Julia

As I write this, the death of Mary Tyler Moore was announced within the last hour. While MTM is rightfully lauded for her role as a single career woman, Diahann Carroll's role in "Julia" broke more ground on more fronts. Ms. Carroll depicted a black woman trying to balance a job as a nurse with raising a 6-year-old son after her husband in the Vietnam War. Add the fact that this series debuted in 1968, there were a LOT of glass ceilings shattered when NBC began airing it and even though it apparently drew criticism, the network stuck with it for three years until Ms. Carroll had had enough.

On top of that, it was a good show, a "dramedy" that was presented in understated fashion without laugh track but with a nice chemistry between the core cast of Ms. Carroll, Marc Copage as her son and old pros Lloyd Nolan and Lurene Tuttle as her doctor boss and charge nurse, respectively. I rate "Julia" a 9 because it could be a little flat at times, but it deserves far, far more attention than it receives even today.

Long before she became Dominique Deveraux on "Dynasty",she set ground here as being the first African-American woman to star in her own weekly TV series which was a milestone when it premiered in the fall of 1968. Julia was just that: a single parent and nurse who raised her son and working for Dr. Chegley,who was in charge of the hospital where she was employed. The show was brilliant in depicting the role model of the family and the single parent which had some good moral values which you don't find that in some shows today. Marc Copage was absolutely adorable as her son Corey,and I really like Micheal Link as Corey's playmate Earl J. Waggedorn. To this day,the show is rarely seen on some stations,but Diahann Carroll was one of the most beautiful women in the world when this show made its mark on the NBC network. I had very good memories of this show,and I wish they would do a TV movie on "Julia",bringing back the original cast for a reunion. Note: Lloyd Nolan who played the Doctor on the show recently passed away,but his status will live on with this landmark series.

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.

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

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.