The Classic TV Database

"He's just like E.T.," says a character of the fuzzy extraterrestrial stranded on Earth in the pilot episode of ALF. But the fun of this late 1980s family sitcom is that the sardonic ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form) is nothing like the interplanetary innocent of Steven Spielberg's classic. With his whiplash wit and huck…

Some like it Hanks in this cross-dressing sitcom that launched one of Hollywood's most accomplished careers. It doesn't get any "Before They Were Stars" than this. The future Oscar-winner hadn't even made Bachelor Party yet! Hanks (in riffing, wiseass mode that lives on in Vince Vaughan), and Peter Scolari star as strugglin…

Directed by Karen Arthur, written by a female team, and starring two filmic heroes of the feminist movement--Sharon Gless as Christine Cagney and Tyne Daly as Mary-Beth Lacey--the show pioneered on-screen presentation of independent, working women. With Cagney as the career-minded single woman, and Lacey as the mother/wife …

Sam Malone, a former relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, owns and runs Cheers, a cozy bar in Boston. Somewhat snobby, beautiful and intelligent Diane Chambers - forced to become a waitress when her fiance jilts her - constantly bickers with Sam. Eventually, they fall in love. Several wacky characters make the bar their h…

Looking back at season 1 of The Cosby Show, it's easy to forget that momentous history was being made. Not only did this immensely popular sitcom hold the #1 spot among all network TV shows for five consecutive seasons (a record that still stands), but it promoted an evolutionary progression that influenced the entire TV in…

More than just a ratings hit for NBC, the Norman Lear/Bud Yorkin-produced Diff'rent Strokes was a pop-culture phenomenon, thanks largely to the wise-beyond-his-years performance of star Gary Coleman. Launched in November 1978 as a mid-season replacement for the failed Joe Namath series The Waverly Wonders, Diff'rent Strokes…

The Dukes of Hazzard was part of America's redneck fetish in the mid-to-late 1970s, otherwise evident in popular songs, movies, and television shows highlighting fast cars, truckers, citizens' band radio, moonshine, irreverent hicks, and clueless lawmen. Created by writer-producer Gy Waldron and inspired by his own 1975 boo…

Before Degrassi Junior High and Seventh Heaven, there was The Facts of Life--a feel-good sitcom where a lesson was learned at the end of each episode. Set in an all-girl boarding school, the series spanned nine seasons, countless hairdos, and an array of cast members and guest stars--some of whom (George Clooney, Helen Hunt…

Though it emerged during the Reagan era, Family Ties remains as relevant as ever. Most children find their parents a little embarrassing, but what sets this sitcom apart is that former hippies Steven and Elyse Keaton, (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney), now find themselves in 1980's America trying to raise a traditi…

Launched during the neon-lit 1980s, The Golden Girls shed light on a side of Miami ignored by Miami Vice. In other words, no drugs, no murder--just four women of "a certain age," spending their golden years in the sun. Like the theme, "Thank You for Being a Friend," the long-running sitcom was about friendship (not crime). …

Believe it or not, he’s walking on air! William Katt is back as reluctant flying crime fighter Ralph Hinkley, who would know exactly how to use the red superpower suit given to him by aliens if he hadn’t lost its instruction manual. In this season, Ralph pitches in the World Series, prevents World War III, suffers amnesia, …

Meet the Seavers in this hilariously successful late eighties sit-com about a family of five living out on Long Island. Maggie has recently rejoined the workforce as a journalist leaving Jason a psychiatrist to juggle his responsibilities to his patients and his three kids by working from home. Mike's the oldest and possibl…

This popular situation comedy was the flip side of Welcome Back Kotter. Instead of underachieving "sweathogs," its focus was on the over achieving honor students at Manhattan's Milliard Fillmore High School. They were so brainy, in fact, that most of their former teachers had just read books while they taught themselves. En…

A gritty, realistic look at the life of cops in a large (and unnamed) metropolitan city. Led by Capt. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti), the cops of the Hill Street Station kept the peace -- though there were plenty of casulties along the way. Focusing more on the characters within in the precinct than on the cases they we…

Knots Landing was a Dallas spinoff that spent its first season in marked contrast to the latter series' tales of power-grabbing, greed, corruption, conspiracies, and fraternal rivalries. Where Dallas concerned travails of an ultra-rich and influential Texas family, and its many enemies0--all great fantasy stuff--Knots Landi…

Set aboard the Pacific Princess, a luxury cruise ship which embarked each week on a romantic, sentimental, and often hilarious voyage across tropic seas. Three or four stories told on each telecast were interwoven and often involved the ship's crew, who were seen on the show every week. Famous movie and TV stars were deligh…

Like James Bond--but without the high-tech gadgets--Angus MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson) is one of those rare beings who can avert any crisis without mussing a hair. (The rest of us should be so lucky.) In the pilot alone, the secret agent dismantles a missile using a paper clip and fashions a rocket thruster out of a pis…

This series is largely remembered for the stylish clothes Detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs wore, the soundtrack, and its distinct visuals. But beneath the veneer is a surprisingly dark cop show. The cocaine boom of the 1980s framed many stories about drugs and murder, with Crockett and Tubbs often resorting to vi…

Children who love Robin Williams as the voice of Aladdin or as Mrs. Doubtfire will get a blast out of the show that blasted him into the stratosphere, and made "Nanoo, Nanoo" a national catch-phrase. Mork & Mindy, a spin-off of a season 5 Happy Days episode, was a tailor-made star vehicle for Williams, who won a Golden Glob…

Mr. Belvedere centered around the Owens family who lived in suburban Pittsburgh. George Owens was a sports writer and his wife, Marsha was a homemaker/law-student. They had three children, 16 year old Kevin, 14 year old Heather and 8 year old Wesley. The series began when it got to the point where Marsha couldn't handle the…

My Two Dads began airing in the fall of 1987 on NBC Sunday nights at 8pm. The sitcom starred Greg Evigan, who had previous fame from the TV series B.J. and the Bear and Paul Reiser, who later starred in the acclaimed TV comedy, Mad About You. The two played lifelong friends, Joey Harris and Michael Taylor resepectively. Rou…

One of the zaniest and bawdiest shows to hit network primetime in the 1980s, Night Court starred Harry Anderson as the Mel Tormé-loving, magic-playing, too-young judge Harry Stone presiding over the night beat of New York. Joining him were lecherous assistant district attorney Dan (John Larroquette), bald Bunyanesque bailif…

Relying on the tried-but-true odd-couple set up, Perfect Strangers focuses on the comical lives of Larry Appleton (Mark Linn-Baker) and Balki Bartokomous (Bronson Pinchot). Larry is an uptight American who has moved away from his family's Wisconsin home for his own apartment in Chicago. His life is changed forever when his …

Back in 1982, it was perfectly fine to refer to the 12-year-old star of Silver Spoons as Ricky Schroder. It wouldn't be until his young adult years, when he went on to star in such projects as Lonesome Dove, 24, and NYPD Blue that Schroder would try to distance himself from the sitcom that made him a household name and repl…

Small Wonder was a sci-fi sitcom about a family who has a robot daughter. Ted Lawson, an engineer at a huge robotics firm, brings home a project that he is working on: a robot in the shape of a 10-year-old girl. The robot was a Voice Input Child Indenticant (V.I.C.I.), but was nicknamed Vicki for short. Not only did she br…

Beginning its six-year run in 1982, St. Elsewhere was neither television's first ensemble medical drama nor, heaven knows, its last. Even now, when "reality" programming blights the landscape like some biblical plague, doc, cop, and lawyer shows remain staples of the medium, and while the likes of C.S.I., E.R., and Grey's A…

The show, set in Chicago, revolved around Webster Long, a seven-year-old African-American orphan (Emmanuel Lewis) whose biological parents were recently killed in a car accident. He is then taken in by retired football star George Papadopolis (Alex Karras), with whom his late father played professional football in the 1970s…

Who's the Boss? was a standard sitcom--turned on its head. Sure, there was a mom, a dad, two cute kids, a house in the suburbs... and a live studio audience. But Angela Bower (Judith Light) was a single advertising exec with a son (Danny Pintauro) and Tony Micelli (Tony Danza) was a widowed ex-ballplayer with a daughter (fu…