TV NEWS ON NOVEMBER 23

http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2012/11/blog-book-review-single-season-sitcoms_23.html When somebody brings up sitcoms between 1948-1979, there are plenty of them that come to mind, from I Love Lucy to The Andy Griffith Show to All in the Family and more. There were plenty more, in fact, but no matter how many more you can name, there are probably very few that come to mind for you that were not-so-successful. Now, radio personality and author Bob Leszczak has written a book that is all about those less than successful sitcoms that lasted a season (or less) from that golden age of television, with his new book Single Season Sitcoms, 1948-1979 - A Complete Guide. Single Season Sitcoms, 1948-1979 - A Complete Guide Blog Book Review - Single Season Sitcoms, 1948-1979 - A Complete Guide by skees53 Single Season Sitcoms, 1948-1979 - A Complete Guide (McFarland, $45.00) is the latest book to come out of McFarland publishers to chronicle some of the best (and the rest) of TV series of the past. Like many other books from the publisher, we have a book filled with information about series from the past. In this book, however, author Bob Leszczak takes a completely different approach compared to how many of these books are written, and opted to focus on as many single season sitcoms as possible (300, in fact) in just under 250 pages. Leszczak begins the book with a very brief introduction, to explain the purpose of the book and the inspiration for it. He points out how great many of the successful series from the past are, and how they've been written about extensively over the years. One such popular book that he gives credit to, of course, is Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh's The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, which gives an excellent account of virtually every TV series out there. But when that book gets to some of the more obscure older sitcoms, it sometimes takes shortcuts and will only give a very brief description. In this book, the intention is to focus on sitcoms that last one season (and not an episode longer) and give a nice half-page overview of that sitcom. The book does a very nice job of that. Without going into every single detail of every single sitcom that is included (it would be impossible to list all of them!), he creates a book that is very similar in style to the Brooks and Marsh book, except he narrows the focus down to single season sitcoms and goes into greater detail than most "encyclopedic" books of this nature. Among series for which you'll find entries in here are Growing Paynes (no, not Alan Thicke's series, but a 1948 sitcom from the DuMont Network), Hee Haw Honeys, Mrs. G. Goes to College (somewhat of an offshoot of The Goldbergs), Tabitha, and even one series that many would be surprised to recognize is a single season sitcom: The Honeymooners. Most of the book is focused on these entries for all of these TV shows, with all of the series listed in alphabetical order. The beginning of each entry gives the reader information on when and where the series originally aired. Then, the entry goes into details about why the series came into existence (if there was any particular reason), what it was about, and why it didn't make it to a second season. The author even takes things a step further to talk about the "afterlife" of the series whenever appropriate, such as if the series is available on DVD or if it aired in reruns after the series was canceled. The book concludes with two indexes. The first index is one of the more interesting ones in my opinion. It is a Sitcom Topical Index, where it goes through and lists different sitcom topics and discusses which series fall into that topic, along with a very brief description of the series. Of course, you can also find the full entry elsewhere in the book. For example, there is one category for "Gimmicks," and this category includes the series My Mother the Car. It goes further to explain why this series falls into that category. The second index is a much more standard index, where people and TV series are listed in alphabetical order, with a page number reference. All in all, this is an excellent and well-researched book that sitcom fans are sure to enjoy. I tried my hardest to find "cracks" in the book, such as a sitcom that was missed, but as it turns out, every single one that I thought should have been included didn't fit the criteria (for example, they all had a second season or they aired after 1979). Some of the details that I read about some of the sitcoms in this book were much more detailed than anything I've read before, and I was impressed that anybody could know so much about some of these very rare series. It would be nice to see some follow up books similar to this one, such as perhaps a book on single season sitcoms after 1979... although understandably, these have become far too numerous in more recent years to write a concise book on all of them. In any event, Leszczak did an excellent job with this book, and I think that it is certainly worth it for any sitcom fan to pick up this book.