’60s Television Shows That Could Never Be Made Today

As is the case for any decade, the 1960s produced some television classics, but that’s not the whole story. TV from the 1960s included family sitcoms often associated more with the 1950s like “Leave It to Beaver” (which ran through 1963) that reflected traditional values. Magic was also in the air, as evidenced by the rise of goofy fantasy sitcoms like “Bewitched” and “The Addams Family.” Television continued to innovate, with pioneering science fiction shows like “Star Trek” and “Doctor Who” touching down in that decade.

Like all pop culture, these shows were products of their time. While great stories are timeless, many shows from the 1960s wouldn’t be accepted by audiences — or even greenlit by producers -– were they proposed today. In some cases, these shows come off as offensive or politically incorrect. Other shows made in the 1960s, such as certain kinds of absurdist comedies, are just too silly to air in the 2020s. Take this trip down memory lane with us, as we discuss the ’60s television shows that could never be made today.

Magical sitcoms were all the rage in the 1960s. “Bewitched” is one of the most well-remembered shows within this genre, while “I Dream of Jeannie” never quite reached the same level of popularity despite airing for five seasons. As in “Bewitched,” “I Dream of Jeannie” depicts the relationship between a magical woman and a non-magical man. Barbara Eden plays Jeannie, a genie found and freed from her bottle by Tony (Larry Hagman), a stranded astronaut. Jeannie follows Tony home and is at his beck and call whether he wants her to be or not.

There are several issues we can take with “I Dream of Jeannie” from a social and political perspective. First off, the dynamic between Jeannie and Tony is rather unseemly; she calls him her “Master” and quite literally lives to serve him. The fact that she walks around in a very revealing outfit (by 1960s standards) doesn’t make us feel any better about her lack of agency in the situation. The concept of a genie is also a fraught topic in Hollywood, as its origins are often erased. Genies derive from jinn, which are trickster-like spirits found in Islamic and Arabic cultures. Though the show nods to this with Jeannie’s outfit and the fact that she speaks Persian, she’s clearly a white woman. Though “I Dream of Jeannie” is a lighthearted show not meant to spark critical analysis, these elements would make it a non-starter today.

When it premiered in 1967, “Ironside” appeared progressive in its politics, as it was one of the first shows to feature a disabled main character. The show follows Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr), a San Francisco police detective and wheelchair user. Ironside is given a special consulting position at the SFPD where he works with a team of officers to solve the city’s toughest cases.

The show was popular enough to run for eight seasons, from 1967 to 1975, but times have changed. Burr was a non-disabled actor playing a disabled character, which, thanks to disabled activists, has become less acceptable today. In 2013, NBC launched a reboot of “Ironside,” and it failed spectacularly. As in the original show, a non-disabled actor, Blair Underwood, played Detective Ironside. While some critics found the show badly written regardless of this casting choice, others took issue with Underwood’s role in particular. If the show were made today, casting a disabled actor in the lead role would be a must.

Western TV shows are back in style again thanks to writers like Taylor Sheridan, but they look a little different from how they used to. While the themes of Westerns are timeless, contemporary Westerns tend to be more concerned with accuracy and realism than their older counterparts. Take “F Troop,” a comedic Western that wouldn’t make sense in today’s TV landscape. The ABC sitcom takes place in the Old West directly following the Civil War. It follows a group of soldiers and often depicts their interactions with the local Indigenous tribe.

You can probably guess the first problem with this premise, which is that all the Native American characters are played by white actors. Though this was a common casting practice at the time, we’ve reached a point where Indigenous actors are hired to play Indigenous roles. Moreover, the show’s goofy, slapstick depiction of the 1860s, especially the jovial relationship between U.S. soldiers and Native Americans, flies in the face of historical fact in a way that reads as offensive today. The era was defined not by camaraderie between the two groups, but by outright genocide. Looking back, it doesn’t feel right to make light of this dark period in American history, and we struggle to imagine a world in which this show would get made today.

“The Beverly Hillbillies” is an archetypal example of a show that’s beloved by viewers but hated by critics, a common occurrence for American sitcoms. It follows the Clampetts, a poor family living in the Ozarks. When oil is discovered on their land, they take the money and move to California. Much of the humor comes from the culture clash between the Clampetts and their wealthy Beverly Hills neighbors, who have very different sensibilities.

“The Beverly Hillbillies” was a hugely popular show watched by as many as 40 million people every week. Critics never came around to it, however, and found the humor too low brow. It ran for nine seasons but was canceled in 1971 during CBS’s famous “rural purge,” in which the network canceled all of its country-fried programming, including “Green Acres” and “Hee Haw.”

In 1993, 20th Century Fox released a “Beverly Hillbillies” movie based on the show and it was panned by critics. It’s unlikely that a contemporary adaptation would fare any better, especially as modern-day writers tend to be more interested in interrogating stereotypes rather than blithely repeating them for laughs.

It might sound absurd, but “Hogan’s Heroes” was a Nazi comedy that was a hit with viewers and critics alike. The show ran for six seasons, from 1965 to 1971, and won two Emmy awards. Set in 1942, the series takes place in a Nazi POW camp, following the soldiers imprisoned there as well as their Nazi wardens. The Nazi officers are portrayed as bumbling fools while the soldiers sabotage their operations right under their noses.

A Nazi POW comedy doesn’t sound like an easy sell, and it wasn’t all smooth sailing. The show was initially pitched with the with the tagline, “If you liked World War II, you’ll love ‘Hogan’s Heroes!'” which not everyone found funny. Leonid Kinskey co-starred in the pilot, then dropped out due to discomfort with the Nazi elements. However, the show also starred Holocaust survivor Robert Clary, along with several other Jewish men who fled Europe during the war.

Even though — or perhaps because — we’re further removed from WWII, folks would likely balk at the show’s very questionable premise today.

A mostly forgotten 1960s sitcom on CBS, “My Living Doll” never achieved the cult status of some of its contemporaries. Executive produced by Jack Chertok, who co-produced the popular series “My Favorite Martian,” “My Living Doll” centers on a psychiatrist’s relationship with a beautiful robot. Like “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” the show depicts a man trying to control or otherwise keep hidden his extraordinary wife or would-be wife.

Bob Cummings plays Dr. Bob McDonald, an air force psychiatrist who comes into the possession of a sexy lady robot played by Julie Newmar. She is model AF-709, though Bob calls her Rhoda and attempts to shape her into the “perfect woman.” In this “Pygmalion”-esque story, Bob’s idea of what a perfect woman is means someone who is obedient and doesn’t make trouble.

When it comes to gender roles, modern-day audiences would probably have some trouble with the premise of “My Living Doll.” To be fair, “My Living Doll” wasn’t a hit in its day either, and Cummings left the show after the first season. Though the show had the potential to critique the stereotypes it depicts, the writing isn’t clever enough to do so, and it’s unlikely the domestic premise would fare any better with viewers today.

“Gilligan’s Island” is a beloved TV show, and we doubt reruns will disappear any time soon. But while the series is still remembered fondly by some, there’s no way it could be made today. “Gilligan’s Island” follows a group of passengers and crew who get shipwrecked on a remote island in the Pacific. The show is named for Willy Gilligan (Bob Denver), the incompetent first mate whose mistakes are often blamed for their continued misfortune. The other folks stranded on the island include the ship’s captain, a millionaire, a famous actress, and a naive farm girl.

Despite its placement in the canon of classic TV, “Gilligan’s Island” hasn’t aged particularly well. The women on the show are all depicted as helpless and dimwitted. Modern audiences tend to look for characters, particularly female characters, with more substance. Little about the show makes sense, and while it wasn’t supposed to, the constant plot holes might annoy viewers in a post-Google world. In recent years, folks have also noticed the show’s offensive portrayal of Indigenous people, which hopefully would make the show a no-go today. Because of these outdated elements, “Gilligan’s Island” actually airs with a content warning on the Sundance Channel.

Can you imagine “Mister Ed” airing in 2026? The CBS sitcom follows a man who talks to his horse … and the horse talks back. Alan Young plays Wilbur Post, an architect and the owner of a palomino horse named Ed (voiced by Allan Lane). Wilbur and Ed have a special relationship because they’re able to communicate with each other, though Ed delights in causing trouble and embarrassing Wilbur in front of his friends and family. Wilbur’s neighbors find him quite eccentric, and his wife, Carol (Connie Hines), doesn’t understand him.

The show began in syndication but was picked up by CBS soon after and ran for six seasons. Though the concept of a talking horse isn’t inherently tied to any time period, the premise is just too silly to work today. “We were not a society big on relevance at that point,” TV producer Warren Littlefield said of the goofy shows of the 1960s, which he calls “idiot sitcoms.” The idea of relevance is much more important to TV viewers today, and there’s no topical hook for a talking horse story. Fox attempted to make a remake of “Mister Ed” in 2004, and the results are hilariously terrible. Though it’s been 20 years, we doubt anyone else could breathe new life into the concept today.

Is there any world in which “My Mother the Car” could have been a hit? All signs point to “No.” The premise of “My Mother the Car” is even weirder than the idea of a talking horse. It follows lawyer David Crabtree (Jerry Van Dyke), who learns that his mother’s soul has been trapped inside of a vintage car following her death. (She’s able to talk to him via the car radio.) Crabtree’s unexpected purchase of the old car exacerbates his family and also puts him on the radar of amoral car collector Captain Manzini (Avery Schreiber), who plots to steal the car for himself.

Considered one of the worst sitcoms ever made, “My Mother the Car” was eviscerated by critics. The premise is too dumb for words, and the jokes don’t land. It doesn’t help that the show didn’t have a laugh track to remind viewers that it was supposed to be a comedy. Talking cars aren’t an immediate no-go, as evidenced by the success of “The Love Bug” and “Herbie: Fully Loaded,” but “My Mother the Car” doesn’t have the friendliness or charm of those films. It was a flop for NBC in 1965, and we’re confident it would be just as much of a failure were it released today.

With its goofy premise and religious setting, it’s hard to imagine “The Flying Nun” becoming airborne in 2026. The show stars a 19-year-old Sally Field, who wasn’t happy about spending her most youthful years playing a nun. She’s Sister Bertrille, a young nun who discovers that she has the ability to fly … sort of. She weighs only 90 pounds, and her tiny stature, in addition to the shape of her cornette, allows her to catch the wind. She uses her sort-of-superpower to help people in the community of San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she works.

These days, “The Flying Nun” isn’t as well remembered as some of its kooky contemporaries of the 1960s. It’s easy to roll your eyes at the concept, though Field does her best to sell the absurd situation. It’s not as if we’ve excised flying human beings from our screens — superheroes are all the rage these days. Still, “The Flying Nun” feels outdated because of how uncomplicated and illogical it is. We still love our fantasy shows, but contemporary fantasy usually depicts a magical world with its own set of complicated rules — not a nun who likes to paraglide.

“Daniel Boone” is the kind of show they don’t make anymore. It’s not a typical action show, nor is it a Western, the NBC series follows a highly fictionalized Daniel Boone as he lives the life of a frontier family man in 1770s Kentucky. The star of the show, Fess Parker, had previously played Davy Crockett in a Disney television series. Daniel Boone, coincidentally, wears a coonskin cap similar to Crockett’s. Along with his wife and kids, Boone is often joined by his friend, Mingo (Ed Ames), an Oxford-educated man with Cherokee heritage.

“Daniel Boone” wouldn’t fit into today’s TV lineup, in part because there’s not really a market for this kind of family-friendly action-adventure show anymore. TV these days is either marketed toward kids or adults, not both. Then there’s the issue of historical accuracy and representation. “Daniel Boone” was so inaccurate that Kentucky legislators penned a resolution condemning the show, calling it an “insult to millions of people” and an “inexcusable farce.” The casting of Ed Ames, a white man, as Mingo, is another blunder that would be difficult to defend today.

Perhaps there can only be one prehistoric TV show per decade. That might explain why “It’s About Time,” which premiered on CBS the same year “The Flintstones” went off air, was never a hit. Or maybe it just wasn’t very good. Created by Sherwood Schwartz, the man behind “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” “It’s About Time” follows two astronauts who accidentally travel back in time to the era of cavemen. The show was derided by critics, and its initially good ratings fell off rather quickly.

Speaking to the AP, Schwartz came up with three reasons why audiences grew tired of the series: The prehistoric plot points grew boring and repetitive, the show wasn’t attractive to look at, and the caveman-speak was difficult to listen to. In an attempt to revive the show’s popularity, Schwartz reversed the premise by having the two astronauts travel back to the present with the caveman family, who then had to adjust to 1960s life. The experiment didn’t work, and “It’s About Time” was canceled after its first season.

We’re inclined to agree with Schwartz’s assessment of the show’s less desirable qualities, which is why there’s no chance the series would work today. There’s not a market for live-action Neanderthal content anymore — nor was there ever. Just look at the massive flop that was “Cavemen,” the 2007 ABC sitcom based on a series of Geico commercials.