After "Return To Mayberry"...

It was all set up for a reboot of the series, the reunion had done monster ratings, and Andy Griffith was ready to do another weekly show . The original premise was back with Andy and Barney in charge...they even had Opie moving away because Ron Howard obviously wasn't going to do it regularly. Everything was set...

And then we got "Matlock".

Any thoughts on why Andy went in that direction, and would Mayberry have even have worked in the 80's without seeming silly...

 

Maybe he watched Return to Mayberry and thought, we look ridiculous.

Twenty or so years on and it did not have the same feel in my opinion.

 

Maybe he watched the "Opie's Back!" skit on SNL and figured nothing could top that?

 

I’ve tried watching Return to Mayberry, and I’ve never been able to finish it; I just don’t think it’s good. Maybe Andy felt the same way and didn’t want to tarnish the legacy of The Andy Griffith Show.

 

Or maybe they offered more $$$$$ for "Matlock". He was excellent in Matlock.

 

" After spending seven months in rehabilitation for leg paralysis from Guillain–Barré syndrome in 1983, Griffith returned to television as the title character, Ben Matlock, in the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995) "

Andy Griffith - Wikipedia

7 months of inactivity gives a man plenty of time to think, and make decisions about his career.

 

I admit it's somewhat bloated because it tried to fit so much in, but the nuggets of a great half-hour show were there with Andy, Barney and Gomer...

 

Maybe because of what Buddy Ebsen was able to do with Barnaby Jones, or Dick Van Dyke was able to have with Diagnosis: Murder. That is, a way to keep the comfort of series acting, at the same time stepping out from under their bigger, typecasting roles.

 

This would sum up my take on it...

 

Are there any of these revivals that worked long term?

 

Matlock did pretty well. Looks like he made the right call.

I think actors who are so identified with one character really hope for another good one. I'm thinking Carroll O'Connor in The Heat of the Night.

 

It was nothing special, but "Still The Beaver" (or whatever they called it) ran for a number of years...

 

Actually, Still The Beaver was a kick to see Eddie Haskel STILL giving Beaver the business after all those years.

"You know, Mrs Cleaver......at Haskell Construction, we dont build Houses......We Build HOMES"....

 

I remember a quote from Andy Griffith where he said everybody looked so old. I guess he did not want to go back and tarnish the shows reputation. Matlock was a new character for him to do. Actors seem to want to do different characters, to not get typecast, etc. I liked the reunion movie, but it went on too long. It would have worked fine if it was a half hour episode. I think most of these reunion movies that I watch tend to go on too long. I often think that it would be fun to watch these reunion movies in edited format. Example, The Wild Wild West movies that Robert Conrad and Ross Martin did should be edited down to an hour. Same as the Perry Mason movies. Those shows worked great as hour long shows. Andy Griffith was a half hour show. Same thing with the Futurama movies. Edit them down to a half hour or maybe an hour each.

 

When "Return To Mayberry" first aired, I watched it in black and white...really helped take me back there.

 

It's much like Chicago. Once Terry Kath died, the show was over. Chicago should have called it quits.

The Andy Griffith Show was great during all the black & white seasons. It went on too long after Don Knotts left.

Even if he came back, Ronny Howard would have been gone. It was over. Let it be. Move on. Good choice.

 

if Andy & Barney were the main characters again IMO it would have been great and successful..they were a fabulous team...the show was never the same without Barney...those 2 could have read the phone book and I still would have laughed...the facial expressions was killer...

 

LOL...I watched it in color. : ) good idea though.

 

Gotta admit, that's about as perfect a marriage of sound and image as one could hope for.

 

Matlock was a (relatively) fresh idea that had legs, unlike a reboot series of an old show prompted by a TV movie doing well.

 

Perhaps, but I can’t imagine any network, given the choice, wouldn’t have preferred a proven property.

 

I think that Andy Griffith tried to move away from The Andy Griffith Show before Matlock. He did a show called Salvage 1 (which started as a TV movie) where he played a savvy junk man who builds a ship to go to the Moon to salvage the NASA items that were left there. I thought the series was excellent, but I think it was killed by a bad time slot (it was often pre-empted by football). His character (Harry Broderick) was quite different from Andy Taylor.

 

Matlock sucked,but a Return reboot would've been worse-YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN!!

 

A revival series isn't a proven property. The original TAGS series (the first few seasons, anyway) still do great in syndication but that doesn't make a revival series a no-brianer.

 

I strongly agree. I don't think there is such a thing as a no-brainer when it comes to anything in entertainment.

Many successful series are a product of their time, and others are the result of the right combination of cast (note the comments about the depart of Don Knotts affecting The Andy Griffith Show [TAGS]). Mayberry RFD was the successor to TAGS with much of the same cast as that was there at the end of TAGS but just wasn't the same.

Also, many classic series took time to find their way and today they might not be given that time. Consider that both M. A. S. H. and All In The Family took more than a season to become successful, and Cheers was literally the bottom-rated show when it debuted and only remained on the air because its network had nothing else to put on.

Finally, sometimes I think it would be better for a series to end before it goes bad. An example of this is the series Twin Peaks (the original series). At the beginning it was a terrific series, but as the series progressed it seemed to lose something and felt like it was meandering around by the end. I thought it would have been better to have one more episode (maybe one of TV movie length) to resolve the mystery and then end the series.