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‘Home & Family’: Is It Time for ‘The Waltons’ Again?

‘Home & Family’: Is It Time for ‘The Waltons’ Again?

Last updated on: August 3, 2015 at 7:34 am by Kate O'Hare

‘Home & Family’: Is It Time for ‘The Waltons’ Again? 2015-08-03T07:34:34-08:00 Kate O'Hare

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Screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood, “Nobody knows nothing.” That’s as true today as it was 40 or even 100 years ago. The biggest hits frequently come as a complete surprise, even to those that made them.

When “The Waltons” premiered on Sept. 14, 1972, nobody gave it much hope of survival, and that included its network, CBS, which scheduled it on Thursdays at 8 p.m. against ratings powerhouses “The Flip Wilson Show” and “The Mod Squad.”

The show, created by Earl Hamner Jr., who based it on his book, “Spencer’s Mountain,” was hopelessly out of step with its times. The Vietnam War was still raging; the Watergate break-in was dominating the news; and Richard Nixon was about to get re-elected in a landslide. The convulsions of the Sixties were starting to give way to the disco hedonism of the ’70s. Certainly no one would be interested in watching a wholesome drama about a rural Virginia family during the Great Depression and World War II.

Ten seasons — plus three NBC movies in 1982, and three more CBS movies during the 1990s — later, “The Waltons” cemented its position as one of the most successful and influential shows on TV (who hasn’t heard a parody of “Good night, John-Boy” and “Good-night, Mary Ellen”?).

But try to find a wholesome, rural drama — or comedy, for that matter — on network TV today, and you’ll come up empty. The odds are a smidgen better on cable, but not if you take out Hallmark Channel and UPtv. Clean is out; edgy is in, and downright deviant is no longer relegated to the HBOs and Showtimes.

On Monday, Aug. 3, five cast members of “The Waltons” dropped by Hallmark Channel’s daytime (10 a.m. ET/PT) magazine show “Home & Family,” filmed in a whole-house set on the backlot at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. They were Richard Thomas (son John-Boy); daughters Judy Norton (Mary Ellen), Kami Cotler (Elizabeth) and Mary McDonough (Erin); and Michael Learned (mother Olivia).

Click here for a previous post that includes clips of the episode.

Before taping commenced, I had a chance to chat briefly with the cast about the show’s appeal, and why there’s no 2015 version of “The Waltons” on network TV.

Michael Learned:

Things come and go. I don’t think the people who make decisions in Hollywood thought it was going to be successful. They were under pressure from Congress to do something [about the quality of TV], honestly. Maybe it’s the same thing now — the people who make the decisions in Hollywood don’t know the people in America who love shows like “The Waltons” … because they’re still there.

There was one woman who said, “Eight to nine on Thursday night was the only time I felt safe in my childhood.”

Hollywood always claims that money is the prime motivator — but if that was the whole story, we’d have multiple network follow-ups to such hit shows as “The Waltons,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Touched by an Angel,” “Highway to Heaven” and “7th Heaven” (the most recent of these ended in 2007). NBC did recently try to reboot “Murder, She Wrote,” but it never made it on the air.

There’s money to be made in family and faith-based entertainment, but few seem willing to make it.

Kami Cotler:

You think money is the only and ultimate driver; that’s not true. There’s a bigger cultural component. In the culture of people who are making these decisions in the industry, there’s nothing cool about [family shows]. You might get an Emmy, but your friends won’t be impressed.

I work a lot in the indie-film market, and they were saying that the biggest moneymakers were family films and faith-based films.

Unfortuately, a lot of faith-based projects are of substandard quality, but an audience starved for content is prepared to lower its standards — but it shouldn’t have to. However, as Richard Thomas points out, calling yourself a “faith-based” film or some other label, can backfire.

Anything that calls itself a particular kind of entertainment is always doomed to a niche market. If you’re tying yourself to a particular genre or niche, you’re going to be stuck with that. If [the genre’s] big, you’ll make money; if it’s not, it won’t.

If you cut yourself apart from the general culture into a particular thing, you’re going to pay for that.

In the end, quality wins out. A “faith-based” project may be a tough sell in this market, but as Netflix’s critically accaimed “Daredevil” showed, the mere fact that a character is willing to discuss his faith out loud (Daredevil, a k a Matt Murdock, is a cradle Catholic) isn’t a dealbreaker for the audience — even the hip comic-book audience.

Hollywood seems to believe that projects that feature orthodox Christianity and traditional families are ratings buzzkills (and won’t get them backslaps at cocktail parties).

But just remember, in Tinseltown, “Nobody knows nothing.”

And now, some shots from the set:

Walton-Reunion-Radio

Slide: 4 of 6

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Images: Kate O’Hare

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