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There’s Something About “Mary”, Part Two

Published 17th June 2026

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four

Last time, I left you all with something of a poser. Clips from three episodes of Mary are sitting on YouTube in various forms. Are these the same three episodes which were broadcast back in 1978?

Certainly, most people seem to have either assumed that they are, or are simply uninterested in whether they are or not. Let’s take a look again at the YouTube video “Why Mary Tyler Moore’s 1978 “Mary” Bombed Big Time”:

The narration certainly leaves us in no doubt about what they think about poor Mary:

“From what I saw, there were two things which caused this programme to nosedive and crash so quickly. The writing was bad. At times, really bad.”

We then get a clip of Mary talking to the studio audience: “Let’s talk about Canada!”. Followed inevitably by a song about Canada. Neither works very well in clip form, I will admit, although I could make the best show in the world look bad by slagging it off and then throwing in a few clips out-of-context.

We are then told:

“So much of the comedy I saw felt forced, and simply wasn’t funny.”

Followed by part of an unidentified sketch featuring Mary, Swoosie, and Judith sitting on a sofa:

SWOOSIE KURTZ: Without another person.
JUDITH KAHAN: Just you.
SWOOSIE KURTZ: Solo.
JUDITH KAHAN: Uno.
SWOOSIE KURTZ: Solitary.
JUDITH KAHAN: Like mouldy cheese.

If anything, there is even less context given to this clip, so it’s simply impossible to judge it fairly. So let’s do the donkeywork ourselves. Where do these clips come from?

The answer: another video on YouTube, worryingly titled “‘Mary’ unknown episode 1978”.

The above video includes both the Canada material, and the sketch with Judith and Swoosie on the sofa, called “Not A Married Woman”. I think all the material comes across much better when watched in context. But that’s not really the point.

Because something else immediately becomes clear while watching this video: we’re not looking at a finished programme here. This is a studio tape, featuring raw footage of a studio audience session for the programme, including retakes. It also isn’t even complete – it ends halfway through a sketch. And needless to say, the completed programme isn’t available anywhere else online.

So our question is now slightly different: does this studio tape represent something which became a finished programme which transmitted on CBS in 1978?

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Electrocution Lessons

Published 11th June 2026

TV Comedy

The problem with finally getting round to watching loads of US sitcoms over the past year or so is that I immediately want to turn Dirty Feed into a fan site for each of them. Sadly, I have zero time to do this. In a parallel universe, somebody very rich is paying me to spend all my time writing stupid shit about All in the Family, rather than worry about World Cup weather delays.

So you’ll have to wait a few decades for my in-depth piece on why I’ve recently fallen in love with Married… with Children. Suffice to say that when you’re watching a show as measured and responsible as All in the Family, it’s a lovely contrast to also watch a programme which is simply interested as being irresponsible and gleefully unpleasant as possible.1

It’s also a show which is far better made and more thoughtful than it’s often given credit for. Take a look at the following clip from Season 5 episode “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”, transmitted by Fox on the 18th November 1990. On the page, it’s a very standard gag: Bud gets an electric shock while mending the doorbell, because Kelly hasn’t turned off the electricity. Cue a Looney Tunes moment with a smoking Bud.

Now, there’s a very obvious way to shoot this scene if you’re making an audience sitcom: record the part with Bud going to fix the doorbell in front of the audience, and then play in a pre-recorded shot of him after being electrocuted. If the production was feeling brave, they could shoot his appearance after being electrocuted in front of the audience, with a recording break in-between to add the make-up and smoke effects to David Faustino.

Married… with Children does neither of these things. It decides the funniest thing is to do it all in one shot, in front of the audience. So that’s what they do. The result is a pure piece of stagecraft magic, and turns a standard gag on the page into something wonderful.

I wonder how many people were standing just outside the door, ready to do David’s hair, make-up, and to set off the smoke effects.2 Note also how brilliantly David rides the laugh when he reappears; one of the best things about Married… with Children is seeing him develop his comic timing over the first few years of the show. Christina Applegate’s corpsing is the icing on the cake.

This scene is everything I love about television. A production going out of its way to do something difficult; not to draw attention to itself, not to win awards, but just because it’s the funniest way to do something. A cut would hurt the rhythm of the scene – and at least subconsciously make it feel like cheat. And of course, doing it live in one take also vastly improves the studio audience reaction.

It’s a commitment to comedy which is stamped over every frame of Married… with Children. It is singularly interested in getting you to laugh as hard and as often as possible, and will do anything to get you there. And that’s why, no matter how unpleasant the show is being at any given moment, it’s also so goddamn lovable.

  1. This is not an idle comparison; both shows share a lineage, and not just in terms of being American videotaped audience sitcoms, a trend which started with All in the Family. No, there is an overt connection: co-creator of Married… with Children Michael G. Moye used to write for the Lear television factory, including All in the Family spin-off The Jeffersons. ↩

  2. It is notable that David never turns his back to the camera throughout the entire scene, so he was clearly already wearing the smoke mechanism from the beginning in order to save time. ↩

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There’s Something About “Mary”, Part One

Published 24th May 2026

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four

On the 24th September 1978, a brand new Mary Tyler Moore variety series premiered on CBS. Simply titled Mary1, there was a full season order in place; many reports at the time suggested at least 22 shows, with an option for two more.

After three shows aired, the show was pulled from the airwaves for good.

This article is partly the tale of what happened to poor Mary. But more importantly: it’s also about the pitfalls of judging a series nearly five decades later, when the detritus surrounding a show can be extremely difficult to interpret correctly.

*   *   *

There was an obvious format which Mary could have gone for: something akin to How to Survive the 70s from seven months earlier. Numerous guest stars, perhaps a different, fairly loose topic every week, job done. Instead, Mary seemed to go out of its way to make life difficult for itself.

Guest stars were mainly eschewed, aside from a brief appearance by Carl Reiner in the opening episode. Instead, they went for a repertory cast, some quite well known, others at the start of their career: James Hampton, Swoosie Kurtz, David Letterman, Michael Keaton, Judy Kahan, and – the most famous of the gang at the time – Dick Shawn. This, at least, had some precedence: surrounding Mary with a solid team was one of the things which made The Mary Tyler Moore Show such a success.

Mary herself described the series as the following at the time, which was widely quoted in the press:

“The show will be made up primarily of sketches which hopefully display wit and grown-up comedy. There will also be some music and dancing but most of the numbers will grown out of the preceding sketch. For instance, a disco sketch evolves into a disco number. It’s a new form for me and I just love it.”

Some clips from the first episode are on YouTube. Sadly, as it’s not the full show, it doesn’t really give a full sense of proceedings; oddly enough, it seems determined not to let us see much of the actual singing or dancing. But it does at least give some kind of idea of the kind of programme Mary was.

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  1. This is not Mary’s 1985 sitcom, also called Mary. ↩

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“A Failed Dancer”

Published 18th February 2026

TV Comedy

MARY RICHARDS: I think you had a dream. You dreamed that you started from nowhere, and you made it all the way to the top. Became rich, successful in every way, loved… and recently, you’ve begun to become aware that time is slipping away, and your life has turned out a little differently from the dream. In fact, compared to the dream, you think your life isn’t all that terrific. And it’s begun to bother you.

TED BAXTER: That’s amazing, Mary. How did you know that was my problem?

MARY RICHARDS: Ted, that’s everybody’s problem. I had a dream once. I dreamed of becoming a ballerina. Took so many classes, I practiced so hard. In the hopes one day I’d dance with the finest ballet company, and I’d win the cheers of audiences all over the world.

TED BAXTER: So you wanted to be a real famous dancer. And you wound up as the producer of a local news show.

MARY RICHARDS: That’s right.

TED BAXTER: Boy, you really blew it.

– The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Hail the Conquering Gordy”,
CBS TX: 5th February 1977

“I think I’ll always consider myself a failed dancer, not a successful actress.”

– Mary Tyler Moore, The Los Angeles Times, 20th December 1981

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An Utterly Worthless Experience

Published 13th February 2026

TV Comedy

I have to be honest: I’ve been feeling a little guilty over the past couple of weeks. When I fell in love with The Dick Van Dyke Show, I wrote something which tried to explain at least some of what I loved about it. With The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I leapt straight into stupid production minutiae. I feel like I’ve given poor Mary a bit of a bad rap.

So let’s try to redress things a little. I want to talk about one of my very favourite scenes in the show. No, it’s not from “Chuckles Bites the Dust”, which is clearly an amazing episode, but has been talked about far too much by this point. Instead, it’s the closing scene from “Mary and the Sexagenarian”, first broadcast by CBS on the 12th February 1977, and written by Glen and Les Charles.

The whole episode up to this point has been about the trials and tribulations of Mary dating a man 30 years older than her, a topic which could have been potentially queasy, but is dealt with in the show’s typical sensitive fashion. And then we get the final scene of the show. What have we learnt today?

And instead of answering that question, Mary Tyler Moore expertly skewers TV’s propensity for giving life lessons and issuing moral guidance.

LOU GRANT: You take two very different people. Different backgrounds.
MARY RICHARDS: Different outlooks.
LOU GRANT: Right, right. One more than 30 years older than the other. You bring them together. With all the odds against it. Even though the whole world ridicules it. It can still turn out to be… an utterly worthless experience.
MARY RICHARDS: Thank you.

There are so many reasons why I love this. Firstly, it was slightly surprising even to me to find a US sitcom from 1977 be quite so relentlessly cynical. This feels more like a gag from The Simpsons than anything else. Sorry Simpsons, Mary Tyler Moore already did it.1

Secondly, I adore Mary Tyler Moore’s performance in this scene. True, it’s a scene which is more about selling an abstract idea than an emotional beat. But the actors have to make that idea work within an emotional context, and they do a magnificent job. Mary looks so revolted and defeated as she leaves the office, and she never gets enough credit for just how good she is at those kind of scenes. The very opposite of “turning the world on with her smile”.

We dumb down Mary Tyler Moore into being merely a bright, smiling, all-American gal at our peril. When needed, she brought as much edge to that show as anyone.

But thirdly, and perhaps most importantly: the scene is a reminder to me that I truly love comedy with what I like to call “an evil, beating heart”. I sometimes worry that people misinterpret what I mean by this; that I’m specifically referring to, say, racist or homophobic gags, or at least material which goes into those kinds of areas. But that’s not what I mean at all.

Instead, it’s something a little more subtle: that I enjoy comedy which does not always have a pleasant meaning behind it. Here, it’s the idea that we can all go through painful experiences, and there truly is no real lesson we can learn from them. The pain has been for nothing.

It reminds me very much of one of my favourite jokes from Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em:

FRANK SPENCER: As my mother used to say – a trouble shared, is a trouble doubled.

A joke which, as friend of the site Mike Scott pointed out, is amusing because of the rhyming trouble/double; it just sounds funny. But what I love most about it is that it talks about a real truth which we would all prefer to ignore. Of course we should talk about our problems… and of course that has a bad side too. By sharing a problem, you literally are giving a piece of it to someone else.

And that’s life. Some troubles just have to be doubled. And sometimes, a relationship you had was an entire waste of time, and there’s nothing positive you can take from it. Sucks to be you.

But maybe comedy like this does have a message after all. It sucks to be all of us.

With thanks to Tanya Jones.

  1. The James L. Brooks connection is not lost on me. ↩

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We’ve Put It All Together

Published 30th January 2026

TV Comedy

The great thing about YouTube is that it’s full of unusual clips of TV programmes which used to be difficult or impossible to see any other way. The less great thing about YouTube: often, these clips are given little or no context.

With that in mind: what exactly is the following, ostensibly from The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

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The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Prod. #7001

Published 21st January 2026

TV Comedy

The problem with coming of age as an archive TV nerd through Red Dwarf DVDs is that you get thoroughly spoilt. You expect every single sitcom release to feature a copious selection of deleted scenes. Sometimes you hit lucky; the Seinfeld releases are absolutely incredible. But for older shows, you’re pretty much always going to be disappointed.

Luckily, we know how to make our own fun around here. Last time, we saw how the script for the first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show pointed towards a reshoot of a key scene. And in that script, there’s a fair amount of material from other scenes which was removed before the show was broadcast.

Audience ticket for the first episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show

Let’s investigate. I haven’t noted every single minor change in dialogue phrasing, as that would be immensely tedious, but all significant differences are noted. Times given are from the Region 1 DVD release of the show.1

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  1. The DVDs of The Mary Tyler Moore Show contain the original broadcast versions of the programme – albeit with the odd edit – not the cut syndicated versions. So this article is definitely about material which was never broadcast. ↩

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“Aunt Rhoda’s Really a Lot of Fun”

Published 18th January 2026

TV Comedy

In 2025, I watched all of The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-65) and its spiritual successor The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), with a chaser of Rhoda (1974-78). That’s such a concentrated burst of greatness that I feel like anything I watch this year will be a disappointment.

So while I scrabble around for something to replace the giant hole in my life – and no, spin-off Phyllis (1975-77) doesn’t quite cut it – I can at least throw myself into the usual behind-the-scenes books and documentaries. Very quickly, you learn all the standard tales which have come up over the years. And with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, one tale looms above all: the disastrous preliminary filming of the opening episode, three days before the real one.

This is probably most succinctly expressed in the book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted (Simon & Schuster, 2013):

“The day of The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s first chance to perform in front of a studio audience began with news of a bomb threat on the lot… The threat was determined to be unfounded, and audience members were herded in. But the folks in the stands couldn’t see the actors over the cameras, which were twice as bulky as the standard kind, so they were forced to try to catch the action on small monitors instead. The air-conditioning broke down, so the two-hundred-member audience and the actors were left to swelter in 90-degree July temperatures while watching a practice run of a series already being promoted to viewers as if it were a done deal. The microphones didn’t work properly.”

The problems continue from there. At times, the stories about this recording take on an almost absurd tinge; everything that could have gone wrong, seemingly did. Showrunners James L. Brooks and Allan Burns did a dreadful job with the warm-up; the actors weren’t quite ready; the director hadn’t had enough time with the camera crew… the excuses just keep piling up. The dodgy aircon and sound system would surely be enough to kill a recording, let alone anything else.

And then there was Rhoda, a character which seemingly made a few people nervous. To be fair, she is set up initially as an antagonist to Mary, and spends the entire episode trying to nab her apartment. But also: never underestimate some people’s unpleasant reactions to a gobby Jewish woman.

Either way, she certainly didn’t test well with the studio audience that particular night. What to do? Back to Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted:

“Script supervisor Marge Mullen, who’d held the same job at The Dick Van Dyke Show, stopped by the producers’ office. She had an idea – maybe not the biggest one, but it was something. “People don’t seem to like Rhoda,” they remember her saying. “There’s this little girl who’s Phyllis’s daughter, and if the little girl likes Rhoda, it’ll give the audience the opportunity to love her, too.”

It was the only substantive idea for an improvement Brooks and Burns had heard all evening. They decided to take Mullen’s suggestion, cut a few other lines, and call it a night, putting their faith in what they’d written and the cast they’d hired. Many things had gone wrong with that first taping, but the words and the talent, they believed, were there.”

Come the second recording, three days later?

“The only major change to the script was pigtailed twelve-year-old Lisa Gerritsen as Phyllis’s daughter, Bess, saying, “Aunt Rhoda’s really a lot of fun,” as Mary opened the curtains in her new apartment to see a harried Rhoda on her balcony in the opening scene. Gerritsen was the granddaughter of child actor and later screenwriter True Eames Boardman, as well as the great-granddaughter of silent film actors, but she had now made her own showbiz history.

This time, the audience roared. Gerritsen’s new line seemed to indeed be the magic bullet.”

Unlike all the other problems with the first recording, which was a smorgasbord of failure, this at least is a nice, neat anecdote. One single line changed how the audience felt about Rhoda, Marge Mullen and Lisa Gerritsen save the day, job done.

The problem is, it’s not quite the full story.

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Everything That You Need to Know

Published 1st January 2026

TV Comedy

Something unexpected has happened with The Peter Serafinowicz Show over the years.

For a programme which had just eight episodes, one of which was a Best Of, and which has never been repeated by the BBC1, the show has become a fixed reference point for certain strata of comedy fans. When I first watched it back in 2007, I rather liked it, with a few reservations. In 2025, it lives rent free in my head. If you think people endlessly quoting Python are annoying, just wait until I do my Ringo Remembers. “I just thought it was inappropriate. Especially at Christmastime.“

But of all the characters in the show, the one with the longest life has turned out to be inept businessman Brian Butterfield. A character inspired by this ludicrous advert, but which became something stranger and wilder almost immediately. A character which ended up going on tour fifteen years after the series was first broadcast, with all the associated paraphernalia. Who would have predicted that back in 2007?

All of which means it’s high time I wrote something interesting about it. So let’s take the second episode of the show, broadcast on the 11th October 2007, and one of the most well-remembered sketches of the lot: the Butterfield Detective Agency.

Of all the incredible moments in that sketch, my favourite might be Peter’s eye-flick upwards on “Australian”, as though Brian has just begun to realise he might have got it wrong.

But if you know this site well enough, you can probably guess where I’m about to go. What about the fabulously inappropriate music for the sketch, trying desperately to give a sense of showbiz that Brian Butterfield is incapable of providing? Well, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that it’s a library track: “Theatre Land”, credited to David Arnold2 and Paul Hart, and first released in 1991 by Carlin on the album TV/Radio/Showbiz/Logos (CAR 188).

Specifically, it’s three different versions of “Theatre Land” bunged together. All three are included below.3 I shall leave where the edit points between them are in the original sketch as an exercise for the reader.

So, job done, yes?

Not quite.

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  1. Aside from the Christmas Special, which had a repeat a couple of days later in a different edit. I’ll write about that one day. ↩

  2. Ah, the everlasting confusion with there being two British composers called David Arnold. One scored multiple James Bond films. The other did the themes for The Big Breakfast and Live & Kicking. We are dealing with the latter. ↩

  3. There are nine versions of “Theatre Land” in total on the album. ↩

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Various Cutaways of Rat

Published 10th December 2025

TV Comedy

(You’ll need to have read this piece on the Fawlty Towers episode “Basil the Rat” and its two-day recording schedule, along with this short follow-up, in order to get anything out of this post. Also, fair warning: we get deep into the weeds with this one.)

Somebody recently emailed me with a reasonable enough question: where do I get all the old television scripts I use in my writing here on Dirty Feed?

You may perhaps expect me to be hanging around various libraries and archives, but for boring practical reasons, that isn’t usually the case.1 Instead, I have various other sources. Some of them are already published in books, like the Absolutely Fabulous pilot.2 Some of them are just sitting online if you know where to search, such as the pilot for Mary Tyler Moore. Some of them I simply get sent by friendly people every now and again. (Yes, I will write about that Love Thy Neighbour script one day, promise.)

Then there’s auction houses. And while I occasionally buy scripts from eBay and the like, I can’t afford to do that too often.3 But just occasionally, you get lucky. As I was when it came to Fawlty Towers, and – you’ve guessed it – “Basil the Rat”, or just “Rat”.

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  1. Oh, you want a longer explanation? Fine. I believe I’m very careful here on Dirty Feed when it comes to copyright and fair dealing. I only use extracts of copyrighted works for the purposes of criticism or review – and the stuff I do here definitely counts as that.

    However, archives are generally a bit stricter than this when you’re actually quoting material they hold, and demand that you get permission from the copyright holder. It’s a) a faff, b) you might not get permission, and c) I seriously want to make sure I don’t upset anyone and make myself persona non grata by disobeying the rules. So with a lot of my stuff, it’s ironically easier to avoid official avenues. ↩

  2. Though you have to be careful to figure out you’re not working from transcripts, or scripts which have been edited to take all the fun stuff out of them. ↩

  3. I recently had to stop myself from buying the script for an episode of long-lost Bob Monkhouse sitcom The Big Noise. I still slightly regret controlling myself. ↩

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