Reviewing Movies

The problem with current TV families in my un-humble estimation is the lack of positive role models. No one would call Roseanne, Al Bundy or Homer Simpson ideal parents. With the divorce rate exceeding 50% and growing; family life on television appears to be equally dysfunctional.

By contrast Earl Hamner Jr.'s memories of his childhood in the depression era Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are a sentimental trip down memory lane of a childhood so idyllic and bucolic as to stretch belief. Certainly, when these episodes first aired in the seventies they didn't get much air time on the TV's in my residence dorm at University or in most cities; but they held such appeal to rural Middle-America that they actually put several competing programmes off the air in their time slot on Thursday nights and continued for 10 seasons.

To describe in this venue the elements that made up a typical episode is to make this show sound hokey beyond belief. The muted trumpet tune and historic shots fading to a view of Walton's Mountain and Earl Hamner's folksy narration. The moralistic plot lines ending always in a view of the old clapboard house with a veranda out front and a light in John-Boy's window as the family call their good night wishes back and forth.

Grandma Walton puts me in mind of Granny Yokum in Dogpatch, but without the double-whammy. Her husband Zebulon adds character to the piece while their daughter-in-law serves as the straight-laced, god-fearing Baptist moral fibre of the clan married to a sawyer who refuses steadfastly to attend church even while he serves as the clan's anchor. It is his hunting buddy Yancy Tucker who reminds us, along with the backwood cousins in a later episode that this is the land of the feuding inbred Clantons and McCoys.

Since I missed most of these episodes the first time round it is pleasant to see them on DVD even if 70's TV was not up to modern standards—at least now I can see them in colour. Season 4 was just released and there are thus six more seasons to come.