Norman Lear made family arguments funny enough to keep us listening when the subject hurt. All in the Family remains worth the noise, though its affection for the loudest man can soften the criticism of him.
Fi1m perspective
In All in the Family (1971), Archie Bunker shares his home with Michael Stivic, the son-in-law whose views he cannot abide. Lear and fellow creator Johnny Speight make disagreement part of the household routine, with no easy way for either man to avoid the other. We found it painfully funny because the people doing the shouting still have to live together. It is abrasive, well-acted television comedy, and worth enduring a little shouting for.
Lear came to this from variety-show comedy writing, then film production with Bud Yorkin, with whom he formed Tandem Productions in 1958. Cold Turkey (1971), a satire of consumerism and addiction, is one of his rare outings as a feature writer-director. His more substantial contribution was to television as a creator, writer and producer. Adapting the British Till Death Us Do Part into All in the Family gave him a household in which a disagreement could supply both jokes and sustained friction.
The live-studio-audience videotaping suited comedy built around recurring characters and pointed dialogue. Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton make All in the Family worth the arguments; the performances keep its abrasive exchanges funny and often painful. But repetition matters in a sitcom, and here it can work against Lear. Archie becomes such agreeable company that the prejudice under attack can start to look like an old relative’s tolerable habit.
That household formula also gave Lear ways to put different lives at the centre of a programme. As producer of Sanford and Son (1972), he helped bring working-class Black characters into network television; as creator and producer of The Jeffersons (1975), he followed a Black family into the upper middle class. The shift in income matters to Lear’s interest in how class affects the daily business of living together.
His later executive-producing credits include The Princess Bride (1987), though television gives us the clearest reason to value his work. There is no need to watch All in the Family as a dutiful lesson in the history of the sitcom. Start with it for O’Connor and Stapleton, and do not feel obliged to forgive Archie just because the programme sometimes does.
Biography
Norman Lear was an American television writer, producer and director. He created, wrote, directed and produced the sitcom All in the Family (1971), which ran until 1979 and addressed social and political issues through comedy.
Lear produced or created several other influential 1970s series, including Sanford and Son (1972), Maude (1972), Good Times (1974) and The Jeffersons (1975). He co-founded the advocacy organisation People for the American Way in 1981. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on 27 July 1922 and died in Los Angeles on 5 December 2023.
