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Love it or hate it, "Sanford and Son" is one of the most groundbreaking American sitcoms of all time. The NBC series about a widowed get-rich-quick schemer (Redd Foxx) living in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood with his adult son (Demond Wilson) was an undeniable hit during its run. It ushered in a Golden Age of Black family sitcoms thanks to dynamic performances, frank dialogue written from a working-class Black perspective, and its often uproarious scripts. It was such a ratings juggernaut that it's often credited for killing off its much more sanitized competition, "The Brady Bunch."

"It was a groundbreaking series," Eric Deggans wrote in a series retrospective for the official Emmys website, noting that "Before 'Good Times' and 'The Jeffersons' would make TV history with powerful stories focused on Black families, 'Sanford and Son' would explore the prickly relationship between a middle-aged Black man and his son.

The best sitcoms of the '70s feature a blend of stand-out humor, progressive themes, and memorable characters, here's the standouts of the group, ranked from worst to best. In the 1970s, sitcoms changed and became more real. While the sitcoms of the 1960s involved many outlandish plots and over-the-top and cartoon-like characters, like The Addams Family or The Munsters, the '70s featured stories about family life, the workplace, and of course, the politics of the time period. Parody of these elements was a common thread shared by almost all sitcoms of the era.

Stories and characters became more relatable to audiences, making many TV shows from this era absolute classics, and a reflection of the culture in the 1970s. Given the dreary and pessimistic world situation during the 1970s, this kind of comedy became a much-needed escape from everyday problems. Despite American TV dominating the decade, not all...

David Lambert at TV Shows on DVD reports the Grady TV show, a Sanford and Son spin-off, starring Whitman Mayo as Grady Wilson, is coming to DVD as a manufacture-on-demand, in July. Grady was cancelled by NBC, after one season during which 10 episodes aired. The Grady TV series cast also includes: Carol Cole, Joe Morton, Rosanne Katon, and Haywood Nelson.After Grady was cancelled, Mayo returned to Sanford and Son, and went on to the Sanford Arms sequel series, but left due to a salary disagreement. Sanford Arms was cancelled by NBC after four episode aired.Read More…...