TV News

10. "All in the Family" (1971)
Lead characters on sitcoms are supposed to be likable everymen and are definitely not supposed to be grouchy, bigoted, ignorant, stubborn louts. At least that was the thinking before Norman Lear brought "All in the Family" to the airwaves as a 1971 midseason replacement. Based on the British series "Til Death Us Do Part," it featured Carroll O'Connor as antihero Archie Bunker, a gruff and belligerent New Yorker who wasn't ready to accept the changing social mores of the world he was living in. Besides the groundbreaking use of the sound of a toilet flushing (unprecedented in TV to that point), the show pioneered the conversion of taboo topics like racism and anti-Semitism into comedic material and attempted to fight prejudice by understanding it and laughing at it.

9. "Happy Days" (1974)
The 1950s weren't even all that long ago when "Happy Days" premiered in January 1974. And, as its midseason status would indicate, not much was expected of the little sitcom about teenagers in Milwaukee. Still, the show was innovative because of the amorphous nature of its casting. It featured a mysterious ancillary character, Fonzie, who became so popular that he was made into a series star. And it endured changes at the top of its lineup, originally centering on high schooler Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) but staying on the air long after he left with a wide assortment of new characters swapped in to varying degrees of success. But perhaps the most enduring legacy of "Happy Days" is an episode in which Fonzie jumped a shark on his motorcycle, giving the world the phrase "jump the shark" to describe a show past its prime.

8. "The Jeffersons" (1975)
Besides having one of the inarguably most awesome theme songs in TV history, "The Jeffersons" was notable for several reasons. From the time it premiered as a midseason replacement in 1975, a spin-off of "All in the Family," to its 1985 departure from the airwaves, the show presented a black family living an upper-class lifestyle a decade before "The Cosby Show" went on the air. Also of note, Helen and Tom Willis, the Jeffersons' neighbors in that deluxe apartment in the sky, were the first interracial couple presented as major ongoing characters on a network show.

7. "Three's Company" (1977)
Like another midseason replacement turned TV classic, "All in the Family," "Three's Company" was based on a British sitcom, in this case "Man About the House." While many viewers of the 1970s were hooked on shows that took place in the 1950s, "Three's Company" presented a thoroughly '70s take on contemporary society. A young, single man finds an apparently perfect living situation when two female roommates invite him to move in, but their protective landlord only OKs the arrangement because he believes the man is gay. He's not, of course, but must preserve that illusion in order to keep the pad. The sexual innuendo on the show seems pretty tame by our contemporary cultural standards and the anachronistic gay jokes will produce some wincing for enlightened audiences today, but it was all semi-scandalous at the time and served the function of loosening up the viewing public and paving the way for bawdier shows to follow.

6. "Moonlighting" (1985)
Sexual tension may have existed on TV prior to ABC's groundbreaking detective serio-comedy, but never was it so overt or used as such an integral plot point. Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) and David Addison (a then-unknown Bruce Willis) run a barely solvent detective agency, gritting their teeth and popping off wisecracks to mask their latent attraction for one another. "Moonlighting" was a midseason replacement notable for several reasons, including characters directly addressing the audience and occasionally inexplicably bursting into song. But the show is best remembered for the "will they or won't they" aspect of the lead characters' relationship and for rapidly falling apart once that question was answered.