Carter Country

To say that Carter Country was based on the show "In The Heat of the Night" is pretty much stretching the imagination. Granted it has a college-educated black man working as a Sergeant in a Sheriff's department full of red-necks but that is as about as far as you can go with the similarities. If I remember right this was an ABC sitcom. It was put on the air to capitalize on then President Jimmy Carter's name (after all he was from Georgia and I believe the setting was in Georgia). But if you actually watched the show you recognized that they were taking liberties with ABC hit police comedy "Barney Miller". Like Barney Miller the show dealt with the workings of the small Sheriff's department and the type of crime, criminals and other things that they had to deal with. Almost all of the action took place in the sheriff's office (Barney Miller was in the 12th precinct)and occasionally you saw the home of the Sheriff or the deputies.

I suppose other similarities can drawn looking at shows like "Beverly Hillbillies", "Petticoat Junction", "Green Acres", even "The Andy Griffith Show" as these shows also were about rural people, some from the South.

Carter Country was an extremely funny, well-written show that just never got off the ground and that was too bad. I mean when idiotic stereotyping shows like "Dukes of Hazzard" can last as long as it did you would think Carter Country should have had a better chance.

Yes it is a silly show. But at the same time it challenged a lot of stereotypes in a very positive and constructive way. It was a show that modern reviewers will consider offensive and stereotypical, but that was the whole point. Carter county did a wonderful job of showing that people can learn to get along and can still have value even if we disagree.

There are of course '70s situations that are very stupid, things that the producers were required to do, but through all of it, there is a built-in belief that people are good at heart and with dialogue and exposure, everyone can grow. I would compare the show in many ways to a pg version of blazing saddles, in the sense that it tried to reveal the idiocy of stereotypes.

I watched this growing up in Georgia and it captured the flavor of the South ! Victor French plays the sheriff who's bumbling deputies are always messing up things. Baker is the black deputy with a little more intelligence than the others but still they all make you laugh ! I'm not sure how long this series lasted but I know it had a plot line all its own. This can't be compared to "In the Heat of the Night" because the show all originated in the police station. The fat mayor would come in and complain to the sheriff and then it would go on down the line. I was lucky enough to record one episode in the late 1980's and I have loved watching it. Columbia Pictures Television should give everyone the chance to see this classic comedy again ! It's well worth your time watching it.

I remember this show well from the late 1970's. It was a fairly lightweight sitcom, but as I recall, it was above average in both the quality of acting and writing. The interaction between Richard Paul as the Mayor and the great Victor French was the highlight of the series. Unfortunately, as President Carter's popularity started to wane by 1978, so did viewers' interest in this show and it ended after 2 seasons. Vernee Watson and Keene Holliday were believable as love interests and Guick Kook was also good for comic relief. The late 1970's was a period when ABC television specialized in "jiggle shows" like Charlie's Angels and Three's Company, among others, but "Carter Country" is good family fare without a jiggle in sight. If it comes up on TV Land, its worth watching, if for no reason other than nostalgia.

This is one of those quickie sitcoms developed in reaction to current events. In this case, it's a takeoff on "In the Heat of the Night", with a decidedly farcical twist. Because Jimmy Carter had just been elected, Hollywood gave us this badly-titled waste of time that featured stupid rednecks getting their comeuppance on a weekly basis. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, I guess.) Think "She's the Sheriff" without Suzanne Somers but with fake Georgian accents. Everyone acts like they're ten years old because that's the target market.

Melanie Griffith is the only one of the cast who went on to anything spectacular, but most of the rest are recognizable as good character actors. Aside from Griffith, the most recognizable would probably be Victor French, who created many memorable characters in productions like Highway to Heaven, Little House on the Prairie, and did several turns as heavies in movies like Flap and An Officer and a Gentleman. Here he is the world-weary but (mostly) fair sheriff. Richard Paul played the mayor, and he was the one who came up with the witless phrase that everyone repeated on playgrounds and by water coolers -- "Handle it" repeated three or four times, rapidly, while dropping the 'd'. Kene Holliday plays an educated black man who for some reason decided to live in Deliverance territory. Most of the cast has passed away.

In order to understand how this ludicrous series was ever created, you could take a look at David Garber's filmography. His work includes such luminary events as The Love Boat, The Fall Guy, Saved by the Bell, among others. I see his latest project is "Butt-Ugly Martians", another potential Hallmark Hall of Fame production ....