Shérif, fais-moi peur!

Eight years after Fred Silverman's infamous "rural purge", this show burst on the scene and instantly became a hit. Even though the show did get a lot of heat for the outlandish plots, simplistic characters and scantily clad women, especially Daisy, this show struck a chord with the American public during the late 70's/early 80's. Also, you could tell that this show was done very tongue in cheek and that the cast had a lot of fun doing it. The only bump in the road that hurt its momentum was when John Schneider and Tom Wopat left the show due to a contract dispute. When the producers thought that those two could be replaced by a pair of actors that were almost identical to their predecessors. However the show went downhill during this period. Also, the producers thought that it was the car and not the two leads that everyone turned in to see. However, when the ratings dropped and soon the producers were begging Schneider and Wopat to return.

Even though this show wasn't Shakespeare, it still was one of the highlights of C.B.S.'s Friday night lineup.

'A kids show! But well done. Well with today"s P C crowd The Dukes of Hazzard got taken off T V land. I guess the car, the short shorts, and southern stereotypes where laughable in the 70's, but never to be aired on regular t v again. Cable and H B O I would say yes. But back in the 70's Confederate flags, BBQ, short shorts/ tight shirts, male and female eye candy was the norm. Boss hog, and Rosco where two bumblers bad guys and every episode had no social message, but a formulated plot which involved dynamite and high rev gear jamming. Funny the first 3 seasons where more adult oriented with humor, but The Dukes of Hazzard slow became more of a predictable kid's show as the series progressed. Tom and Wil where gone for a season due to a contract hold out, which formulated the series even more. Laughable at times, with some interesting stunts, with funny stereo type humor influenced from the Smokie and Bandit Burt Reynolds 70's make The Dukes of Hazzard a memorable series like M A S H. For the monster truck, and professional wrestling crowd which I love. Ya all have a good time now. 7 stars.

I just realised that this series was based on the 1974 movie "Moon Runners," which didn't have the Duke family, but it did have characters named Uncle Jesse, Cooter, and Waylon Jennings as the Balladeer. The main characters, Bobby Lee Hag and Grady even had a stock car which they raced. The car wasn't named "General Lee," but was named after Robert E. Lee's horse, Traveler. They significantly cleaned up the story to make it family-friendly for television. In the movie, the main characters were involved in the illegal alcohol business. Uncle Jesse was a moonshiner who was in trouble with other local moonshiners because of his insistence on quality. Bobby Lee was a rum runner, who used his big old Chevy to outrun the local sheriff and the revenuers (tax authorities).

I remember being eight years old when I started watching this show. I would anxiously await the Friday line up that included The Incredible Hulk, Dallas, Falcon Crest and this one. That was a great Friday line up, highlighted of course by the Dukes. What was so appealing about this show to so many people was it's virtue. I'm sure parents wanted their kids to watch it because you couldn't have a better show for their kids to watch. It was safe. The Dukes were polite, virtuous and church going. How could they not like that? How could a parent object to anything like that? But of course as kids we liked it for different reasons.

Stunts, fast cars, Daisy, Boss Hogg and Roscoe. The Dukes of Hazard was so absurd sometimes but it always entertained you and more often than not it made you laugh. Could you imagine what the script must have looked like when they first pitched it to studio? Could you imagine how silly Roscoe must have looked on paper? I mean how do you write in his ridiculous laugh? How do you write all of his idiosyncrasies? Or was that all James Best? I don't know, but it sure was funny.

TV is different now in the 90's and beyond. Shows are more gritty and real and there is nudity and foul language and talk of homosexuality and alcoholism and a plethora of other issues. And that is fine. I like shows like Dawsons Creek and Friends and such, but Dukes of Hazard is a throw back to a simpler time. It is a time in television history when innocence was combined beautifully with humour, fast cars and lots of scenes of the General Lee jumping creeks. This was so much fun to watch and even when Coy and Vance came on the show, it was still okay.

The Dukes of Hazard was classic TV. My generation looks at this like my parents generation looks at Leave It To Beaver. Has twenty years really gone by?

'Just some good ol boys, never meanin' no harm - they been in trouble with the law since the day they wuz born...' So began the classiest of all hicksville county roadchase shows, where each week those loveable two modern day Robin Hoods, Beaureguard "Bo" Duke [John Schneider] & Lucas K. "Luke" Duke [Tom Wopat] would pit themselves against some ner do wells, probably from Chickasaw county, and inadvertently manage to rub Sherriff Roscoe P Coltrane [James Best] up the wrong way to boot. Cue slo-mo shots of an airborne General Lee [1969 Dodge Charger]flying down leaf littered byways with Roscoe's cruiser once again in hot pursuit.

This was a fantastic early Saturday evening kid's classic, mainly because of the shows hugely appealing basic premise -Bo & Luke are on probation for running moonshine, and they have the fastest motor in the county. So they're basically outlaws with hearts of gold who never really do anything particularly anti-social, they're just fighting the system that's run by corrupt town official Jefferson Davis Hogg, AKA "Boss Hogg" [Sorrell Booke]. He's fat, he's greedy and he wears a ridiculous white suit. And to make matters worse he's always trying to aquire the deeds to the Duke's farm, managed by his long time rival Uncle Jesse [Denver Pyle]with the help of Daisy Duke [Catherine Bach]. Show me a ten year old boy who, in 1981, didn't have a major Daisy Duke fixation - I mean, her legs were insured for two million dollars. Crikey.

So our renegade heroes would have at least a couple of car chases each week, they'd hang out with Cooter in the garage, take the p**s out of the educationally sub-normal deputy Cletus, stop some really bad guys from doing something dastardly and probably blow up a barn or something with a stick of dynamite fired from a bow and arrow. And that's just before lunch.

It all went pretty badly wrong in about '83 when the the boys were replaced by some pseudo Duke-lite wannabes named Coy and Vance. Their names alone speak volumes. This kind of signalled the beginning of the end, and I'm not sure the show ever quite recovered. Still, it's better not to dwell on this shamefully duff period in the show's history, instead it's better to fondly remember the Dukes in all their glory - flagrantly disregarding the law, and only ever climbing into and out of the General Lee via the windows, as the doors were soldered shut. Yee-haww.