The Doris Day Show is an 128-episode American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS network from September 1968 until September 1973.
Doris Day had been a popular film actress in the 1950s and early 1960s. In this gentle sitcom, she was cast as Doris Martin, a widow and mother of two young sons who, when the series premiered, had just moved back to a rural ranch outside of San Francisco after having lived in big cities for most of her adult life.
Other characters during this initial phase of the program included Doris's father Buck (played by Denver Pyle) and their hired hand on the ranch, Leroy (played by James Hampton).
In the 1969-70 TV season, the Doris Martin character began to commute from the ranch to San Francisco, where she worked as a secretary for a magazine. New workplace characters were added. At the start of the 1970-71 season, Doris and her sons moved from the ranch to San Francisco, where they lived above an Italian restaurant. Doris began writing articles for the magazine at which she worked, Today's World.
The fourth season, 1971-72, saw a radical change in the series. The entire cast other than Doris Day left the show; even Doris Martin's two sons were no longer in the cast. Doris Martin now had a new editor, Cy Bennett, and she was a full-time staff writer. The series continued with this format until it was canceled in 1973.
The Doris Day Show was considered a rather lightweight comedy, and was never a huge ratings success (although it was popular enough to survive on primetime TV for five seasons). Even though it premiered at a time when rural comedies such as Green Acres were still the norm, it continued into the era when topical, relevant sitcoms like All in the Family prevailed. In fact, The Doris Day Show was once, in 1971, referred to in an episode of All in the Family. As the bigoted white character Archie Bunker awkwardly attempts to make small talk with his new African American neighbor Louise Jefferson, he asks her: "Er, how did you like the Julia show last night?" Louise Jefferson replies, "Fine. How did you like Doris Day?"
One implication of this exchange was that the sunny sitcom Julia, starring Diahann Carroll as a middle-class African American nurse, a show considered rather groundbreaking at the time by many white Americans, was in fact no more relevant for black Americans than the lightweight Doris Day Show was relevant for whites.
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Last updated: 05-28-2005 23:00:11
