[Jeff Chandler]

Petticoat Junction was never funny.
The Andy Griffith Show never recovered from Don Knott’s exit.
Green Acres was warped. People either loved it or hated it.
The Beverly Hillbillies was a classic.

[BradyLS]

Petticoat Junction was never funny.

Hard to disagree. I watched reruns for years as a kid and that was one show when the laugh track had to remind you that a joke had been told. It was a very sleepy, gentle show during a time when things in the US were becoming increasingly turbulent socially. At the very least, it appealed to an older and nostalgic demographic.

[chimera]

PJ and AGS were more like TV versions of romantic comedies. Their humor was more of the feel-good type and derived a lot from the charm of their settings and the mild eccentricity of some of the characters, as well as a moral message (the small-town Sheriff whose peaceful manner fits well with his environment, the widowed mother trying to raise three be-good daughters). GA and TBH were more of the howler-type comedies which drew on the obvious mismatch of the protagonists to their surroundings and happenstances. Of course, being a teenager coming of age in the sexually liberated ‘60s, I must admit to some measure of attraction for the female characters of both PJ and GA. I was terribly smitten with Eva Gabor as well as two of the three Bradley sisters (Linda Kaye Henning never tickled my fancy as much as the others).