The Classic TV Database

The Addams Family was a perplexingly macabre and wealthy family who lived on North Cemetray Ridge. The family members included the head of the house Gomez, who had rather destructive instincts. Morticia was the beautiful but somber lady of the house. Uncle Fester was Gomez's wacky older brother. Lurch, the butler, was a sev…

Since its network debut in 1960, The Andy Griffith Show has been a viewer favorite thanks to its folksy, nostalgic charm and memorable cast, both of which shine in this set featuring the series' debut season. Originally spun off from an episode of Make Room for Daddy (both series shared producers Sheldon Leonard and Danny T…

Shown in Great Britain for more than five years (debuting in 1961) before it caught on in America, The Avengers is a secret-agent thriller that almost bests James Bond. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - and adventurous citizen Emma Peel repeatedly saved the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally d…

After inheriting a vast fortune after his parents are killed by a gangster, Bruce Wayne vows to avenge their deaths by spending his life fighting crime in Gotham City. Cared for by Alfred, the family butler and Harriet Cooper, his aunt. Bruce adopts the orphaned, teenaged Dick Greyson. Together they adopt the guises o…

From the creative genius of TV pioneer Paul Henning (The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show, Love That Bob, Petticoat Junction), comes the story of poor Ozark mountaineer Jed Clampett and his kin, striking it rich with oil and headin' for Beverly Hills, California. Join the feistiest Granny of them all, wise Uncle Jed, his cr…

Samantha has fallen in love with New York ad exec Darrin Stephens and seems like she's the luckiest girl alive when she marries him in the first episode. The trouble in this situation comedy begins when Darrin finds out that Sam is part of a secret society of powerful witches and warlocks and has great magic at the twitch o…

The Cartwright's thousand-square-mile Ponderosa Ranch is located near Virginia City, Nevada, site of the Comstock Silver Lode, during and after the Civil War. Each of the sons was born to a different wife of Ben's; with none of the mothers still alive. Join Ben (Lorne Greene), Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker) and …

The comedic chemistry of The Dick Van Dyke Show is legendary. Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore's collaboration created one of the funniest couples in TV history. They were backed up by Morey Amsterdam (?human joke machine? Maurice) and Rose Marie (the sharp-tongued, husband hunting Sally).

Flipper was a show about a fish and wildlife ranger named Porter Ricks, and his two sons, Sandy and Bud. The show centers around a precocious pet dolphin, named Flipper, and all their adventures. Flipper was a spinoff from the 1963 feature film. Flipper's theme song also remains one of the most popular themes from the 196…

The right show at the right time, Get Smart brilliantly spoofed the spy genre that was all the rage in 1965, with James Bond on the big screen, and such series as Danger Man, The Avengers, The Saint, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and I Spy more or less playing it straight on the small screen. Get Smart, on the other hand, had a …

Despite critical barbs as sharp as a Maroobi spear, Gilligan's Island has proven unsinkable. Its first season was 1964's top-rated show. The expository theme song is one of television's most quoted, and its characters--the Skipper (Alan Hale Jr.), first mate Gilligan (Bob Denver), the millionaire (Jim Backus) and his wife (…

Golll-eeeee! The '60s' favorite TV country bumpkin, Gomer Pyle, won the hearts of viewers on The Andy Griffith Show, and spun off in to his own wildly popular series, Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.. As the eternally cheery and clueless Gomer, Jim Nabors gives a comic tour de force performance as a newbie Marine under the command of th…

New York lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas longs for a simpler way of life. So he buys a farm, sight unseen, and moves there to live off the land, much to the chagrin of his socialite wife, Lisa. The collision of small-town life and Lisa's sophisticated ways - she insists on wearing full-length gowns and ostentatious jewelr…

Gunsmoke was set in Dodge City, Kansas; the year, arbitrarily, was 1873. Crusty old Doc Adams, the only cast member besides Arness to stay with the show for its entire twenty year run, was the town's kindly, sympathetic physician. Doc spent most of his spare time, as did many of Dodge City's residents, at the Longbranch Sal…

Stalag 13, a German prisoner-of-war camp officially run by the naive and inept Colonel Wilhelm Klink and his obese, bumbling assistant, Sergeant Hans Schultz. Unofficially, events and camp life are manipulated by Colonel Robert Hogan, U.S. Army Corps, senior officer in camp. Assisted by inmates LeBeau, Newkirk, Carter, Kinc…

Oh, the innocent days when the sexiest thing on television was Barbara Eden's hidden navel! In the classic 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, an astronaut stranded on a desert island discovered a bottle containing a genie--a shapely blond genie in scarves and diaphanous pantaloons! He sets her free, but she follows him back t…

One of the most successful of the numerous 1960's nonsensical sitcoms was this one about a talking horse. Solid writing, a classic theme song, and palpable chemistry between man and horse led to the show's success. Mister Ed belonged to Wilbur Post played by Alan Young, a young architect who had decided to move out of the c…

If there ever were a family that embodied the highest ideals of family values, the Munsters would qualify, despite the fact the father is a Frankenstein monster and the mother comes from a line of vampires and werewolves. A zany parody of family sitcoms, The Munsters is the story of the bizarre, but close-knit Munster clan.…

My Favorite Martian first aired in September of 1963 on CBS and was probably one of the first sitcoms with a "bizarre" or fantasy premise to emerge in the early to mid 1960's. It joined the ranks with Mister Ed which began in 1961. The series centered around Tim O'Hara, who worked as a reporter for The Los Angeles Sun. T…

When one thinks of cutting edge television, My Three Sons does not immediately leap to mind, but this beloved Boomer-era staple (it ran for 12 seasons, which, for a family sitcom, is second in longevity only to The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet) broke the nuclear family mold. Fred MacMurray's Steve Douglas was a widower, ra…

The hit Western series Rawhide is known for giving future star Clint Eastwood his start. The story revolves around a group of twenty riders looking after a herd of thousands. With so many head of cattle to look after, the riders often ran into trouble, including lack of water, anthrax, wolves, ghost riders, and of course, c…

Space. The Final Frontier. In 1966, Star Trek set out to boldly go where no series had gone before, beginning a three-year mission that led to a franchise that would last decades. The now world-reknowned series Star Trek follows the crew of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise as it completes its missions in space in the 23rd cen…

Submitted for your approval: To discuss television's greatest anthology series whose title has become pop culture shorthand for the bizarre and supernatural is to immediately become like Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd in Twilight Zone: The Movie; a can-you-top-this recall of famous shocks and favorite twists. Several essenti…