YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN: THE POPULARITY OF THE REUNION TV MOVIE
BY AMANDA REYES

The 1985/86 TV movie season was a prolific one, featuring several interesting releases ranging from sophisticated dramas (An Early Frost) to lighthearted fluff (Beverly Hills Madam), but the season may be best remembered as the year we all welcomed Andy Griffith and Mayberry back into our living rooms. Airing on April 13, 1986, Return to Mayberry was seen in over twenty-eight million homes, making it the seventh highest rated telefilm ever at the time of its debut. But Andy and his loyal sidekick Barney weren’t the only fondly remembered characters reuniting on the small screen that year. Raymond Burr resurrected Perry Mason, recapturing its audience (while establishing a devoted new fanbase), spawning over two dozen more telefilms that featured Perry and his dutiful assistant Della Street (all hail Barbara Hale) bringing justice to mostly high-class citizens caught up in intricate webs of deceit. In fact, the movie series was so popular four more TVMs were shot with different actors stepping in as Mason’s upright buddies after Burr’s passing in 1993.

This, of course, was not the birth of the reunion movie; it enjoyed previous success in such nostalgic fare as reuniting the cast of Father Knows Best, not once but twice in 1977, and revisiting the Cleavers in Springfield in 1983’s Still the Beaver (leading to a new made for cable television series). But it was the one-two punch of Mayberry and Mason in the 1985/86 season that legitimized collecting the surviving members of well-loved television series.

The reunion TV movie actually has a long history, starting with Dragnet in 1969.¹ What’s curious about this entry is that it was produced three years earlier, in 1966, before the revived series aired. Apparently Jack Webb, who oversaw and starred in both versions of the show, wanted a different approach for the sixties remake, and held back on the TVM until he found the right balance. Yet, while this telefilm is darker in tone (Friday and company pursue a serial killer), it is quite fondly remembered, and often cited as one of the best entries into Dragnet’s long and illustrious career.

Following on the heels of the Dragnet TVM, the late seventies saw a small surge in reunion telefilms, bringing back old favorites such as Maverick (1978), in an attempt to drum up interest in a potential new series, or simply to get the gang back together, as with Gilligan’s Island (1978), which was successful enough to stretch that three-hour tour into two more reunion sequels! But, reunion movies aren’t without their misfires, interesting though they may be. Nineteen seventy-seven’s oddball Murder in Peyton Place attempts to reignite the hotbed of sex and betrayal that was so popular during Peyton Place’s original run from 1964–69, although it only confused and alienated viewers. The series was also responsible for launching the careers of Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal, and consequently, Murder in Peyton Place’s producers assumed that neither actor was interested in returning to their small screen roots, and decided to brutally kill off the characters, building a mystery around the murders. While many great Peyton Place faces reprise their roles in the telefilm, including Ed Nelson and Dorothy Malone, there were mixed feelings from certain cast members. Christopher Connelly who played Norman Harrington lamented, “It was like going back while everyone else was moving on. Like Ryan and Mia and Lee [Grant]. It was like going back and doing your first job all over again.”²

Connelly wasn’t the only actor who wanted to move forward instead of looking back. In 1981 Max Baer Jr. turned down Return of the Beverly Hillbillies (which would prove to be the right decision), and James Brolin declined to rejoin Robert Young in The Return of Marcus Welby M.D. (1984). Of course, Baer, a successful producer, and Brolin, a well-known actor, did not have to return to the familiar to pay the bills. Still, while typecasting was a concern, audiences tended to be more forgiving with favorite characters, and actors seemed only too happy to revisit their old series haunts. And then there were the in-name only reunions, such as Gidget’s Summer Reunion (1985), and Bonanza: The Next Generation (1988), which hoped that the idea of those shows were strong enough to withstand new faces.

Whether bringing back original actors or recasting from scratch, many telefilms rely on the familiar as a method to lure in audiences immediately, and underneath the reunion TV movie rests a deeply rooted sense of nostalgia and a yearning to return to traditional ideologies. During the eighties the popularity of revived television series’ originally produced in a “better time” was prevalent and offered a conservative nod toward idealized family units, nine-to-five jobs, and life issues that could be resolved before the end credits rolled. It is in this way that television plays the very important role of memory making. Viewers become so attached to characters, places and happy endings that it becomes a part of how audiences remember collective (and sometimes even individual) pasts, real or imagined.

The gang—Ken Osmond, Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley and Jerry Mathers—get back to together in the sweet and well-received Still the Beaver.

Warm and fuzzy makes its way back to the small screen in the #1 movie of the 1985–86 season, Return to Mayberry.

Even in the seventies, when television was still fairly young, viewers were already embracing a desire to return to the comfortable, recognizable faces of yesteryear, foreshadowing the heavy traction these TVMs would gain throughout the eighties. By 1984, the reunion telefilm was in full swing, and the Associated Press wrote about the numerous revival TVMs on the horizon. Reunion movies that were currently in production toward the end of that year include I Dream of Jeannie, Kojak, Route 66, and Dobie Gillis.³ The popularity of these telefilms proved that you could stretch credulity (Steve Austin’s son goes bionic in the Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman for example; and, even more unlikely, Jeannie and Major Nelson are separated in I Dream of Jeannie: Fifteen Years Later!). As long as filmmakers kept it friendly and safe, audiences were more than happy to spend a night with their favorite characters in just about any situation.

Brian Levant, co-executive producer of Still the Beaver’s spinoff series, The New Leave it To Beaver cited the audience’s “strong bond” with classic television characters,⁴ while CBS’s David Poltrack took a more cynical view, citing reunion movies as a “more efficient product in terms of promotional resources.”⁵ Poltrack’s transparency reveals that the real bottom line of networks was cultivating reliable systems that ensured viewers tuned into their program. In this case, cultivation simply meant leaving the formulas unchanged, because with the popularity of reunion movies, networks also found a form of critic proof television. Not to mention saving writers and producers the extra sweat and tears, pressure, and money needed to invest in successful original programs. It proves that familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt. It’s a bit more like contentment. Still, innovation be damned, many of these reunion movies are quite good.

One of the best, as it turns out, is Return to Mayberry. Bringing back over a dozen original cast members, Mayberry capitalizes heavily on the feel good aesthetic of the reunion movie. Griffith, well aware of the pressure to please his diehard fanbase originally rejected the idea of making a reunion movie until he met up with his old co-stars Don Knotts and Ron Howard on an Emmys show. Even then, he turned down the first script and brought in writers he felt had a better understanding of the characters and setting.⁶ The end product was no groundbreaking effort, and critics were largely indifferent about the telefilm at the time of its original airing. But, its adherence to old school ideologies pleased the masses and frankly, this lack of edge and an overwhelming need to remain honest to the characters makes Mayberry one of the warmest and most watchable reunion films of the era.

Often, this fashionable new trend in television film led to serial reunions, such as the aforementioned Perry Mason series. Other well-loved shows returned again and again (and again), such as Eight is Enough, Hart to Hart and The Waltons. The TVM follow ups were met with varying levels of success, but somehow kept bringing in returning viewers, sometimes for over a decade or so with sequel after sequel. The Waltons in particular remains one of the most beloved families in television, and even after the run of their telefilms, surviving cast members still reunite for screenings and other types of meet and greets, much to the pleasure of their devoted fanbase.

Still, as the years wore on, TVM reunions such as Knight Rider 2000 (1991) and CHiPs ’99 (1998) became less of an event and more of a joke. Journalist Ron Miller aptly wrote, “Even pay dirt turns to mud if you water it down enough and keep stirring it up.”⁷

The unintentional death knell of the reunion TVM may have hit in 2000, when The Mary Tyler Moore Show attempted to reclaim their network success with a reboot telefilm Mary and Rhoda, which was intended to launch a new series. The only actors to return were Moore and Valerie Harper, who originally played Mary’s BFF Rhoda. Moore hoped that the movie would walk the line between old and new, and that the other legacy characters could be brought back in subsequent episodes or movies. Although the TVM was a runaway ratings success, attracting over seventeen million viewers, audiences missed the old gang, and critics and fans alike received the film poorly. It would be one of the last gasps of the reunion telefilm, proving that too much tinkering only estranges faithful fans. And the curtain was mostly drawn on this type of television movie.

Later on, reunion programming developed in interesting ways. As the nineties wore on and television movies became less attractive to the networks, reunions morphed into nonfiction clip shows. Casts from beloved shows like Laverne and Shirley and One Day at a Time sat in front of pleased audiences recounting their memories of working on a hit series. And it wasn’t only the sitcoms taking on this format—the drama series’ Knots Landing and Beverly Hills, 90210 also joined this new casual talk show approach.⁸ While obviously done on the cheap, when the casts were open to revealing insider moments, or just genuinely interested in sharing the stage once again with their costars, the results were charming. The Andy Griffith Show was brought back yet again, not once but twice, in this format with surviving members reliving the good old days in 1993’s The Andy Griffith Show Reunion, and then one decade later in 2003’s Andy Griffith Show Reunion: Back to Mayberry.

Then, the reunion movie underwent yet another metamorphosis, opting for a docudrama behind-the-scenes approach. These TV movies were not nearly as enchanting, and often more interested in inflated melodrama among horrible period recreations. However, 2005’s Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure (ABC) manages to be self-aware and daring enough to dive into the camp without pretending that wasn’t what they weren’t aiming for.

After all of these years, the television reunion is still going strong. In 2016 Netflix revived Full House with Fuller House, and The X-Files resumed its journey toward the truth in a limited six-part series. Nostalgia will always be a selling point for those who have immersed themselves in favorite shows, and as long as networks and studios can entice actors back to the set, we can always go home again. Even if for only a couple of hours and in between commercial breaks.

 

1Richard B. Armstrong & Mary W. Armstrong, Encyclopedia of Film Themes, Settings & Series, 201–202.

2Associated Press, “Remember Rodney, Allison? They’ve been murdered,” Eugene Register-Guard, Oct 1, 1977.

3Associated Press, “Lots of old favorites being revived in new TV movies,” Eugene Register-Guard, Sep 8, 1984.

4Ibid.

5Newsday, “TV gives lesson in 3 Rs: reunion, revival, remake,” Eugene Register-Guard, Nov 8, 1994.

6Alan W. Petrucelli, “Original Cast to Reprise Their Roles in ‘Return to Mayberry,’” Herald-Journal, Apr 6, 1986.

7Ron Miller, “Nominations made for 10 worst TV ‘reunion’ programs,” Bangor Daily News, Apr 11, 1991.

8The popular Knots Landing also enjoyed a reunion miniseries in 1997 titled Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac.