Television's best beach series

By Vinnie Penn
Special to MSN TV

Long gone are the days when television during the summer months was a sea of reruns. There are actually a slew of popular TV shows whose entire runs you can grab on DVD and you won't find one single summer-themed episode because they just plain never went there. "A Special Christmas Episode"? Sure. They had to, caving to December sweeps in the most glorious of ways. The time-honored back-to-school episode? Oh, hell yeah. After all, the country was back to school nights, so 8 p.m. appointment TV made perfect sense. But, why do a Fourth of July/Independence Day episode when it would have to either air in May or, worse, in September? When, at best, it would have to be revealed via flashback -- cue cheesy synthesizer effect?  

Bing: Beach TV shows|Summer TV shows

Some popular shows eventually began trip-to-the-beach episodes, like "The Brady Bunch," but June through August was either rerun city or where episodes of shows that had been canceled yet had remaining and unaired episodes buried those episodes, like Dad in the sand at the beach. 

In the early '90s, Aaron Spelling saw his new teen drama "Beverly Hills, 90210" faltering, and rather than swing the ax (which would happen immediately today; thanks, in large part, to the plethora of television product laying in wait, which is thanks in large part to summer reruns being a thing of the past), he ordered a special summer season, and, lo and behold, the show took off.

Here, now, is a list of the beach-based and/or summer-themed things of beauty that TV has wrought.

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(E!/FOX/CBS)