How the Sitcom Mirrored, and Shaped, Your Idea of New York City

Photo: The Encyclopedia of New York In November 1947, the DuMont television network aired the fifteen-minute premiere of a show called Mary Kay and Johnny. It was the first American television sitcom, appearing several months before the first officially programmed season of network television, and it was unlike anything viewers had seen before.

That idea, the small residential space serving as a regular backdrop for mundane but meaningful, humorous stories about everyday life, became a foundational piece of sitcom DNA. It’s there in The Goldbergs, the long-running radio sitcom that transitioned to television in 1949, and in The Honeymooners, the 1955 Jackie Gleason sitcom about a New York bus driver.

Since then, sitcoms have helped America reconceive New York not as somewhere to get stabbed but as a place where you could live your best life. In 1989, Seinfeld began to promulgate the idea that New York City existence was principally about having wacky, if venal, neighbors, and it conveyed local references— H&H bagels, black-and-white cookies, subway seat-stealers, George Steinbrenner as perpetual white noise—to a national audience.

kvanaren Yes I agree with that assessment. There are some wonderful sitcoms which are relevant to New York, even going back to the 40s and not all of these shows are New York relevant. (It seems The Big Apple is some kind of trope)

kvanaren As a little kid in Texas, for me one the New Yorkiest of the New York sitcoms was ”That Girl.”

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