to solve crimes. The show exists in the same televerse as Las Vegas.
David Kelley's legal trifecta of Ally McBeal, The Practice, and Boston Legal takes place in Kelley's old stomping grounds of Boston. One can trace Kelley's creative roots in the Boston law genre to his 1987 movie From the Hip starring Judd Nelson.
Kelley also created Boston Public, a show about a high school that enjoyed a crossover with The Practice as did Ally McBeal.
George Peppard plays the title role in Banacek, a 1970's show on NBC about an insurance investigator in Boston who receives a percentage of a property's value upon recovering it after a theft.
Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place, later simply named Two Guys and a Girl, centers around...well, the title says it all. Three platonic twentysomething friends share misadventures, advice, and problems, in college and thereafter.
For the younger set, the Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack & Cody takes place in the fictional Tipton Hotel in Boston. Twin boys, Zack and Cody, live in a hotel because their mom is the headline singer and the residence is part of the contract.
HBO made a first in 2006 when it aired its first sitcom, the adult-themed, Boston-set Lucky Louie featuring stand up comedian Louis C. K.
Beyond the racy language, adult themes, and spare apartment set lay a working-class basis that parallels All in the Family and The Honeymooners.
Lucky Louie only aired six episodes in the summer of '06.
Boston is the setting for later episodes of Dawson's Creek when the core characters attend college.
And even though we never saw Boston through his eyes, we certainly heard about it from his nostalgic recounts, the Boston revered by Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on M*A*S*H.
Boston is a great sports town.
Boston is a great history town.
And Boston is a great television town.
david@davidkrell.com
Boston is a terrific site for television programs.
Where do you go when you want to be where you can see the troubles are all the same and everybody knows your name?
Cheers in Boston -- Cheers.
Where do you go when you want to hire Spenser, the private investigator?
A revamped firehouse turned living quarters in Boston -- Spenser: For Hire.
Where do you go when you need Dr. Marc Craig, an egotistical, egocentric, and egomaniacal heart surgeon who is also a leader in the field of cardiac care?
St. Eligius Hospital in Boston -- St. Elsewhere.
Goodnight Beantown is also set in Boston. This mid-1980's sitcom revolved around a male-female television news anchor team played by Bill Bixby and Mariette Hartley.
Boston Common enjoyed a coveted role on NBC's Thursday night Must See TV lineup in the mid-1990's. The show features stand up comedian Anthony Clark, familiar to fans of Yes, Dear as good-natured, hard-working, and fun-lacking Greg Warner.
Crossing Jordan stars Jill Hennessy of Law & Order fame as a coroner who goes beyond the obvious to solve crimes. The show exists in the same televerse as Las Vegas.
David Kelley's legal trifecta of Ally McBeal, The Practice, and Boston Legal takes place in Kelley's old stomping grounds of Boston. One can trace Kelley's creative roots in the Boston law genre to his 1987 movie From the Hip starring Judd Nelson.
Kelley also created Boston Public, a show about a high school that enjoyed a crossover with The Practice as did Ally McBeal.
George Peppard plays the title role in Banacek, a 1970's show on NBC about an insurance investigator in Boston who receives a percentage of a property's value upon recovering it after a theft.
Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place, later simply named Two Guys and a Girl, centers around...well, the title says it all. Three platonic twentysomething friends share misadventures, advice, and problems, in college and thereafter.
For the younger set, the Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack & Cody takes place in the fictional Tipton Hotel in Boston. Twin boys, Zack and Cody, live in a hotel because their mom is the headline singer and the residence is part of the contract.
HBO made a first in 2006 when it aired its first sitcom, the adult-themed, Boston-set Lucky Louie featuring stand up comedian Louis C. K.
Beyond the racy language, adult themes, and spare apartment set lay a working-class basis that parallels All in the Family and The Honeymooners.
Lucky Louie only aired six episodes in the summer of '06.
Boston is the setting for later episodes of Dawson's Creek when the core characters attend college.
And even though we never saw Boston through his eyes, we certainly heard about it from his nostalgic recounts, the Boston revered by Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on M*A*S*H.
Boston is a great sports town.
Boston is a great history town.
And Boston is a great television town.
Numbers
April 10, 2009
by David Krell
david@davidkrell.com
Numbers play important roles in television.
Nielsen ratings determine whether programs live or die.
There’s a show on CBS actually called Numbers because it deals with a mathematical approach to solving crimes.
But what about numerical references in the actual television shows?
Let’s take a journey on one through ten.
Titles:
The Single Guy.
The Odd Couple.
Three’s Company.
Number of characters:
Four seems to be a magic number.
4-A. Classic sitcoms. I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Seinfeld, and Will & Grace all share a striking similarity: four major characters in a New York apartment.
4-B. Law & Order. The longest running network drama has four major characters, two detectives and two assistant district attorneys. Purists might argue the number is six because of the police lieutenant and the D.A., however, most of the scenes appear to use some combination of the aforementioned four.
4-C. HBO’s Entourage uses four primary characters -- a movie star, his half-brother and his two friends.
Five children on The Partridge Family.
Six on The Brady Bunch. NBC’s powerhouse sitcom Friends also had six major characters.
Seven is interesting.
It was the name George Costanza chose for his future offspring on Seinfeld. Unfortunately, it lost significance when the pregnant cousin of George’s fiancé Susan took it for her newborn baby.
Seven was also the name of a child the Bundys adopted on Married With Children. Then, like Chuck Cunningham, he just wasn’t there one day, though he was referenced briefly in a dream sequence when Kelly had to empty her brain of useless information and a picture of Seven floated by.
Back to titles.
Eight is Enough.
The Nine.
Just the Ten of Us.
Numbers can play an important part in the plot line of a show. In Lost, the following numbers have terrific significance: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.
First, they’re Hurley’s winning lottery numbers.
Second, they’re on the bottle of medication that Desmond takes.
Third, they’re the numbers Desmond has to enter into the computer every 108 minutes. Coincidentally, or maybe not, the numbers total 108 when added together.
When he didn’t, he triggered a reaction that caused an Oceanic Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles to crash on the island. The numbers have also appeared individually or in some combination throughout the series. For example, the Oceanic flight number is 815.
Numbers.
They’re not just for Nielsen ratings anymore.
david@davidkrell.com
Numbers play important roles in television.
Nielsen ratings determine whether programs live or die.
There’s a show on CBS actually called Numbers because it deals with a mathematical approach to solving crimes.
But what about numerical references in the actual television shows?
Let’s take a journey on one through ten.
Titles:
The Single Guy.
The Odd Couple.
Three’s Company.
Number of characters:
Four seems to be a magic number.
4-A. Classic sitcoms. I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Seinfeld, and Will & Grace all share a striking similarity: four major characters in a New York apartment.
4-B. Law & Order. The longest running network drama has four major characters, two detectives and two assistant district attorneys. Purists might argue the number is six because of the police lieutenant and the D.A., however, most of the scenes appear to use some combination of the aforementioned four.
4-C. HBO’s Entourage uses four primary characters -- a movie star, his half-brother and his two friends.
Five children on The Partridge Family.
Six on The Brady Bunch. NBC’s powerhouse sitcom Friends also had six major characters.
Seven is interesting.
It was the name George Costanza chose for his future offspring on Seinfeld. Unfortunately, it lost significance when the pregnant cousin of George’s fiancé Susan took it for her newborn baby.
Seven was also the name of a child the Bundys adopted on Married With Children. Then, like Chuck Cunningham, he just wasn’t there one day, though he was referenced briefly in a dream sequence when Kelly had to empty her brain of useless information and a picture of Seven floated by.
Back to titles.
Eight is Enough.
The Nine.
Just the Ten of Us.
Numbers can play an important part in the plot line of a show. In Lost, the following numbers have terrific significance: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.
First, they’re Hurley’s winning lottery numbers.
Second, they’re on the bottle of medication that Desmond takes.
Third, they’re the numbers Desmond has to enter into the computer every 108 minutes. Coincidentally, or maybe not, the numbers total 108 when added together.
When he didn’t, he triggered a reaction that caused an Oceanic Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles to crash on the island. The numbers have also appeared individually or in some combination throughout the series. For example, the Oceanic flight number is 815.
Numbers.
They’re not just for Nielsen ratings anymore.