There was a time

I must agree that tv isn't what it was "back in the day". I hate to date myself but I never missed Time Tunnel on Friday nights back in the mid 60's.
About the time Emergency went off the air, I gave up on any serious tv program watching. Every so often I put the TV Land channel on and watch marathon episodes of I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, and others.
Cartoons from the early 60's were pretty good too...Gumby,Hercules,Wally Gator, etc. What a great time it was to grow up!

That show with the marionettes ... puppets ... whatever they are called. God I loved that when I was a kid. I bought the whole series and watched them a couple of years ago ... loved every episode again!

http://www.amazon.co...

Abner Kravitz, puffing on a bulldog during a baseball game.

This show was a favorite of my Dad's back in the day and must watch TV every Thursday night. Strange to see people sitting in a workplace and smoking, ah but those were the days. Neat website by the way

if we missed an episode of "all in the family".

...bought the complete DVD collection (all episodes) of these:

Sherlock Holmes (original Basil Rathbone)
The Bob Newhart Show
The Andy Griffith Show

We enjoy an episode frequently, almost nightly.

other than wrestling from Washington DC (Antonino Rocca and Dr Jerry Graham, et al) were Route 66, Climax Theater, Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, Playhouse 90, and, strangely enough, the Warner Bros detective and western shows. Formulaic but very well done. Bob Newhart had two incarnations on national TV; I thought both shows were as subtle and as funny as anything ever on the air. Some here may not remember either the Smothers Bros or Rowan and Martin's Laugh In (circa 1968-69) but they were well written, and topical. Dan Rowan frequently smoked a pipe as one of the hosts of the show.

I could list a lot of childhood shows that you lot will never have heard of :)

I'd love to be able to use Hulu, but it's a US only service unfortunately. I will find a way around that, but for now I use surfthechannel.com and youtube.com for old Transformers episodes, He-Man, Crash and many others.

Both were great shows, particularly Laugh-In and I can well remember Dan Rowan smoking his pipe. Remember the episode when they said goodbye to all the cigarette advertising on TV when it was outlawed around '69? Nixon even made a cameo appearance on it once as I recall.

Dick Van Dyke was great, as was the later Mary Tyler Moore show. And who could forget Archie Bunker and All In The Family? It seemed to me like comedy on TV went downhill in the late 80s-early 90s era.

My Dad always loved Andy Griffith and The Beverly Hillbillies, as did I. Who could have known that Ron Howard would grow up to be a famous Hollywood director?

Smokey

God, yes, those were cool ...

And they're not your regular ordinary marionettes either, they could actually move pretty smoothly (proof).

Anyway, for the better part I'm afraid I could, just like Lars, list a long list of series none of you have ever heard of.

But I do have fond memories of the ThunderCats ...

It made me laugh but damn, every time Brains grabbed his crotch I ... well ... that was just wrong in so many ways.

I never heard of the Thundercats ... but my all time favorite cartoon has to be Thundarr the Barbarian! http://www.youtube.c... Jeeze, can you tell that even when I was a kid I was into the whole Lord of the Rings type fantasy thing! Wow, and I still read fantasy today. Some things just don't change I guess.

My favorite series of all times is the Beverly Hillbillies. Although I was a pre teen when it first aired in 1962, this show was not just for kids. The humor was geared more for adults. In my area, this show has been on almost constantly. TV Land now airs it.

The Black and White episodes were the best. The newest color shows were sometimes unwatchable, such as their trip to England with Jethro fighting the War of the Roses, and others with him pretending to be a Hollywood movie director and agent.
The early simple episodes were wonderful entertainment.

I've been smitten(in an innocent way) with Elly May since that show began in 1962. There were many great shows on TV since the fifties, such as the Honeymooners, Twilight Zone, McHale's Navy, All in the Family, and Sanford and Son. However, my favorite by a mile is the Beverly Hillbillies.

McHale's Navy - I forgot all about that show. Gosh I used to love it.

I also used to love Lost in Space. Recently one of the networks started showing it again and now as an adult I can see that the early episodes where Dr. Smith was something more than comedic releif were far better than later episodes.

Huckleberry Hound, Mighty Mouse, Quick Draw Mcgraw, Yogi Bear, Rockey and Bullwinkle (although I never realized the satire until my later years), Roy Rogers, Rin Tin Tin, Sky King, Tom & Jerry, The road Runner....now those were some shows!!!!

DPS

Was the most violent show on television. WTF, I know rp hates abbreviations.

Your so right the road runner and for that matter most of the cartoons of my day (early to late 60's) were violent, yet it seams like people took it all with a grain of salt. We knew it was all slapstick comedy and didn't think much more of it. I grew up in a small midwestern town and it was common for school kids to bring guns to school because we planned on going duck or pheasant hunting after classes. Can you imagine that in this day and age.........

DPS

A few of us would be walking down the street on our way to the river, all of us packing either a 22 or shotgun. If anybody said anything at was (a)"Be carefull), (b)"Have a good time boys", or (c) "Does your mom know where you are?"

Now days a SWAT team and half the Oregon National Guard would be there.

I used to laugh myself to tears watching this as a kid and it still works to this day. This is funny!

http://www.youtube.c...