The Best Family Comedy-Drama Television Has Ever Produced

esstee55

I was born the year "Father Knows Best" premiered. But it, along with "I Love Lucy," "The Honeymooners" and "Leave It To Beaver," figure quite prominently in my memory. In the case of "Father...", it ran into the early '60s, and was possibly the only series that ran for at least one, if not two seasons--reruns only--in prime time, AFTER they had finished filming the last episode! So I remember it very well, and can say that I grew up watching it, learning from it, and loving it. It seemed everyone in America loved this show when it was on. It was initially a sitcom, but it grew like so many long-running series have done. It matured into a thing that was still quite funny at times, but quite dramatic at others. Robert Young had made movies for years before this, and I've since seen several of them. Oh, he was a good enough actor back then I suppose, but in "Father Knows Best," he was like my second father when I was growing up, and when I see one of his older movies nowadays, it's always a disappointment, simply because he's not Jim Anderson in them! The rest of the cast was fine, but it was Young who really made the show.

I suppose the final comment here should be something like, "yeah, why IS it that 'Father Knows Best' hasn't ever been rerun on Nick or TV Land?" 'Tis a real pity, that. Well, since I wrote that, I've seen that the show was indeed played on TV Land. But a bigger pity nowadays is that the series has yet to be available on DVD! What's up with that???

Of course, as of 2014, the entire series has been released on DVD. I am the happy boy!!

score 10/10

esstee55 10 January 2002

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0051024/