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What is an older TV show that you really think would be relevant today, both from an artistic and cultural standpoint?
Lots of older shows were quite innovative and groundbreaking even for today, so I'm curious to know what you would like to present to younger audiences!
Survivor
It first aired in 2000 and popularized the now-standard reality elimination format that we pretty much take for granted. Most people think of Survivor as something that happened "back then", but did you know that it is still in production?
Moreover, did you know that it has had forty two seasons so far?
As a direct answer to the question it's kind of cheating, because it's not necessarily an "old" show if it's still running, but I'm including it because it feels like it fits the answer in spirit.
The show has a very dedicated following, and the producers are continuing to evolve the format through incremental steps. Even though it's, on paper, a game about literal "survival" (food and shelter and whatnot), it's actually much more about social strategy and intrigue, with everyone scheming and plotting and allying and backstabbing one another in an attempt to win the prize money.
The "survival" aspect is simply the producers' way of turning up the heat on the players, and it's actually refreshingly organic. Other reality shows tend to be very heavily produced or the contestants are put under undue and unnecessary pressures as a way of trying to elicit conflict. Meanwhile, Survivor doesn't have to heavily "produce" anything, as the drama is built into the format itself.
Furthermore, it has been on so long that there's an entire meta-layer to the show now. The people playing have watched all the previous seasons and know winning and losing strategies. In fact, many seasons have returning players who have competed on previous seasons.
For example, one viewer noticed that an optional puzzle went unused on a previous season and assumed that the producers were likely to reuse in a later season given that the props had already been made but never actually used. Thus, he memorized how to solve it and, sure enough, when he was cast on the show, he encountered that exact puzzle and solved it in 15 seconds.
There's all sorts of stuff like this, as the people that are into Survivor tend to be very into Survivor. Part of the reason I included it here is that rewatching old seasons is like, fully part of the experience. There's an entire coding system called "edgic" that examines the "edit" of each player in each episode, looking at things like number of confessionals they're in, whether they're portrayed positively or negatively, etc. It's almost incomprehensible at first glance, but fans literally track and tally this sort of stuff as a way of attempting to suss out and evaluate winners and losers. Furthermore, the producers of the show are aware of stuff like this and adjust their practices accordingly.
The show is noteworthy not just for what it is, but for the community it has developed alongside it. Talking about players' strategy, both in anticipation and in hindsight, is as fun as, if not more fun than, watching the show itself.
I also think that, culturally speaking, Survivor's diverse representation is noteworthy. The show recently committed to having at least 50% BIPOC cast members and has increased its LGBT contestants as well, but I give the show credit for a long history of putting a relatively wide spread of everyday people on television. Granted, it is not without its issues, of course, but where else in 2000 could you find a public television network's flagship show featuring an openly gay leading man -- much less one that's not portrayed as a femme stereotype but instead a complex, powerful, Machiavellian schemer -- and much less one who ends up winning the game's popular vote among his peers to take the million?! 1
Meanwhile, two more recent seasons featured Zeke Smith. Zeke is, outside of Chaz Bono, probably the only trans man I encountered in mass video media up to that point (and sadly one of only a few since). How many other shows, even as recently as 2017, have trans men in them -- much less one with the name-recognition of Survivor?
In Zeke's second season on the show, he was -- unexpectedly and very unfortunately -- outed by another player to the others during Tribal Council. The person who outed him was attempting to say that Zeke "hiding" his trans status made him untrustworthy.
When I was watching this as it aired, my breath left my chest and didn't return for minutes. It was harrowing, and I cannot imagine being outed as trans in that moment, much less on national television, and much less in such a malicious way -- that not disclosing one's queerness is a product of willful deception rather than an individual and deeply personal choice with a whole world's worth of reasons to justify it.
What followed, however, is some of the most moving and powerful "real" television I've ever seen. Zeke's fellow contestants all speak up in support of him and against the outing -- unconditionally and unilaterally. The host, Jeff Probst, completely breaks the Tribal Council format to change it to a group processing of the moment. Zeke himself gives a heartfelt and moving speech about himself and who he is. As my breath came back it gave way to genuine tears.
After the discussion, instead of holding a vote, Probst simply gets verbal confirmation from everyone that the person who outed Zeke will be the one leaving. Probst is big on rules and on Survivor being "his" show (he has been an executive producer and the host for all 42 seasons), so his unprecedented refusal to hold a formal vote was essentially his way of saying "get off my show" within the allowable parameters. It read as a very Survivor-specific way of sanctioning the outing and supporting Zeke in that moment.
That moment ended up being a powerful lived lesson, as well as a genuinely affirming show of support for Zeke specifically and trans people in general. It's also a good small slice of what makes Survivor an engaging and relevant show overall. While this particular moment was certainly out of the ordinary, it was rooted in something extraordinarily ordinary: the player relationships that are formed on the island. The people who came to Zeke's defense did so because they had been living with him for weeks at that point and had grown close to him, and that happens across contestants and seasons. It's what makes the intrigue so powerful, because these aren't just people trying to get ahead of each other -- it's also people who are mutually dependent on each other and who come to cherish and value one another.
Survivor, more than probably any other reality show, tends to transcend the cheap, gimmicky trappings of "reality elimination show" and venture more into the realm of authentic human drama, and that has carried it for an astonishing forty two seasons.
1: Edit: Talked to my husband (the real Survivor fan and the only reason I know about all the stuff I wrote up) about Richard Hatch, learned some stuff I didn't previously know, and am, uh... considerably less enthusiastic about him. I still think his casting and gameplay were important, especially for the time (he pioneered alliances!), but also, not exactly someone we should be holding in high esteem.
I appreciate the interesting write-up about the show. I never knew it had such a dedicated following still.
I would be cautious about this and it may be because you and your husband are a little too involved but what do I know :). I remember when it aired the first time and maybe it's because we are comparing it with today's standard reality editing and drama infusion but Survivor was always heavy on this too. They were just among the first and it kinda fades looking at today's shows in comparison. I do agree though that it had natural build in tension with competitions and the "survival" aspect especially compared to Big Brother, Real World etc. that were popular around the same time.
Oh definitely. I meant that it's organic specifically within the parameters of "reality elimination" shows. You can do a lot worse than Survivor in the genre. My husband and I have been watching RuPaul's Drag Race since its inception, for example, and it's on the complete other end of the spectrum.
That is a great account! Although I was not familiar with the notion that recent seasons of the show were left unnoticed by viewers, I also know nothing about it's rich history and fandom, and I'm always interested in juicy /r/hobbydrama.
I’m honestly only scratching the surface. There is SO much more depth to the show and its community, but I’m also not the one who could speak to those in a way that does them justice.
Believe it or not, despite everything I wrote above, I’m not actually a huge Survivor fan myself. I just happen to be married to one. 😁
After reading this I had to go look up that episode you described and I can confirm it is an intense experience.
You can really see how ashamed the guy is of himself by the end of it, but only by the end of it: you can easily imagine how it would have gone differently with a less empathetic or less close-knit group. He throws out these weak excuses "I wasn't saying it was a bad thing", "we're playing for a million dollars", and it's only when they're all met with shocked disgust does it dawn on him what a transparently awful thing he did.
Good recommendation.
Wow, this entire part of the description is hard reminding me of Jeopardy. Did you come across Holzhauer's forum posts from before he applied to be on the show, talking about the strategy he developed for when he'll get on it? Pretty mind blowing stuff.
Nope! Never heard of those until now.
Also, it's funny you mention this, because the only time I ever see Jeopardy is when my husband turns on the TV to watch Survivor, as Jeopardy airs right beforehand. I usually catch the Final Jeopardy question and get really excited when I actually know it (which is, uh, quite rare 😆).
I felt like in its stride Malcolm in the Middle hit the dysfunctional family trope on the head in a realistic, only occasionally exaggerated manner. At least for me it was less "lol they're not a dynamic family" and more "oh shit, that's crazy mom shit that I've seen and experienced." Conversely, I think Modern Family presented a non-dysfunctional family in a surprisingly realistic light, but it is quite a bit newer. I just remember it wasn't saccharine or sappy.
Pick a Star Trek, as well, because we're still dealing with a lot of dilemmas those many series discussed in detail. Frankly I don't think you could go wrong with any of the older series, but I haven't watched anything newer than DS9.
MASH was a solid show, dealt a lot with the horrors of war which many of us simply won't experience, but also the daily struggles of life in interacting societies, even just across the same society (class interactions among people of the same rank, interactions across ranks in the unit, etc). I went through a phase where I watched a lot of it, and my mom still kicks it on, so I'll sit and watch it.
The latest series, Strange New Worlds, opens with the crew being in an unfortunate situation that necessitates them making first contact with a pre-Warp civilization that is experiencing political turmoil not unlike what we've been experiencing in the US over the last two years. The January 6 Capital riot is even directly mentioned (and shown through archival footage) at some point.
The whole first season was also fantastic, definitely worth a watch if you're a fan of TOS, TNG, and DS9.
Strange New Worlds gives me hope that Star Trek can return to its former glory.
A bunch of the ones I probably would have mentioned already have been by others (M*A*S*H, Twilight Zone, Queer as Folk, The Wire, Buffy, Malcolm in the Middle, Ally McBeal, Star Trek/TNG/DS9), but here are a few more that haven't yet:
Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962)
Very similar to Twilight Zone but with more horror and less scifi focus, this anthology series also explores many universal themes, features many acclaimed actors, and absolutely stands the test of time.
The Outer Limits (1963-1965)
Similar to AHP and Twilight Zone but far more scifi focused. Not as good as either, IMO, especially since it was very low budget, with '50s/'60s B-movie scifi creature costumes to match, but if you can look past that aspect it's still well worth watching.
The Wonder Years (1988-1993)
One of the first "coming of age" focused shows that I'm aware of, at least to achieve lasting success. It has influenced and inspired countless other shows (including Malcolm in the Middle), even outside that genre, especially due to its unique (at the time) narration. It's a bit dated now in terms of the particular issues it covered and how, due to being a product of its time, but IMO the underlying themes it explored are still very much relevant.
Oz (1997-2003)
Whenever people talk about the new "Golden Age" of "Prestige" television, Sopranos always seems to be the first show mentioned, and often the primary focus. Don't get me wrong, I agree that it was a very good show. However, Oz predated it by two years, and was just as good (if not better), but IMO the issues it focuses on actually remain far more relevant (in the US) to this day than those in Sopranos, and it was also far more groundbreaking, both thematically and visually.
Six Feet Under (2001-2005)
Like Oz, this is another oft-overshadowed-by-Sopranos, landmark drama from HBO. It's quite dark and often painfully depressing, but it's balanced by also being incredibly heartfelt, thoughtful, and at times quite funny too. It's a nuanced, low-key, almost meditative exploration of the serious issues surrounding life, death, mental illness, love, loss, and family. It also has one of the most emotionally powerful finales I have ever seen.
Nip/Tuck (2003-2010)
Similar-ish to Six Feet Under, in that it's also dark, sometimes funny, and often depressing, but almost the opposite in that it's not subdued or nuanced at all. Instead, it's far more on-the-nose, over-the-top, shocking, grotesque, hedonistic, provocative, and mired in interpersonal conflict and soap-opera-ish melodrama. It was also a show not afraid to touch on incredibly taboo subjects beyond just its primary focus on the darker side of plastic surgery. Despite its various shortcomings (and there are many, especially as the seasons progress), it's still highly recommended, and quite relevant to today, IMO.
Honorable mentions: Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me. Both charming, short-lived, Bryan Fuller created comedies about death, that had so much potential, and were a bit reminiscent of The Good Place in their themes and tone. It's truly a shame they were cancelled before they were given time to shine like Good Place was though.
The ones I keep coming back to:
Have you tried The Orville? It's like Star Trek, but optimistic again.
I love The Orville, specially after they pretty much gave up on making a comedy and made into a full blown Trek-like show (with a few jokes in between).
I honestly think telling Fox it was going to be full-blown comedy is how it got on the air, and then they waited until the network wasn't looking and eased off the gas.
This.
The Orville is honestly one of my favorite Trek shows (and that says a lot), but only after the first three episodes, and especially after the entirety of season one, and most certainly with season three.
I think MacFarlane wanted a straighter homage and Fox demanded his usual comedic fare, and then they backed off once they were solid. It's a gut feeling more than anything, but you get a glimpse of it in the very first episode, when he makes a very classy quip of "Happy Arbor Day", and then Kelly says it should have been "You got wood" and everyone agrees with her... I think they were written to represent the Fox people.
This is definitely a show that was green lit under the guise of "comedy in space, made by the creator of family guy" with the ulterior motive that MacFarlene really just wanted to make a prim and proper modern hard star trek series.
I give him props.. he told the execs what they wanted to hear and rode it out until they got distracted by the newer shiny.
I'm not fully caught up on S3 but honestly, this may be the season that elevates it beyond any of the "actual" Treks for me. The episode of "A Tale of Two Topas" is hands-down one of the most amazing hours of TV I have ever watched. The performances and writing are incredible. It directly and un-apologetically engages with a difficult and hot-button current-day social topic, and does it while building and extending the backstories and character arcs of our established cast.
I absolutely agree. I just finished Midnight Blue a few seconds ago. I won’t spoon anything, but it jerked a few tears from me.
Twice in a Lifetime was really hard for me for personal reasons, it really tore me up, I had to go sit quietly and console myself for a few hours after that one.
I have heard of it, but it’s not on my watchlist just yet. I’m still working my way through the Star Trek archives (even the subpar series). ;)
We Own This City, which was recently ended, was very similar to The Wire. It's set in Baltimore, has the same writers/creators, even has some of the same actors, and it depicts the same problems. I've not yet seen The Wire but the people who did and loved it adored We Own This City. As a standalone piece, separate from The Wire, I did too.
Just added that to my list!
The Prisoner is always salient.
There was a made for tv movie in the 80’s about replacing newscasters with deepfakes.
I cant find this. When was it made exactly?
The Prisoner
Thanks. I had tried to watch this show, and didn't remember anything about deep fake newscasters.
Those are two separate shows I mentioned. I can’t remember the title of the made for tv movie, alas.
wikipedia
The Twilight Zone (1959)
Most older shows were formulaic (the same characters following the same plot.)
Each episode in Rod Sterlings The Twilight Zone were basically high quality short movies, often with woke social commentary ahead of its time.
I love original Twilight Zone, this show had a profound influence in my life, it basically set my obsession for speculative fiction which is so important to me. I love hearing Rod Serling speak. Everything I write (or try to write) in speculative fiction is in some level an attempt to make people feel like I felt watching Twilight Zone when I was younger. I even liked Jordan Peele's revival, I think it was grossly misunderstood and unfairly cancelled.
One great thing about original Twilight Zone was the half hour runtime -- short and sweet. These days, anthology series like Black Mirror totally miss this point.
My favorite tv show of all time is The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Even at the time Carl Reiner foresaw the everlasting popularity of the show and tried to minimize slang of the time so people in the future could understand the show more easily.
They had episodes dealing with stuff we still see today, including the decline of the American male as the show comments on from a progressive point of view. When I was first watching it in 2018 I was shocked at how relevant it was with all the conversations of “alpha” and “beta” males that guys still have amongst themselves. And how men were manly men during WW2 and now men are weak and feminine etc etc.
Good stuff.
This might just be the nostalgia talking, but there's something about The Muppet Show that makes it feel like it's always "fresh". The biggest problem with it today is that nobody knows who the stars are anymore. Though to be honest, that's usually the biggest issue I have with the newer Muppets show; I rarely know who the special guests are.
It's kind of sad that most of the Muppets shows since then have not been able to match the charm of that show. I personally attribute it to the fact that none of those projects have the framing of being in a life vaudville production; I seem to remember a lot of the jokes were springboarded off of the concept, from the appearance of Waldorf and Stadler to things happening "backstage" having an affect on the production.
The last time the Muppets came anywhere near to replicating the success of the original Muppets Show (other than perhaps Muppets Tonight in the 90s) was Muppets Now, a terribly short show on Disney Plus that still didn't have the frantic energy of the 70s show. But even without it, I really enjoyed it. The celebrities were pretty well selected (I really enjoyed the conversational segments with Rupaul talking to Kermit and Ms. Piggy), and the writing generally took really good advantage of the established Muppet characters.
Is it just me, or is The Simpsons, which is supposed to be adult animation, actually more "cartooney" and unrealistic than cartoons made today for consumption by children?
MacGyver was revived in 2016 and ended in 2021 after five seasons. I only saw the original but I guess you're right!
The Muppets had a one season revival in 2015 and was cancelled the following year. It was a mockumentary sitcom like The Office. It was not that bad (I liked it), but it was not great either.
I knew about the MacGyver revival, apparently it's pretty bad. Was unaware of the Muppets revival though!
Extremely relevant is LOST.
The six season television series ushered in a level of production craftsmanship and episodic writing that has reverberated in movies, literature, and streaming content ever since. The idea that a series could have a beginning, middle, and end that wasn't at the mercy of a gatekeeping network was unheard of before it came along.
Part of the reason I still watch this series today is because the unfolding of its story reflects those changes as they were taking place. The theme of the show was presented by dropping the wtf bomb as often as possible, in ways that played to the audience but also produced amazing music scoring, writing, and humor, as well as gripping dramatic events that again and again had major foreshadowing. Even some episodes that were absolutely hated by fans were the result of frustrations of the writers, who basically forced the network to provide them with an endpoint to the series, allowing them to work toward the finale they wanted.
The show was vilified by many for the last season, which is still misunderstood by a large percentage of people. That perception is even now being rewritten as new viewers are introduced to it twelve years later.
Wholeheartedly agree. Never have I been immersed in a show like LOST when it came out. I wrote episode discussions on tv.com and scoured the internet for theories and opinions. Things I've never done before. I downloaded the episodes as soon as they had aired because I couldn't watch it live. It was amazing to be a part of. Also compared to other shows that partly or completely fell apart in the last seasons I don't think LOST did and it certainly doesn't ruin the whole experience like with the other shows even if you end up finding the ending confusing or unsatisfying. I still recommend it to people today and will continue to do so.
For several of the seasons, I hosted LOST watch parties at my apartment where my friends would come over to watch each new episode. Some drove half an hour (one-way!) and had to suffer the pains of looking for street parking in a very crowded area -- all just to watch a TV show (but mostly to talk about it during commercials and afterwards!).
The show really was a complete phenomenon, and unlike anything that came before (or since).
Also, I'll join you and @DonQuixote in saying that I'm completely fine with how the show wrapped up. The type of ending that people were wanting where every single element of the show was neatly explained and wrapped up was clearly never going to happen, and if it did I think people would still be angry, as it would erode the show's entire conceit and mythos. The last season felt, to me, like an honoring of the characters and world that the show created, and think it's much better that the show closed on its own terms.
If I were to be completely honest, I think most TV programs were kind of shitty until the last few decades. The best shows tended to be sitcoms, and because society has changed so much most of them are very outdated and wouldn't be good for modern audiences. The oldest sitcom I can think of that I think would still interest the younger generations would probably be Just Shoot Me. For a show about running a fashion magazine, you'd expect it to be very out of date, but because the fashion aspects are secondary to the show, it's surprisingly watchable today. Beyond all of that, Wendie Malick is a treasure.
There is a drama that I think would be good for younger people to see specifically because it's not as socially relavant as it used to be, and that's Queer as Folk - The American version, specifically. Even with the outlandishness, even though there were a lot of characters who were very much unlike myself, I found it to be the most real drama of the time it was made because for the most part people were dealing with real world issues that were greater than just themselves. I think that's valuable to young people to understand where we came from so that we don't go back there.
Honestly, I think that the most important media to preserve for their artistic merit is anything and everything animated. Western cartoons have a bad rep, but there is some gold in those hills. There's a lot of very surprisingly progressive and interesting productions made by Disney in the 80s through the early 2000s that featured excellent animation with interesting and unique styles and fantastically imaginative writing. Recess presented a super imaginative world with deep lore and writing that showed more respect for children than any other show I can think of. Pepper Ann served as a guide for young girls, giving advice on how to deal with the growing pains that are more specific to them (even going so far as to talk about puberty), while still being full of enough fun so that boys could follow along and gain understanding for those kinds of issues. Teacher's Pet is a beautiful pastel-style animation that is about a boy and his dog who is secretly Nathan Lane - which earned him a Daytime Emmy, no less.
And that's just Disney; there's way more animations than I could go on about, like Reboot or Batman or a hundred thousand different Japanese productions (TMS was involved in so many amazing productions in the 80s and 90s).
I used to watch Queer as Folk. It was a fun show, unlike anything else on television at the time (2000). I've read some criticism regarding its representation of the LGBT world as overtly eroticized and promiscuous, and I suppose that makes sense. I was not familiar with the subject in real life, so to me, everything felt like an over-the-top, really fun, fantasy.
For sitcoms, I think we can go older than Just Shoot Me and still find shows that hold up with younger audiences.
Police Squad! aired in 1982 and is basically a pastiche of film noir by way of Airplane!. The noir mystery trappings are enough of a trope that modern audiences are still very familiar with them, and the slapstick writing from ZAZ is heavily reliant on wordplay and visual gags rather than pop culture references. Critically, it also does not sport a laugh track, something which live-action TV comedies in general would continue to rely on until the later '00s.
This one might be more of a stretch, but I think Hogan's Heroes holds up a lot better than most '60s sitcoms, thanks in large part to it's World War II setting. The show was shot on 35mm film, from which surprisingly modern-looking high definition transfers were made in the '00s. However the over-the-top characterizations and use of a laugh track definitely still telegraph the show's age.
I feel our world could benefit from the heart, the mythos, and the wisdom of Northern Exposure.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Northern Exposure ran from 1990 to 1995 and won a number of Emmy Awards, Golden Globes, and the like. Yet, unlike its contemporaries such as Twin Peaks and The X-Files with which it reimagined what TV could be, the show now seems fairly little talked about.
At its core, Northern Exposure is a meditation on our relationship with nature, our social configurations, our innate link with the mythic, as well as our abilities and struggles to accept ourselves as who we are or what we have the potential of being. It starts out as a fish-out-of-water story of a young New York physician forced to work in a tiny middle-of-nowhere town in Alaska, and while that storyline and its juxtapositions of urban vs rural, modern vs timeless, and scientific realism vs magic realism remain central throughout the series, it soon develops into an ensemble piece with a large cast of wonderfully quirky, eccentric, and memorable characters.
Imagine Twin Peaks, but replace the dark and scary Lynchian surrealism with much more brightly coloured existentialist, Jungian, almost shamanistic approaches to life. Add a dash of contemporary philosophy and psychology, and a large serving of the positivity of something like Ted Lasso and My Name Is Earl. This is the sort of a show where the simple act of installing a washing machine routinely turns into discussion about capitalism, human evolution and... well, basically what our world has become 30 years after that particular episode aired. But even when it sometimes paints less than desirable pictures of the human condition, it always does so with love, warmth, and a remarkable lack of irony.
All in all, Northern Exposure is a fairly postmodern, intertextual piece of television. The show was early on called a Twin Peaks copycat, to which they naturally responded by copying Twin Peaks. It often felt like no reference was out of reach for the show, including the show itself. In one way, this playful nature is probably also the reason for Northern Exposure's current unavailability on streaming services, which I understand to be due to music licensing. Renegotiating rights to the songs used in the show would be difficult and expensive, yet changing those songs would not really work as they were so thoughtfully used to enhance, underline and commentate on the show's themes and storylines. Some DVD releases were once upon a time put out without the original music, while the releases that did have the music were more expensive.
Although my ramblings here may not have convinced you to go through the trouble of digging up Northern Exposure, I think I have convinced at least one person here to start watching it. Myself. As I was selecting the YouTube links that I've used above (even YouTube has surprisingly little Northern Exposure), I started to feel a longing to go back to that fictional town of Cicely. It's been too long since I last saw it. And it was, and still remains, such a magical place.
I'm gonna say Ally McBeal (1997). A progressive legal comedy drama with musical numbers and a touch of absurd feels totally in sync with our zeitgeist. And what happened to unisex bathrooms?
The Good Fight's third season reminds me of it at times.
She-Hulk may be for you, sans musical numbers.