Customer Reviews

Television Comedy Series: An Episode Guide to 153 TV Sitcoms in Syndication

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3 star:		(2)
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As a TV Sitcom writer/producer I was particularly enthralled by this labor-intensive work. It has excellent "TV-Guide-style" synopses of the most popular syndicated shows, and even some cult favorites we may never see again. Not only is it an excellent record, often reflecting "the signs of the times", and superior single-volume reference work, going through the various story lines is a great springboard for ideas for new sitcom stories. My only wish is if they were a) more thorough with the credits for writers of episodes in particular, and b)they churned out a new edition. It's been over 10 years, boys

Comprehensive. Having all of this information in one place has been a huge boon to me. Sure, Taxi and Love American Style are here, but Guestward Ho!, Hey Landlord, Wait Til Your Father Gets Home, and Wendy & Me? Love it.

While this may be an useful quick reference book for TV fans or researchers, the information it provides is far from complete. Episode synopsis are too brief (often just a couple of lines), helpful only if you already know and remember very well the plot of the episodes you've seen and want to identify them by title. Directors and writers of each episode are in most cases not listed. The lists of guest actors are usually incomplete, and the names of the characters played by each actor are not listed. No airdates are given, and the episodes are not even separated by season -- you just can't tell which season each episode belongs to! In many cases it is very easy, today, to gather all that information from fan sites in the internet. Considering, however, that this book was written in the 80's, when there was no internet, some credit must be given to its authors for what must have been a painstaking research. But now it is badly in need of revising and enlarging.

While this may be an useful quick reference book for TV fans or researchers, the information it provides is far from complete. Episode synopsis are too brief (often just a couple of lines), helpful only if you already know and remember very well the plot of the episodes you've seen and want to identify them by title. Directors and writers of each episode are in most cases not listed. The lists of guest actors are usually incomplete, and the names of the characters played by each actor are not listed. No airdates are given, and the episodes are not even separated by season -- you just can't tell which season each episode belongs to! In many cases it is very easy, today, to gather all that information from fan sites in the internet. Considering, however, that this book was written in the 80's, when there was no internet, some credit must be given to its authors for what must have been a painstaking research. But now it is badly in need of revising and enlarging.

This is a must have for anyone who enjoys those oldie but goodie tv comedies. My one disappointment was that it did not contain an episode guide for one of my favorite TV sitcoms, "I Married Joan". It's almost impossible to find out anything about that show and it would have been great if it had been included in this somewhat exhaustive work. My request to the writers is to include this info in the next edition (if there is one and I hope there is). There were others I would have like to have seen included too, but Joan was the really missed one.

"Is now quite dated" is how these Mork & Mindy generation authors refer to most of the series that pre-date their viewing era. At the time this book was published there probably wasn't anything else available with this information, but now just about all the contents of this book can be easily found on the internet (on websites that most likely took their info from this book.) If you can find a copy for a few bucks, go for it. Otherwise save your money.