History of the Sitcom
Genre	Television documentary
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
Production
Executive producers	John Ealer Bill Carter
Running time	42 minutes
Original release
Network	CNN
Release	July 11 (2021-07-11) – August 22, 2021 (2021-08-22)
Related
The History of Comedy The Movies (miniseries) The Story of Late Night See It Loud: The History Of Black Television

History of the Sitcom is an eight-part CNN documentary television series that traces the development of the American situation comedy show from the 1950s to the 21st Century. The show features 184 interviews with creatives, actors and directors including Norman Lear, Mel Brooks, Yvette Lee Bowser, Marta Kauffman, and Carl Reiner (in his last recorded interview).^[1][2] The series follows a similar format of the CNN Original Series The History of Comedy.

The series takes an expansive view of what can be considered a sitcom; it includes traditional programs shot with multiple cameras in front of a live audience like I Love Lucy as well as modern single camera programs like Fleabag. The decision about which programs to include, according to series producer Bill Carter, came down to: "If the overarching purpose of the show is to make you laugh, it can be considered a sitcom. And in almost all cases, the shows are half-hours rather than hours."^[3]

Series overview

Production

"The series uses the same team — executive producer John Ealer and former New York Times media writer Bill Carter — that recently created CNN's six-part The Story of Late Night.

They first had to first decide how to define a sitcom, which originally was three cameras on a soundstage before a live studio audience and a laugh track. But in recent years, comedies such as The Office and Modern Family dispensed with the laugh track and audience. "We created a sniff test," Ealer said. "Does it feel like a sitcom? Insecure is not the same as The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Yet they both represent how comedy opened up the viewpoints of Americans in profoundly funny ways." Carter noted that M*A*S*H was considered a groundbreaking comedy despite heavy doses of drama. "If you started to eliminate shows because they had a lot of drama, you'd get rid of a lot of great comedy," he said.

History of the Sitcom began production just before the pandemic and used the rest of the year to interview a whopping 184 people for the series, including some of the biggest living luminaries of the sitcom world, from Ted Danson to Tina Fey. Ealer said they strategically began lining up interviews of the older luminaries first and fortunately did so right before the pandemic." ^[4]

Before each episode, there is a 10-second intro of the show, which parodies the title cards of famous sitcoms including I Love Lucy, Bewitched, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Home Improvement, Happy Days, Living Single, M*A*S*H, Seinfeld, Gilligan's Island, Fresh Off the Boat, Cheers, Frasier, Black-ish. Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Simpsons, Arrested Development and ends with the show name inside a box tivi. The beat of the intro is similar to Seinfeld's and has a sitcom laugh track at the end.

Episodes

List of sitcoms represented

Each episode section below lists the film clips from the decade that are featured in that episode. The list below will order the sitcoms in the chronology order in which they appear in the show and only have shows that are credited on the right/left corner once they are introduced. If a series appears many times in the same episodes, it will be listed on the time it is mainly mentioned.

References