Sketch o’the Week: All in the Family!

Those were the days! If one had to pick a U.S. sitcom that was the most groundbreaking, daring, and yet hugely successful of all, “All in the Family” would be at or near the top of every list. Norman Lear‘s masterpiece of a show addressed subjects that the formerly staunchly uptight American audiences would never have dreamed they’d see on network TV: racism, homosexuality, rape, abortion, the Vietnam war, Women’s Lib, impotence, and so many more social and personal issues. It was a truly revolutionary show in this country. My sketch features the main cast, Jean Stapleton, Carroll O’Connor, Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers.

This show was one of the first major U.S. sitcoms to use videotape in a multi-camera format in front of a live studio audience. Show creator Lear was proud of the fact that they did not use “canned” laughter for “All in the Family”, and that all the laughs heard in the broadcast were the real thing from an audience.

I was going to skip this show in my continuation of the “US Sitcom Series”, because I did Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton a few years ago for the art for the CNN docu-series “History of the Sitcom”. However as I am doing all these drawings in a “TV Guide” format i.e. full figures and in-situ with all main cast members, it was worth a revisit.