Didn’t think too many people remembered Burns and Allen.
All of the episodes are on YouTube.
I am raising my children on this show. Both daughters love them.
Compared to other great shows of the era (Honeymooners, I Love Lucy), the comic timing of the main performers (Burns, Allen, Von Zell, Benaderet, Keating) is as good as any of them, the writing is just as good. Although Lucy was superior with physical comedy and slapstick, George and Gracie had a warmth on screen that was there even when Gracie ordered enough appliances to fill the yard to save money because they were on sale.
The other shows were often sillier, but Burns and Allen explicitly never took itself too seriously, as George was playing God even then, watching his own show on TV so he was generally a step ahead of everybody, but never lorded over everybody. There was never any danger of George knocking Gracie to the moon, or even spanking her. Unlike really light fare like "Father Knows Best" or "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet", the plots were genuinely funny, and the jokes were far funnier. Gracie could deliver the ditziest lines with complete believability. Unlike many modern sitcoms, the main characters were extremely likeable.
George and Gracie had decades in show biz even by the '50s to know what worked and what didn't, and weren't shy about incorporating great vaudeville skits into the show. One of my favorites is the
"Kleebob Card Game" (with a less famous "Harry")click here Some day, I'm going to come up with a complete set of rules for Kleebob based on that skit.