-PJ
Before “Dragnet” debuted on television, it was an outstanding—and very conservative—radio show. Jack Webb was still Joe Friday on the radio. Excellent stuff!
Honestly, the most conservative show I can think of is “Leave It To Beaver”.
Family Ties. Although they ridiculed Alex, his rebel conservatism came through, and ended up making the hippie attitude of his parents look ridiculous.
Maybe not quite as conservative as Dragnet, but the Waltons, and Duck Dynasty merit mentioning.
Magnum PI was pretty conservative in a non-political way.
50’s Hwy Patrol show with Broderick Crawford.
HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL
VICTORY AT SEA
THE HONEYMOONERS
Combat and Twelve O’Clock High were pretty watchable.
Lot's of classic quotes from those shows, too.
"The sun hasn't come up on a day that Marshal Dillon can't take care of himself, Miss Kitty."
The Apprentice
Funny that you mention Jack Webb as “conservative”. I recently came across a privately written “history” of the neighborhood in Palm Springs where he once lived. His ex wife, Julie London, the singer, bought a house there after their divorce. Webb promptly bought the house next door and moved in to “keep and eye on her”. Some might construe that he was a stalker — unless he was just overly concerned about her well being on her own. Who’s to know? Except it seems a little creepy.
The Rifleman.
Bad guy shows up, bad guy does bad thing, bad guy dies in blaze of gunfire by good guy. Conservative Idealism.
Wagon Train
I don’t know about the conservative part; but I loved Andy Griffith (Ernest T Bass always cracked me up), Gunsmoke, Rifleman, F-Troop, Gilligan’s Island, McHale’s Navy, Beverly Hillbillies...I could go on and on. Good memories!
TV these days is horrible.
These shows reflected the traditional values of the time, which are conservative by today’s definition. Apply the same logic to current offerings and consider what that means...
When “Dragnet” came back for its second run in ‘67 it was popular and a Ronald Reagan could be elected Governor of California. Those days are gone forever.
The TV show and Reagan both were ridiculed by the rapidly turning liberal-leftist media(the SF Examiner, Orange County Register, and the SD Union-Tribune were considered Right Wing in 1967!!)of the day but, as is often the case with liberal-leftists, for all the wrong reasons.
One could justifiably make fun of “Dragnet” because the Hollywood “hippies” and “rock music” characterizations were so ridiculously off the mark it was hilarious. All from the stone-ignorant imaginations of Hollywood producers and writers with names like “Murray” and “Sid.”
As for “Ronald Ray-Gun,” he was portrayed as a dumb-as-a-post Drug Store Cowboy bent on enslaving Californians and putting hippies in concentration camps. Nothing’s changed.
Hollywood, BTW, is still just as far off the mark as it ever was. Only difference between then and now is that firearm violence is more graphic, the language more coarse, there is no “moral to the story” unless its to make some leftist point, and the “scantily-clad” actresses are tougher than the men.
