Short Post: why “Green Acres” should come back…
A radio journalist on yesterday’s Marketplace Morning Report made a throwaway reference to the old sitcom “Green Acres,” which sparked my imagination. It’s time to return to Green Acres.
In the sitcom, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor starred as a wealthy New York couple who move to the country town of Hooterville to become farmers. Albert, the husband, loves the outdoors but finds the rural inhabitants of his new town baffling. His wife Gabor pines for her lost life of decadent Manhattan sophistication– think “Gossip Girl” with older people who suddenly find themselves shipped out to a dysfunctional Mayberry. The show lasted forever (170 episodes between 1965 and 1971 according to Wikipedia), and I remember watching reruns as a boy. With only momentary effort the theme song leaps to my mind.
This conceipt seems ripe for a gender-switching remake in today’s digital, over-crowded, overloaded, telecommuting era.
In this version, the wife would be a whiz kid stock broker or investor who hates city crowds and longs for fresh air and solitude, or perhaps a quieter environment in which to raise kids who haven’t come along yet. Meanwhile her husband is a long-time Manhattan native with a jet-set citified career (perhaps an attorney like Albert) who now has to split his time between the city and the country.
As a storytelling engine (to use John Seavey’s excellent term), this has legs.
Note: one of the director’s of the original series wanted to continue it unchanged less than a year ago.
2 Responses to “Short Post: why “Green Acres” should come back…”
1 Steven 30 July 2008 @ 9:06 am
Green Acres was a very surrealistic show, far nuttier in an almost psychedelic way than the other rural comedies.
2 Randall Rothenberg 30 July 2008 @ 9:42 am
Ah, there’s so much more to “Green Acres.” The show’s executive producer, Paul Henning, was also the creator of “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Petticoat Junction.” As media scholar David Marc notes in his wonderful cultural history of television, “Democratic Vistas” (http://www.amazon.com/Demographic-Vistas-Television-American-Culture/dp/0812215605), Henning managed to recreate in all three shows the classic American folkloric trope of the hayseed outwitting the city slicker. Thus, Eddie Arnold’s Oliver served the same purpose as the door-to-door salesman in all those old “farmer’s daughter” jokes. I highly recommend Marc’s book, and his biographical essay on Henning, an important but forgotten character (despite having a 90 share for CBS) on the American cultural landscape.