Obscure Sitcoms That Ran Forever

[quote] The whole cast are snarky, self-absorbed and sometimes outright nasty to one another in the best way.

Oh my that sounds dreadful

Mr Belvedere

Step by Step on ABC ran for 8 seasons. It starred Suzanne Somers and Patrick Duffy. It eclipsed Suzanne's time on Three's Company AND Patrick's time on Dallas, but who remembers that dumb obscure sitcom?

Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons,

Life with Riley,

If something "ran forever," it really couldn't have been all that "obscure," now could it?

Now, "Long-Running Inexplicable Hit" I could understand. For comedies, "Two And A Half Men." And for dramas, "Walker, Texas Ranger."

Five seasons = forever?

And Ozzie and Harriet and My Three Sons aren't at all obscure, just old.

Here is a list of all American sitcoms running 200 or more episodes...

Title (# of seasons) # of episodes

The Simpsons (30) #662

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (14) #435

My Three Sons (12) #380

The Danny Thomas Show (11) #344

Family Guy (17) #392

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (8) #291

The Big Bang Theory (12) #279

American Dad! (15) #276

Cheers (11) #275

The Donna Reed Show (8) #275

The Beverly Hillbillies (9) #274

Frasier (11) #264

Two and a Half Men (12) #262

The Jack Benny Program (15) #260

Murphy Brown (11) #260

King of the Hill (13) #259

Married... with Children (11) #259

M*A*S*H (11) #256

Happy Days (11) #255

Bewitched (8) #254

The Jeffersons (11) #253

The Love Boat (9) #249

The Andy Griffith Show (8) #249

Friends (10) #236

The Drew Carey Show (9) #233

Modern Family (10) #232

Roseanne (10) #231

Will & Grace (10) #228

Petticoat Junction (7) #222

Family Matters (9) #215

The Middle (9) #215

Everybody Loves Raymond (9) #210

The Facts of Life (9) #209

How I Met Your Mother (9) #208

The King of Queens (9) #207

All in the Family (9) #205

Home Improvement (8) #204

Alice (9) #202

The Office (9) #201

The Cosby Show (8) #201

Coach (9) #200

R8 you forgot “Close Thread” at the end now that you’ve ruined it for everyone else.

The Middle and Coach. Haven't watched an episode of either.

The Middle is a perfect example. When the show’s ending was announced the creator even joked that they wanted to get off the air before too many people noticed they were on. 9 seasons... they won’t be writing clickbait about whether or not it held up on its 25th anniversary

^^^ (Gay Gasp!)

You've NEVER seen an episode of "The Middle," starring DL Fave and Ultra-Right-Wing-Looney-Toon Patricia Heaton?!

I was always surprised at how long Boy Meets World went on

reply 12 Patty’s wig won an Emmy for that show

And My Fucked Up Life or some shit. That starred that girl that went to do something..I think?

And that American Hero thing with the great theme song...never watched an episode.

I win.

I liked Wings and watched for that dreamy (at the time) Thomas Hayden Church.

The Middle had that very special episode with Bea Arthur as nanny. Keep watching for the Fernando scene.

So sorry, MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE.

My So-Called Life isn't obscure and ran for one short season.

^^^Nor was it a sitcom, reading comprehension people!

Ellen.

Grace Under Fire

Reba.

R23 Didn’t it have other names at times?

Hanging With Mr. Cooper

Living Single

Sanford & Son. I loved LaWanda Page as Aunt Esther.

I’m seeing a lot of all African American show posted, are they being perceived as obscure because whites are posting them and they were not the demographic who watched them? Outside of Cosby were there other African American shows that transcended the race barrier? I only recall watching shows like Jeffersons, Good Times , What’s Happening fleetingly in the 70s and 80s rather than being must see TV.

I loved Sanford and Son. I'm white but Red Fox's character was exactly like my grandfather. He was even built like him.

Arliss

R24 the final episode of Grace Under Fire has to be seen to be believed. This is a link to a very small screen but you get the picture. Brett Butler looks terrible, can barely speak and the last few minutes are just bloopers added to make up enough minutes to fill the run time . Honestly shocked they let this air

You never hear about Third Rock from the Sun anymore.

I am not sure what's worse: the OP's apparently earnest use of "latinx" or the OP's enthusiasm for George Lopez.

R30 lives black.

What the hell was obscure about Sanford & Son? It was one of the highest rated programs through most of its run.

I've happily never seen one episode of The Middle, then with Ed O'Neill from the mid-2010s, the one with Jessie's Mussy Ferguson, the one with Allison from Melrose Place as the wife of John Belushi's brother...

Not one episode.

Nor Parks & Recreation and that Tina Faye drivel.

R38 is so cool! I wish that I could be JUST! LIKE! HER! but alas, I am too weak of mind.

The King of Queens lasted 9 seasons, the same amount as Seinfeld, and more episodes than Seinfeld.

That is kind of insane.

I just found out that Malcolm in the Middle and The Middle are two different shows.

Two Broke Girls. What an unfunny, canned laughter piece of shit.

R8 The Simpsons is a cartoon, not a sitcom.

Sanford & Son was known to everyone regardless of race. Everyone knew about Fred's hilarious faking heart attack routine.

Fred: Ester, I could dip your face in batter and make me some gorilla cookies

Ester: Watch it sucka

1971–72 No. 6

1972–73 No. 2

1973–74 No. 3

1974–75 No. 2

1975–76 No. 7

1976–77 No. 27

It was only in the last year, after ABC offered both Redd Foxx and Damon Wilson contracts (at higher salaries) for their own shows when Sanford & Son ended that the ratings tanked, as both stars no longer cared about the show.

R44 The show was cancelled because Fred Silverman lured Redd over to ABC with the promise of doing a variety series. It tanked about as quickly as Mary Tyler Moore's did.

R41 But the Middle was a spin-off from the other one no?

R46 no. The Middle in this case referred to the show being set in middle America.

George Lopez story: An actor friend of my was a background extra for a scene. Their facial expressions, specifically requested by the director, were deemed "distracting" by Lopez and he yelled at them after the scene requested they be escorted from the soundstage. If an extra is that much of a threat to your comedic ego, it really is surprising the show lasted that long.

r44 Sanford and Son was on NBC, not ABC.

Cable sitcoms:

Dream On

Brothers

It's Garry Shandling's Show

[quote]Life with Riley,

Oh, dear.

I liked brothers.

"Rules of Engagement" with David Spade, Patrick Warburton and some other people we'll never be hearing from again was on for, what, 6 seasons?

The same goes for "Yes, Dear".

I thought that R53 made up Rules of Engagement and Yes, Dear. I figured that I would have heard of any sitcom that ran 6 years.

But they are real. And I never heard of them.

The winner of this thread must be "According to Jim." It ran for years. No one ever mentioned it or admitted to watching it, and was never a success in reruns, but it ran a long time.

One I never heard anyone talk about was the awesomely unfunny Rules of Engagement, which I would watch sometimes only because it had two of the hottest men on TV, Patrick Warburton and Oliver Hudson.

A lot of black sitcoms did run for a while under the radar because they were on UPN, which had a very low ratings bar for cancellation because it wasn't on in every market. Shows like For Your Love, Girlfriends, Moesha, The Parkers, One on One, All of Us, Half and Half, Malcolm & Eddie, In the House, etc. all ran 4 seasons or more. Even The Hughleys, which was canceled on ABC, moved to UPN and ran four more seasons. Had these shows been on the Big 4 networks, they'd have been canceled much sooner. UPN also specifically courted an urban audience with most of its programming.

Any sitcom with Judi Dench, they were never funny and seemed to go on forever.

Luckily UK series are much shorter than they are in the US or 'As Time Goes By ' would have filmed 400 episodes over its 13 year run instead of the 67 tedious ones they made.

She also made an unfunny sitcom with her husband Michael Williams called 'A Fine Romance '.

[quote]Sanford and Son was on NBC, not ABC.

Exactly ABC lured them AWAY, no one said Sanford and Son was ON ABC. Read it first, then think, then comment

When we have threads like this it is always surprising to discover how many people watch absolute crap on television.

R30 Family Matters and Fresh Prince.

In Living Color wasn't a sitcom but it also transcended the race barrier.

I think the black shows that did well showed upper or middle class black families.

Times have certainly changed though. Married with Children's cast was depicted as white trash, but the sad thing is they would be doing well by today's standards.

Yes, Dear with Anthony Clark. It was painfully unfunny, and every character was annoying.

Amen

r65, and Clark was the closeted cousin of Jerry Falwell. I wonder what he thinks about Jr. and the pool boy and the other guy and the pictures...

Yes, Dear deserves to be beaten with a stick, it is so bad.

I liked Yes Dear and thought Clark was cute. Did he ever come out?

I vaguely remember some crap from a number of years ago with Sara Rue called "Less Than Perfect", that lasted a few seasons. It's one of those things you see advertised during commercial breaks but you don't know anybody watching it or talking about it, yet it somehow seems to drag on for a few seasons.

It's A Living has to win this thread.

R64 I still enjoy Married with Children in reruns. Katy Sagal and Ed O'Neill had fantastic chemistry. David Faustino, "Bud" is the only one who didn't go on to further acting success. I still think about Al's old Dodge and laugh.

Not a sitcom, but Jeff Lewis' Flipping Out. I was watching that the summer after high school and I'm 30 now.

The Goldbergs has been renewed for a 7th season.

"Out of this World" with DL icon Donna Pescow. Ran for four seasons in syndication.

How about some Disney channel stuff, like Even Stevens, or That's So Raven? Some are even being rebooted.

But Angie and Hot l Baltimore could have lasted longer.

Some of these are stupid, Sanford and Son, is far from obscure, they still sale t-shirts with Fred and Aunt Esther on them, just like the Golden Girls, not to mention the theme song is iconic. My white Southern family never missed an episode of Sanford and Son, 227, The Jeffersons, or Amen, whenever they aired, some of you just seem racist. Living Single is far from obscure, either. Some of the other ones that have been mentioned, like Reba and The Middle aren't obscure either, it is hard to classify them as obscure when they had long runs, and are now seen constantly on cable and in syndication.

Just Shoot Me is a show I haven't heard mentioned in at least a decade.

Honey, Just Shoot Me wasn't a show that anyone heard mentioned even while it was running.

Just because these shows weren't "must see TV" doesn't mean they didn't find an audience and deliver decent ratings. I'm so sick of you cultural snobs, that don't watch anything isn't Will & Grace or Friends.

Cultural snobs liked Friends and Will & Grace?

ABC's "Perfect Strangers"