Julia

I was only 9 years old in 1968, but I was an avid television watcher, and I loved this TV show.

My parents got me a Julia "Barbie" doll, even though I did not have any regular Barbie dolls. (We are a Caucasian family.)

It is almost 40 years since I have seen an episode of Julia, but reading the other comments triggered a little memory for me.

I remember the morality of the show. I remember respecting Julia. I remember liking her little boy for his respectfulness toward his mom. I remember it was an intelligent show, not a silly one.

I loved this show.

I can't believe some of the vapid comments about this wonderfully gentle and sweet ground-breaking show! I remember watching Julia when I was young and being very impressed by its cast and storyline; they were both very creative. Why do you make fun of it because it wasn't about angry, bitter black people with chips on their shoulders, but about a young black mother who was a nurse and her little son trying to live upbeat, positive, fulfilling lives while the male head of the family was serving his country in Vietnam. This was a landmark show for America and deserves more respect! This show was like a Serenity Prayer for race relations! Not all "progress" is made by angry, bitter, or violent people protesting in the marketplace. Real progress is often made one by one by individuals who can see past the divides to reach out on a daily basis to people of different races and religions, with a sense of goodwill and humility.

So it was with Julia. You catch more flies with honey instead of vinegar and I'm sure this show did more to increase understanding among whites for the everyday concerns of black folk than all the Jesse Jacksons and Malcolm X's in the world!

This show has to be recognised as one of the milestones in Black TV, before Bill Cosby, before the smattering of Black shows on TV today, Diahann Carroll played a single mom raising a son all by herself.

She didn't play a rich bored housewife, or a Hollywood madam like in Dynasty. Diahann played a sensible working woman. Scatty, witty, repressed at times but a woman of our times. Characters like Julia are everyday people, they remind us of who we are,

I find Julia a powerful statement of the 70's with single working parents, this is a positive statement for women and Blacks all over, it's not all about flash,booty and bling!!! There is dignity in hard work, pity the show didn't last very long but it's important to note that she played the lead and there were hardly any race-related issues on the show. It was just normal "everyday people"

Also being filmed in Black and White dates it but gives it a classic feel.

SOUND!!! 7/10

Diahann Carroll (Dynasty "Dominique Deveraux Lloyd") played "Julia Baker" a single parent and a nurse who had one son "Corey Baker" Marc Copage (The Wave). "Corey Baker" was an adorable little boy. Lloyd Nolan (Peyton Place, Hannah and Her Sisters) "Dr. Morton Chegley" was Julia's boss in the hospital where she worked. This show portraits a role model family of a single parent. Diahann was and is a beautiful woman. I watched the show when I was growing up, dubbed and black and white. I used to look forward to finding the show. I don't think that they dubbed that many episodes, and soon I found myself watching the reruns. But it was ok, because is the show had good values. I have very good memories of the series.

Just for the record, no one seems to have commented on the social importance of this show. It was the first television series to star a black woman. (And one of the few of its time to star any black actor or actress.) It was also important in that it did not play to stereotypes of of the role of black women, let alone single black mothers. Julia was a successful single parent with a career as a nurse at a major hospital where she was respected.

As I recall, while her race was not ignored, it was not the crux of the program.

The content of the show was not terribly exciting, but the matter-of-fact way in which Julia's middle-class life was portrayed was a major step forward for television. In a sense, the somewhat bland quality of many of the episodes was a de facto recognition of the fact that the day-to-day lives and concerns of most people (even fictional TV people) don't really differ based on external factors like race.