Nostalgia Television

There was an interesting trend in television for most of its history, which I’ll be terming “Nostalgia Television”—television series set in the past. Specifically, two decades in the past. There are several highly successful high-profile shows set roughly twenty years before they actually aired.

The 1970s began the trend with two little shows in 1974: M*A*S*H and Happy Days. Both lasted at least a decade and became television classics; the final episode of M*A*S*H is still the most-watched episode of any television series ever. Both shows, despite airing in the 1970s, took place during the 1950s. During its run, Happy Days moved into the 1960s, but M*A*S*H never did, confined to the 1950s by its setting in the Korean War.

In the 1980s, there was The Wonder Years, in addition to the final seasons of Happy Days, set in the 1960s. The 1990s gave us That 70s Show. All had incredible longevity for television shows, and were major hits with audiences.

Then came the 2000s, and Nostalgia Television stopped working for the networks. There were three shows that premiered early on in the decade, attempting to capitalize on setting things in the 1980s. That 80s Show, Do Over, and That Was Then (the latter being an hour long, as compared to all previous Nostalgia TV Shows, which were half-hour shows) all flopped miserably.

There are a lot of reasons this switchover could have happened. Do Over and That Was ThenThat Was Then  9/11 made the country a lot more about the here-and-now. From 2001-2005, networks rarely debuted sci-fi/fantasy shows, and if they did, they were mostly unsuccessful (with the 2004 exception of Lost).  weren’t just shows about the 80s, they were shows about men being sent back to inhabit the bodies of their younger selves (in the 80s) to not remake the same mistakes. ignored the rule of its predecessors in Nostalgia Television by making an hour-long drama instead of a half-hour comedy.

Or maybe people just really hated the 80s.

American Dreams was the closest early-2000s show to Nostalgia Television, but it didn’t follow the two-decade rule, and it was always a low performer in its time slot. It lasted three seasons, none of which made the top 50 for ratings, and each season declined in ratings and episode orders.

It’s only recently that some form of Nostalgia Television has succeeded, but it’s not on a basic network and it also doesn’t follow the same pattern of a two-decade gap. Mad Men, set in the early 1960s, is a gold mine for AMC (at least as far as Emmy’s go). While it’s not twenty years and it’s not a sitcom, Mad Men does give the glimmer of hope that Nostalgia Television could return to your TV. It’s only 2011; there’s a lot of time left for a show set in the 90s to sweep us all off our feet.