Happy Birthday Norman Lear

To someone like me, who adores the sitcom format beyond all reasonable measure, Norman Lear is something of a demi-god; Lear is personally responsible for a string of socially conscious, ground-breaking shows throughout the 1970s, which themselves were responsible for bringing a plethora of social issues into American living rooms which otherwise might not have been discussed there...

Beginning with the January 1971 premiere of All in the Family - which itself was based on the Britcom Til Death Us Do Part - Lear spent most of the next decade on a roll, spinning shows out of shows out of shows: All in the Family begat both Maude and The Jeffersons, while Maude later begat Good Times.

Sanford and Son was another Americanization, this time of the Britcom Steptoe and Son; another original idea was One Day at a Time, which dealt with the daily travails of a single mother - a first for American prime time.

By the time he guest-hosted Saturday Night Live in 1976, though, some of the bloom had come off his rose; in a filmed montage of Lear interacting with his stars which formed the centrepiece of his monologue, those of Good Times are conspicuously absent. For a producer who'd built his name on shows with a redeeming social message, he was by then being accused by John Amos and Esther Rolle of not dealing with the issues faced by a black family living in the projects - in this case Chicago's Cabrini-Green - choosing instead to pander to a younger demographic by focusing on the teenage antics of break-out star Jimmie Walker.

By the 1980s people's tastes had changed - or so we are supposed to believe - and none of Lear's subsequent shows achieved the success of his earlier work, although all* drew otherwise critical raves for their sharp insights on topical issues.

*Especially The Powers That Be.
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