Comedy · 1950s
13 shows13 sequences
1 sequenceI Love Lucy
1951–1957CBSComedy
A satin heart on a cigarette-brand backdrop — a title card that exists because the sponsor paid for it, and which outlived the sponsor by seventy years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Honeymooners
1955–1956CBSComedy
A moon over Brooklyn and an orchestra — the sitcom that most American sitcoms since are a variation on, in thirty-nine episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
1952–1966ABCComedy
A real family playing themselves for fourteen years, which is the longest-running live-action sitcom in American television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Knows Best
1954–1960CBS / NBCComedy
The Anderson family of Springfield, and the series the phrase came from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Danny Thomas Show
1953–1964ABC / CBSComedy
Eleven years of a nightclub comedian's home life, and the series The Andy Griffith Show was spun out of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRomper Room
1953–1994SyndicationComedy
A franchised preschool programme licensed to local stations, each with its own hostess and the same magic mirror.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Donna Reed Show
1958–1966ABCComedy
A sitcom its star produced herself, which is why the mother in it has a job the plot takes seriously.
- Season 8
1 sequenceThe Phil Silvers Show
1955–1959CBSComedy
A military march for a sergeant running every racket on the base — the ancestor of every workplace comedy about a charming fraud.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOur Miss Brooks
1952–1956CBSComedy
Eve Arden as a high-school English teacher, in a radio transfer that ran on both media at once.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHancock's Half Hour
1956–1961BBCComedy
Galton and Simpson's radio series moved to television, and the point at which British sitcom stopped being a variety turn.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
1950–1958CBSComedy
A sitcom in which the husband watches the rest of the episode on a television in his study and comments on it — thirty years before anyone called that postmodern.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMr Squiggle
1959–1999ABC (Australia)Comedy
A marionette from the moon with a pencil for a nose, turning children's scribbles into drawings for forty years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Colgate Comedy Hour
1950–1955NBCComedy
A live variety hour with a different star each week, made to take the audience off Ed Sullivan.
- Season 4