TVSquad

How swinging is CBS's new summer series Swingtown? It's not swinging in the Sinatra-Rat Pack-ring-a-ding-ding way. No, this Swingtown is set in an era ten years later, specifically July 4, 1976, the bicentennial. But Swingtown, which premieres on Thursday at 10 PM ET, is not a nostalgic, optimistic wallow. However, It does evoke a time when America was undergoing a lot of change as the college kids from the late sixties were moving into the seven-year-itch of marriage, raising children, exploring boundaries.

Swingtown reminded me of Knots Landing meets Boogie Nights with a dollop of The Stepford Wives thrown in there, too (maybe it was those scenes in the supermarket). Superficially, there are elements of Swingtown, in particular the attention to detail in the production design and music, that are as spot on for 1976 as Mad Men was for 1960. When you see that pop-top can of Tab, you can't help but go back in time.

Oh, Peter. They're breaking up that old gang of ours! There's a spin-off of Family Guy in the works at Fox. Peter's drinking buddy, Cleveland Brown, might be getting his own show. Oh no, does this mean he may be leaving Quahog? What, no more get-togethers at The Drunken Clam? (Note to self: He's an animated character; he could still be part of Family Guy.)

Cleveland is perhaps the most down to earth of Peter's pals on Family Guy, which could make him the perfect centerpiece of a new cartoon series. Zany new characters could be built around him. If history repeats itself, he could be the George Jefferson to Peter Griffin's Archie Bunker, i.e., The Jeffersons spinning off from All in the Family.

Remember Sony's Minisode Network? Basically Sony is sitting on a huge library of television episodes that don't see much airtime anymore. So the company decided to slice up classic TV shows like Charlie's Angels, and T.J. Hooker and create 5 minute "minisodes."

The interesting thing is that the cliff notes versions of these shows work surprisingly well, if you don't care about things like plot, character development, and dialog.

The minisodes were originally available online at MySpace. Now Sony is making the mini-shows available on Crackle, AOL, and Joost, as well as MySpace. Sony is also bringing more shows out of the vault including Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and The Jeffersons.

[via The New York Times]

Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.

• 7th Heaven - Season 4
• The Addams Family - Vol. 2
• Family Affair - Season 3
• The Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes - Vol. 1
• Full House - Season 6
• The Jeffersons - Season 6
• Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman - Vol. 1
• The New Adventures of He-Man - Vol. 2
• One Foot in the Grave - Seasons 1 and 2
• The Shield - Season 5
• Sonic The Hedgehog - Complete Series
• Touched by an Angel - Season 4, Vol. 2
• Whose Line Is It Anyway? - UK Version - Seasons 1 and 2

Bold and the Beautiful star Darlene Conley died of stomach cancer on Sunday in Los Angeles.

She has starred on the show as Sally Spectra for 20 years, and was diagnosed with cancer only three months ago. Producers and writers were actually developing a storyline for her to deal with the diagnosis.

Besides The Bold and the Beautiful and three other soaps (Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless, and General Hospital), Conley guest-starred on several other TV shows, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murder, She Wrote, Highway To Heaven, The Jeffersons, Little House on the Prairie, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Gunsmoke, Cagney and Lacey, and Ironside. She also did the voice of Mrs. Claus in Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July.

You'll remember Evans from his role as Lionel Jefferson on All In The Family and the spinoff show The Jeffersons. He died of throat cancer last week in California.

Besides his role as Lionel, Evans also appeared in The Streets of San Francisco, Rich Man, Poor Man, Love, American Style, Match Game, and Walker, Texas Ranger. He was also one of the creators and writers of the sitcom Good Times.

I had forgotten this, but he was actually replaced as Lionel Jefferson on The Jeffersons for four years, in the late 70s. He was replaced by Damon Evans, then returned to the show for the last couple of years.

I took this quiz over at Mental Floss and scored 100%. You have to match the sitcom with the house/setting they show in the opening credits.

By the way, I'm not bragging about that score, the test is just incredibly easy, especially since two of the pictures are very, very easy to identify, which means you can guess the others by process of elimination, if you don't know one or two of them. I mean, one of the shows is The Love Boat, so you know there's going to be a boat involved, right?

This might prove to be very satisfying, that you know you TV homes as much as you do your own. On the other hand, it might be kind of scary that somewhere in your mind you have actually memorized what sitcom family homes look like (and from shows that you probably haven't seen in a long time).

Also, just so you know, scroll down very slowly and stop when you get to the sitcom names. If you go any further you'll see the answers, and you don't want that to happen.

[via Pop Candy]

As we reported yesterday, Franklin Cover, best known as dorky white guy Tom Willis on The Jeffersons in the 1970s, passed away. His death made me ruminate on The Jeffersons, which was a mainstay of my childhood. Good old George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley, the little man with big ideas, who grew to see race issues in a different light through his relationship with interracial couple Tom and Helen Willis. Helen was played by Roxie Roker, mother of rocker Lenny Kravitz, and the character of Tom was supposedly based on her real-life white husband (an interesting tale related to me by Roker's nephew several years ago).

George and wife Lousie (Weezie), played by the late Isabel Sanford, were always struggling with issues of equality in their household, not to mention issues caused by sweet-faced-but-evil Mother Jefferson (Zara Cully) but Weezie didn't take any guff from her man, and neither did their maid, Florence (the best character in the show, played with deadpan perfection by Marla Gibbs). What made The Jeffersons great was the way it dealt with issues of race, class, and equality with sharp-witted humor; George was never really quite as bad a guy, at heart, as much as he might have seemed to be at times. Through his friendship with Tom Willis and bumbling Brit neighbor Bentley (Paul Benedict), and eventually through son Lionel's marriage to mixed race Jenny, daughter of Helen and Tom, George learned to face his own prejudices, even as he dealt with the realities of racism himself, which didn't go away when he moved on up to that deeeeeluxe apartment in the sky.

But here's one thing that I find disturbing: how is it possible that in all these years, I've never realized there were TWO actors playing Lionel? Mike Evans played Lionel in 1975; his job duties as creator of Good Times forced him to leave the show, and he was replaced by Damon Evans, who played the part from 1975-1978. Mike Evans took the role back again from 1979-81. Am I the only person on the planet who didn't know there were two Lionels? I knew there were two Beckys on Roseanne, and two Masons on Santa Barbara (sorry, but Terry Lester just never did it for me as Mason Capwell #2), but two Lionels? Wow.

Franklin Cover, perhaps best known as Tom Willis, George and Louise Jefferson's white neighbor on The Jeffersons, has died. Cover was being treated for a heart condition at the Lillian Booth Actor's Fund of America home in California. Besides a regular gig on The Jeffersons, Cover also appeared in The Jackie Gleason Show, All in the Family, Who's the Boss?, Will & Grace, Living Single, Mad About You,  and ER. What an awesome resume. He leaves behind a wife, Mary, a son and a daughter.