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70s VS 80s tv shows

RobertScorpio

RobertScorpio

Pariah
What decade was the better of the two, in terms of TV...I am going with the 70s...All in the Family/Mash/Taxi/Bob Newhart/Barney Miller/Maude/The Jeffersons, even THREE's COMPANY and other ground breaking shows came in the 70s that i think the 80s just built on and produced good shows too....

The other reason I think the 70s win? THE FACTS OF LIFE came from the 80! The worst TV show of all time!!! (Just kidding)...

But, yes, I do think the 70s were better in terms of quaility...it gave an edge to sitcoms, (All in The Family/Soap) and it had its share of zany comedies (Threes Company)..it had family shows (Little House/Waltons/Happy Days) and even the crime dramas were good (Hawaii Five 0--Kojak--Baretta). And variety shows? How could you go wrong with The Donny and Marie show???

Roots--The Macahans--Rich and Poorman made Mini-series events!!!

Scifi? We got you covered there...Battlestar Galactica, The Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, The Hulk, and even comedy/scifi..MORK AND MINDY...

Rob
Scorpio
 
Although I have many favorites from the '80s -- "Star Trek: The Next Generation" anyone? -- I'd have to say that, for sheer tectonic shift, the '70s were the pivotal years of change for American television. I can't think of a single show in the last 20-plus years that had the impact on social conscience (be it positive or negative) as "All In The Family" or "MASH" or other shows of the decade.
 
I don't know that I can say much for either decade.

Good shows of the 70s:

  • Hawaii Five-O
  • Kung Fu
  • M*A*S*H

Good shows of the 80s:

  • Hawaii Five-O
  • M*A*S*H
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation (not especially good until the 90s)
Decent or sometimes clever:
​
  • Macgyver
  • Remington Steele
Have heard good things about, but haven't seen:
​
  • 21 Jump Street
  • L.A. Law
  • Moonlighting
On balance, I'd have to say the 80s were better than the 70s (though that seems to be true for much more than just television). I suspect the 50s, 60s, 90s, and 2000s surpass both decades easily.
 
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By far the 80s. I can't think of one show that I liked from the 70s, whereas as I can think of several 80s shows, Facts of Life included!
 
cosidering I was born in the 80's, my knowledge of 70's shows is noexistant. Actually, I don't know many 80's shows either except Care Bears, Duck Tales, etc.
 
^ I was born in the 80s, too, but have seen a lot of these shows on cable, in syndication, or on DVD. I recommend Hawaii Five-O if you haven't seen it. It's still one of the best police shows ever produced, even if some elements of it are dated at times. Did anyone here know that Danno was elected governor by the end of the series, making him McGarrett's boss? I was really surprised to learn that.
 
I'd say 80s. I saw the post re your top 5 70s shows and couldn't think of enough to post. Starsky and Hutch and Kojak, that would be about it. Some of Happy Days (pre-shark leaping!). I liked the original BSG, the Lou Ferrigno Hulk and the Nicholas Hammond Spider-man at the time, but time has not been kind to any of them. I know there was MASH and other shows, but it probably doesn't help that I was too young for a lot of the best shows from the 1970s.

OTOH, the 80s gave us Cheers, Star Trek:TNG, Miami Vice (it was really good, despite the dodgy 80s clothes and hair styles!), The Simpsons started in 1989 (IIRC), Hill Street Blues (though it may have started in the 1970s), LA Law and Moonlighting. In the UK, there was Minder, Blackadder, Only Fools and Horses, The Young Ones and Edge of Darkness (currently being remade by its original director, Martin Campbell, and starring Mel Gibson).

Of course, it must be remembered that each decade produced an awful lot of crap tv too ...
 
My personal highlights...

70s:
Taxi
M*A*S*H
The Muppet Show
Roots
Saturday Night Live (the original Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players, with Bill Murray joining in season 2)

80s:
Beauty and the Beast (not the movie, the Ron Perlman/Linda Hamilton series)
Fraggle Rock
Cheers
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Quantum Leap (granted, only the first 20 or so episodes were made in the 80s)
The Golden Girls
The Cosby Show
Night Court

Can't decide, I'm wembling! (The first who gets that reference gets extra credit.)
 
It's hard for me to say. While the '70s had its great sitcoms, like The Bob Newhart Show and All In The Family, they also had high-rated but lowbrow crap like Laverne and Shirley and Three's Company. Still, the only sitcom that started in the '80s that I'd bother to watch today is Cheers, so I'd give the edge there to the '70s.

A lot of hour-long shows in the '70s were pretty good, especially the crime shows like Columbo and the other NBC Mystery Movie shows, The Streets of San Francisco, Kojak and Hawaii Five-O. But most of those were pretty formulaic, with everything wrapped up neatly by the time the credits rolled. I still like them, though, because the writing and the guest stars were usually top notch. And then there was The Rockford Files, IMO in a class of its own for originality in blending mystery plots, humor, and an excellent ensemble.

The '80s, though, win for me because of two NBC shows: Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. Witty, expansive and confident, these two shows deftly mixed comedy and gut-wrenching tragedy in plot arcs that paid off brilliantly over whole seasons. Their wonderful ensembles were composed as much of losers as heroes, and often both in the same character. Gone were steely, infallible automatons like Steve McGarrett and Emergency's Dr. Brackett, or the wise medical sages like Marcus Welby. The people in these new shoes questioned themselves and made mistakes, and were always, sometimes painfully, human.

All of this was completely new to American television, and those two shows lived on through poor initial ratings thanks to NBC's Brandon Tartikoff, who knew that if they were given a chance, their audience would find them. This would never happen today. Homicide, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, ER, The Sopranos, and pretty much every other critically acclaimed serial ensemble drama in the past twenty years owes a lot to Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.

Unfortunately for those who never got a chance to see them, there are only two seasons of Hill Street available on DVD, and only one of St. Elsewhere.

The '80s also have a big advantage in that the variety show finally, mercifully, died out by then. On the other hand, the '80s lose points for Dynasty and Knott's Landing and any number of similar prime-time soaps.

So, I still can't decide. In both decades there were a few gems and a lot of crap.

--Justin
 
Hmm, tricky one this:

70s, you've got Secret Army, I Claudius, Dad's Army, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, When the Boat Comes In, UFO, Space: 1999, The Persuaders!, The Sweeney, Upstairs Downstairs, Survivors, Columbo and the best bits of Doctor Who.

80s, you've got Tenko, the early years of The Bill and Casualty when they were proper dramas, The Singing Detective, Edge of Darkness - the last being probably the best tv show ever made.

There's good and bad in both decades - not to mention the cracking stuff that straddled both, like Blakes 7 and Sapphire and Steel.

Probably there was generally more quality stuff in the 70s, but when the 80s stuff got really good, it hit highs we've never seen before or since.
 
Some of my favorite shows were in the 80's: ST:TNG, Otherworld, The New Twilight Zone.

In the 70's, I mostly watched game shows. :p
 
I don't remember watching anything in the 70s, and watching loads in the 80s... Of course that could be down to the fact I wasn't born until the 80s, but whatever. :D
 
I think the 80's was really when TV came into it's own, as the dominant form of entertainment media in the US...

Before that it really was the movies that held that title...

But still, there is something in everything from the 80's which has a very unique feel to it. From the TV shows, to movies. From the cartoons, the music, and even the ads which played on TV.

No. The 70's was the start of the rise of TV... the 80's it was in full climb, cresting around 96 or so before leveling out then starting to wain with the introduction of "reality TV" beyond the simple sat night eps of COPS, and has been in a deep battle between decline and maintaining level as real programs battle with crap like american idol and dancing with the stars. With the overall future not yet fully evidente as we move forward.
 
I can't say I care much for television produced in either decade, outside of a *few* shows. I prefer older television (60s) and newer television (90s-2000s) over these two decades, actually. But I didn't grow up on these shows.
 
The 80's had the begining of Must See Thursdays, Cheers, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Night Court, Hill Street Blues, L.A Law, Seinfeld, Dear John. Before anyone says anything I know that Seinfeld didn't start on Thursdays.

Both had their good and bad.

I like the 80's better.
 
The 80's blew TV wide open-but they couldn't have done it without the King of Snee, Radar's Teddy Bear, Archie's chair(dingbat!), Chico, the Fonz and Columbo-"Um, just one more question..." Not to mention Fred "I'm coming to ya, 'Lizabeth!" Sanford, Weezie, and MTM, which is a damned production house these days but was a girl setting out to set the world on fire with a smile once upon a time in the 70s. Sex In the City, kneel down before your maker...(or just kneel down-oops, sorry!):lol:

Look, no TV show talked about child abuse-until Archie admitted to being abused when he and (skinny) Rob Reiner were trapped in the basement. No TV show killed off major characters(especially on a comedy) until Henry Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. Latinos didn't even have a character on TV worth noting after Desi Arnez left in the late 50s until Freddie Prinz hit the scene-Latinos in Hollywood were domestic help only, thank you, until then, and now they are just part of the acting landscape. And the "quirky" character, like Wilson on Home Improvement-wouldn't have happened if not for Carlton the Doorman, who was only heard over the intercom. As for social commentary-don't even get me started about GOOD TIMES - Jesus, the show informed Long Island WASPS what was going on in places like Detroit better than Walter Cronkite and the Evening News! THe 70s were also the last bastion of the Big Three-cable hit in the 80s and the paradigm changed. That was the end of mutual social viewpoints. Now, we have HBO and YOUTUBE and a thousand other access points and maybe we are closer to DEMOCRACY in the rush of individual views-but what we think and who we are started when Carrol O'Connor scowled into our living rooms that looked so much like his, when the opening notes of "Suicide Is Painless" began to play, when we heard the funky MOOG synthesizer notes echo around, letting us know Barney Miller was going to try to regulate the crazies in his squad room again-from this came your 80s and your 90s and the oughts. Change on the scenery of TV that led to all that came after-No "Flying Nuns" for us-we had real discussions about our country and our life-welcome to the 70s.:techman:
 
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