The retro hour

Tele rewind

A warm broth simmering on the hob, dinner for five with bread and new potatoes, sons at the table with demands like — “can I borrow $5 for a new sweater to impress my girlfriend,” mothers who say, “No makeup for my girls till they are 18” and daughters who need permission to go to a party on school night... do these scenes sound familiar?

These are excerpts from TV shows that were shown a few decades ago and the scenes depicted then are worlds apart from our sitcoms today, we often remember  them with great nostalgia. This year, it’s celebration time for many TV shows including TFI Friday and Gilmore Girls, as they commemorate the success of their sitcoms or plan reunions to mark the memory of their shows, and as always, there is a deluge of memories at this time of the year about the way things were on television once.

Changing times

In the scripts that are played out on television today, no young man would ask his father for money to impress a girl. He would be thinking up clever lines for his Facebook update or a smart comeback on WhatsApp. A young girl today would perhaps tell her mother she has no time to go out for a party even on the weekend, because she has to cram for another competitive exam. It would be the mother trying to make the girls go out, wear makeup and have fun, and not the other way around.

Television shows of yesteryear relied heavily on tradition, family bonding, laying down of rules and jokes aplenty. They took you down the path of gentle moralising, a hint of old fashioned values and a world of great aspiration. The father was always a lawyer, a doctor or a millionaire. The mother was either committed to home making or juggling her career and her home like a superwoman. The children were paragons of virtue, who rebelled sometimes, only to be brought back to the right path with the wisdom of their parents. There was always a home cooked meal at the end of the day, there was always a moral to take home, a thought to dwell on and an idea to discuss later.

While we all love the irreverence in TV shows today, the older shows took us back to a time when life was perhaps so much simpler and therefore, sweeter. Who can forget The Wonder Years, where the protagonist Kevin Arnold, played by Fred Savage, dwells on a golden time of his childhood, when all he had to do was woo his girlfriend, fight with his brother and obey his father. Some of the best lines from the serials still live on in our minds, like Kevin Arnold’s immortal quote: “Things never turn out exactly the way you planned. Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day, you’re in diapers; next day, you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place... a town... a house... like a lot of other houses; a yard like a lot of other yards; on a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is... after all these years, I still look back... with wonder.”

Dose of morality

Another TV show that was a household favourite was Doogie Howser, M.D. In the sitcom, actor Neil Patrick Harris plays the role of a medical prodigy who is only 10 years old and has graduated from Princeton. He is Dr Douglas Howser, MD, nicknamed Doogie. This 1989-93 comedy-drama followed Doogie’s daily problems as a child doctor in a busy hospital. Most of us loved to hear the familiar question from a patient who would say, “Wait a minute... you are a kid.” And Doogie would reply, “True, but I’m also a genius. If you have a problem with that, I can get you an older doctor who’s not as smart as me.” He recorded his daily thoughts on his computer at the end of each day where he chronicled his thoughts about life and death, disease and the human body. He would write stuff like... “Learned a lesson in anatomy today. Of the body’s six hundred muscles, the hardest to keep in shape is the heart.”

Another favourite was Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, where actor Will Smith plays the role of a country bumpkin in the big city. Will’s mother sends him away from his rough Philadelphia neighbourhood to live with his Uncle Phil, Aunt Vivian and his cousins in Bel-Air, so that he can improve his manners and his life. Will, however, manages to change the atmosphere of his uncle’s palatial home with his own brand of humour and simplicity. Who changes whom? That is the crux of this delightful show that held viewers in its spell for six years and several seasons.

For the politically minded, there was Yes Minister, a political satire about a British minister who relied heavily on his advisors as he was clueless about what was going on around him. No one was ever sure who was really funnier, the Minister Jim Hacker played by Paul Eddington or his Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Nigel Hawthorne.
Crime shows came with super hot heroes like Pierce Brosnan, in Remington Steele, and the lovely Stephanie Zimbalist, a private detective who launches a detective agency only to find that clients refuse to hire a woman. So, she invents a fictitious male boss called Remington Steele and con man Pierce Brosnan agrees to take on the role. There are many power struggles in the show and a dash of romance too that viewers loved at the time.

Another popular show, Diff’rent Strokes, was the story of two African American boys who were adopted by a rich Park Avenue widower called Phillip Drummond. The younger boy, Arnold, played by Gary Coleman and his catchphrase, “Whatchoo talkin’ bout Willis” was often quoted by his fans. In this TV show, subjects like racism and drug abuse were addressed and it was a great hit for over 10 seasons.

There are endless shows that TV viewers yearn to see again. Whether it was the science fiction sitcom Small Wonder, the famous British sitcom Are you being served that was full of double entendres, the famous I Love Lucy series about a daffy woman and her crazy problems, The Cosby Show with its loveable family, The Bold and the Beautiful, full of glamorous people, or the show Knight Rider with the inimitable David Hasselhoff and his artificially intelligent Pontiac Firebird, KITT — these shows were much loved when they were aired. Fortunately, there are many reruns today of TV shows like Friends, Home Improvement and Mind Your Language, but many of the other shows have disappeared into the annals of television history. We can only look back in nostalgia and think of the magic they brought to our lives at one time, and somewhere in the depths of our hearts and memories, we know they will live on forever.