The trailblazer for this trend was The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), with its portrayal of small town life complete with stereotypical rural characters. The show kicked off a whole string of series set in rural communities or prominently featuring country characters, including The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Hee Haw and the Andy Griffith spinoff, Mayberry R.F.D. By the end of the decade, however, many of these series were considered irrelevant, though they still drew respectable ratings (of mostly older audiences) and were cancelled to give way to more timely series such as All in the Family and M*A*S*H.

Many 1960s TV shows also featured science-fiction and supernatural elements, including the science-fiction adventure series Star Trek, anthology series such as The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, as well as situation comedies such as My Favorite Martian, Bewitched, The Addams Family and I Dream of Jeannie. The sixties also saw a surge in the popularity of animated series airing in prime-time, which appealed to both adults and children. This trend was kicked off by the success of The Flintstones, which was quickly followed by Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mr. Magoo and The Jetsons. And 1968 saw the debut of an innovative series that would have a heavy influence on American TV comedy in the years to come: the sketch-show Laugh-In.

The show was set in the fictional rural community of Mayberry, North Carolina, and revolved around the widower Sheriff Andy Taylor (Griffith) and his young son Opie (Ron Howard). Other members of the cast of The Andy Griffith show included Frances Beaver who played Aunt Bee, a spinster aunt who served as the Taylors’ housekeeper, Betty Lynn as Thelma Lou, Barney Fife’s sweetheart and Aneta Corsaut as schoolteacher Helen Crump, Andy’s love interest. Collectively, the cast succeeded in creating a memorable portrayal of small-town life that endeared the show to millions of American viewers.

The Andy Griffith Show remained popular throughout its entire run, consistently landing in the top 10 in the Nielsen ratings and even rating number one during its final season. It also spawned two spin-off series, Gomer Pyle and Mayberry, R.F.D., a sequel series featuring the supporting characters from its parent show.  However, by the late 1960s, these shows began to seem increasingly irrelevant in the wake of the contemporary issues then dividing America, such as the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, and they were summarily canceled even though they were still drawing respectable audiences, to be replaced by more relevant shows such as M*A*S*H and All in the Family. However, The Andy Griffith Show remains an endearing favorite, and millions of Americans still watch it in syndicated reruns.

Like any popular long-running show, the cast of Happy Days underwent several changes as the series ran on. Scott Baio, for instance, was added to the cast in the fourth season as Fonzie’s cousin Chachi, while Ron Howard would leave the show in the eighth season. The show also featured notable guest appearances by a young Tom Hanks and Robin Williams as an alien named Mork. That particular episode became so popular that Williams went on to headline his own show, Mork and Mindy.

After its cancellation in 1984, many members of the cast of Happy Days went on to find success in other fields, most notably Ron Howard (Richie Cunningham), who would quit acting to become a top Hollywood director, and Henry Winkler (the Fonz), who produced the hit series MacGyver, as well as writing a series of children’s books, and continues to act today. Other cast members, such as Marion Ross (who played the Cunningham matriarch Marion) and Tom Bosley (father Howard Cunningham), continued to enjoy flourishing acting careers on the small screen. The series itself still attracts new fans through syndicated reruns worldwide.

The show actually began life as a radio show that first aired in 1949 to 1954. Young also played the role of the father on the show, and was the only member of the radio cast to make the transition to television. Father Knows Best debuted on CBS in 1954, and ran until 1960, when Young left to pursue other projects. The show was so popular, however, that it continued to run in primetime reruns for the next three years. During its last (1959-60) season, the show ranked 6^th in its average Nielsen ratings.

The enduring popularity of the show was highlighted when the cast of Father Knows Best was reunited for a pair of TV movies in 1977, Father Knows Best Reunion and Father Knows Best: Home for Christmas. In the intervening years, Young starred in another hit series, Marcus Welby, M.D., for which he won another Emmy for his work on the show. Wyatt, meanwhile, went on to create another iconic character: Amanda Grayson, the mother of Spock, whom she played in the original Star Trek series and the 1986 movie, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. And Father Knows Best continues to enjoy a healthy afterlife both in syndicated reruns and in DVD box sets that allow a new generation of viewers to rediscover one of America’s best-loved fictional TV families.

Of course, we would like to share the joy of watching these classic series with our children. Fortunately, to introduce your kids to classic TV shows is easier than ever, due to the sheer availability of these shows in various media. For example, there are various websites where full episodes of these series can be viewed, most notably the TV Land site, as well as various other TV nostalgia sites. The TV Land cable channel itself remains a good place to watch fondly-remembered TV series, although recent programming changes have led them to focus on more recent shows.

Another way to introduce your kids to classic TV shows is through DVD box sets. You can purchase either full runs of a series, individual seasons or greatest hits collections featuring the best episodes of a series’ run. But you don’t have to spend any money to familiarize your children with the joys of classic TV. Many local stations continue to run episodes of old series on a daily basis on weekdays in order to fill programming gaps. Be warned, however, that many of these episodes may be missing important scenes as the stations cut them down to make time for more commercials.

Adam West and Burt Ward played millionaire Bruce Wayne and his ward Dick Grayson, who, in response to the Bat Signal flashing into the night sky, would slide down hidden fireman’s poles into the Batcave and emerge as Batman and Robin, defenders of Gotham City. Other regular members of the cast of Batman included Alan Napier as faithful butler Alfred, Neil Hamilton as Commissioner Gordon, Stafford Repp as Chief of Police O’Hara and Madge Blake as Aunt Harriet Cooper, who lived in Wayne Manor with Bruce and Dick.

The series was a huge hit in its first season aired in 1966 (when the show aired twice a week), consistently reaching the top ten and the top five in the Nielsen ratings, and was widely acclaimed for its inventiveness and off-the-wall humor. However, by the second season the show had increasingly begun to repeat itself and fall into formula, resulting in declining ratings. In its third season, in an attempt to boost ratings, Yvonne Craig was added to the cast of Batman as Commissioner Gordon’s daughter Barbara, who joined Batman in his fight against crime in her secret identity as Batgirl. Unfortunately, by then the show was clearly faltering and had been cut down to once a week airings; it was eventually cancelled in 1968. However, its influence can still be seen in subsequent Batman projects, most notably the new animated series Batman: the Brave and the Bold, whose visual style is clearly taken from the 1960s series.

Set in the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in South Korea during the Korean War, the cast of M*A*S*H featured an exceptional ensemble of actors, playing some of the most memorable characters ever to appear on TV. The cast was led by Alan Alda as Dr. “Hawkeye” Pierce and Wayne Rogers as Dr. “Trapper” John McIntyre, whose irreverent antics frequently put them in opposition with various military authority figures, most notably Senior Nurse “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit) and Dr. Frank Burns (Larry Linville). Also playing a key role was McLean Stevenson, as the camp’s commander Col. Henry Blake, who genially watched over the goings-on in the camp and frequently intervened to prevent Hawkeye and Trapper John from being court-marshaled.

The cast of M*A*S*H would undergo many changes as the series ran on, although Alda stayed for the entirety of its eleven-season run, eventually going on to play a more important role creatively behind the scenes, as he would direct and write several key episodes. He would eventually be nominated a record 25 times for his work on the series, and would win five times as actor, writer and director. The series itself remains extremely popular in syndicated reruns, more than twenty-five years after it left the airwaves.

The majority of the households that had sets at the start of the decade were affluent ones, and because of this, many 1950’s TV shows of the period were aimed at an upscale audience. The most acclaimed programs then were live dramatic anthologies such as Playhouse 90 and Kraft Television Theatre, which staged their own versions of popular Broadway plays, and lured acclaimed writers such as Rod Serling, Gore Vidal, Horton Foote and Paddy Chayefsky to do original plays for television. Many of these teleplays, such as Marty and Twelve Angry Men, later went on to become equally acclaimed and award-winning theatrical feature films. As a result, this period of television history became known as The Golden Age of Television.

Comedy was also a popular television genre in the fifties, and many of the most popular 1950’s TV shows were situation comedies, or sitcoms as they became more popularly known. Some of the most popular sitcoms of the era were I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best and The Honeymooners; many of these had their roots in radio shows which often brought the original casts and writing teams with them when they made the transition to TV. These sitcoms often presented idealized TV families and ways of life that many Americans soon accepted as the norm.

One of the reasons for the success of The Honeymooners is undoubtedly the social status of its characters. Unlike many other sitcoms of the period which featured prosperous middle-class families living in suburbia, the Kramdens and the Nortons are lower middle-class New Yorkers who live in a rundown tenement in Brooklyn. They are also portrayed as constantly squabbling, another contrast to the perfect couples who were the norm in 1950s television. Many of the episodes of the series revolved around Ralph’s get-rich-quick schemes, which would inevitably be frustrated.

The Honeymooners began life as a series of live sketches performed by Gleason during his many variety series. The sketches initially started with just Gleason and actress Pert Kelton as his acerbic wife; Kelton was eventually replaced by Meadows after she developed heart problems and was politically blacklisted. Eventually, Carney and Randolph were added to the sketches, and this became the cast of The Honeymooners show. Although initially a ratings success, the show fell out of the top 10 due to competition from the popular Perry Como Show, and Gleason decided to end the series and return to a variety show format. He sold all rights to the show to the network for just $1.5 million, a move which cost him millions in foregone revenues as The Honeymooners proved a bonanza in syndication.

Since then, The Honeymooners has played almost continuously in syndicated reruns, and has been released as successful DVD box sets, which also include the so-called “lost episodes,” re-edited filmed sketches from Gleason’s personal collection.

The series revolved around Lucy and Desi Ricardo, a young married couple: Desi is an orchestra leader and Lucy a frustrated housewife who constantly wants to join him in show business despite his belief that women should not entertain such ambitions. Other members of the cast of I Love Lucy included Vivian Vance and William Frawley as the Ricardos’ landlords, the Mertzes; an odd bit of casting considering that Vance was actually 23 years younger than her on-screen husband. In the second season, Lucy’s real-life pregnancy was worked into the show and became one of the first on-air pregnancies. The episode in which she gave birth, the airing of which was timed to coincide with her actual delivery, became what was then the most watched TV show ever, exceeding even the coverage for the presidential inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower the next morning.

After the series ended in its sixth season, the format continued as a series of hour-long specials called The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show; thirteen episodes featuring the cast of I Love Lucy were aired from 1957 to 1960. Sadly, the day after the last episode was filmed, Lucy filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz. The series remains popular and is still continually aired in syndication; DVD box sets of all the episodes, including the hour-long ones, were also released.