‘Quietly’ innovative
Bob Newhart’s first sitcom went off air 40 years ago
The Bob Newhart Show concluded 40 years ago with neither a whimper nor a bang. In fact, there weren’t many whimpers or bangs during its six-year run. The show was reliable but never flashy. But it influenced decades of television comedy.
It ran from 1972-78 on CBS, among progressive and political shows: The Mary Tyler Show, which portrayed a single, working woman; M.A.S.H., which aimed its biting satire at the horrors of war; and All in the Family, which took on abortion, rape and race.
The Bob Newhart Show was different. Much like its lead actor, the show may have appeared square. But a closer look revealed an almost silent subversion, making it what Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, called “quietly revolutionary.”
To wit: It was a workplace comedy that featured a childless married couple who — gasp! — slept in the same bed. The show implied they had an active sex life, and they didn’t fall into the regular tropes of nagging wife or dumb husband. Newhart’s character, Bob Hartley, was a psychologist, and the show didn’t shy away from mental disorders. And it starred not an established actor but a standup comedian.
Still … “We kind of lived in the shadow of Mary, understandably,” Newhart said.
Syndication became the show’s windfall, and one reason it’s endured. (Newhart predicted as much — it’s why he was adamant about not including topical humour.)
The show is often cited by comics as an inspiration, and its influence can be seen in contemporary sitcoms that aim for geniality, like Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory.
“It was a show written for adults, but it wasn’t brash or cruel,” said Steve O’Donnell, head writer for Late Night with David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel Live!
At the heart of the sitcom was Newhart, who stepped away from a burgeoning career in standup in search of better hours.
“I’d been doing standup for 12 years, and being on the road while having three kids,” he said. “I wanted a home life, and (I was) asked if I’d be interested in a situation comedy, and I said yeah. It would give me a normal life.”
Today, getting a sitcom is a measure of success for a standup comic. But at the time, it was nearly unheard of. Translating a standup’s ethos into a sitcom hadn’t been attempted.
Newhart’s comedy was sly and absurdist. It was never callous, and the adults at which it was aimed could comfortably watch his show with their children present.
“It was just good, kind, no-nonsense, mid-America comedy, turning things on its ear,” actor Fred Willard said. “It didn’t have that New York edge.”
That uncommon tenderness wasn’t only in the show’s comedy, but baked into the relationships between its characters. Consider the marriage between Newhart’s character and Emily Hartley, played by Suzanne Pleshette.
“It showed two people, a husband and wife, who loved, respected and challenged each other,” comedian Bonnie Hunt said. “Even when they disagreed, they supported each other. That’s harder to write, because you had to have well-defined, threedimensional characters for both the man and the wife.”