Allan Burns helped make a woman's working life the basis of a warm, sharply funny sitcom. We value him most for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where Mary Richards has a career worth taking seriously and no shortage of jokes.
Fi1m perspective
Mary Tyler Moore makes patience funny in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), and the writing knows how much comedy that can carry. Creators Allan Burns and James L. Brooks give Mary Richards a career and a personal life without making either seem like something to fill the hours before she finds a man. We rate the series highly for making that life worth following, and for finding so much comedy in people talking. It is warm company, with enough sharpness in the ensemble writing to keep the warmth from becoming tiresome.
Burns began by writing animation for Jay Ward Productions, and his early sitcoms favoured stranger premises. The Munsters (1964), created with Chris Hayward, built a suburban family comedy around monsters; their My Mother the Car (1965) shared that taste for absurdity. The latter was poorly received; the move towards more realistic workplace comedy is the turn that interests us. Work with Brooks on Room 222 (1969) preceded The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where an independent woman in a newsroom supplied enough to begin with.
Burns's share of that achievement cannot sensibly be separated from Brooks's, or from the actors who make their conversations pleasurable. The ensemble matters to our affection for the series, and Moore makes a patient central character funny enough to hold it together. We laughed at her restraint against the broader character humour around her. That broader humour is also the caveat: some of it is overplayed, and the show can press harder for a laugh than it needs to. The writing is better when it trusts that Mary's work and personal life are interesting already.
The partnership with Brooks also led to Lou Grant (1977), a dramatic spin-off centred on the newsroom editor, while Burns's screenplay for A Little Romance (1979) took him into literary adaptation for film. Moving a newsroom editor into drama makes sense for a writer already willing to take a sitcom character's working life seriously. Begin with Mary Richards; she is good company even when the jokes are trying too hard.
Biography
Allan Burns was an American screenwriter and television producer. He co-created the sitcom The Munsters (1964) with Chris Hayward and, with James L. Brooks, co-created and wrote for The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970).
Burns began his career in animation, writing for Jay Ward Productions on series including The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. He later partnered with Brooks on Room 222 (1969) before developing The Mary Tyler Moore Show for MTM Enterprises. The series spawned spin-offs including Rhoda (1974) and Lou Grant (1977), on which Burns also worked as a writer and producer.
Burns received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for the film A Little Romance (1979). He died in Los Angeles on 30 January 2021.
