Sunday, September 17, 1972. The premier of M*A*S*H.

Early, but not complete, cast from M*A*S*H.

 

This turned out to be quite a week in television history, or more properly two weeks.  On this day, the day after the Bob Newhart Show premiered, M*A*S*H did.

We ran out review of the series here:

The Korean War in Film

In that article, we stated:

M*A*S*H

Okay, now down to the perhaps even more recalled television series M*A*S*H..

This is one Korean War drama that nearly anyone who owns a television has to recall, as it's still on television all the time as a rerun.

I was a fan of this series as a kid, but I have mixed feelings about it now, even though I'll occasionally catch it as rerun even now. Well acted and written, the very long running and hugely popular television series was billed as a comedy when it was first released, even though it was a dark comedy even then. While it always had comedic elements, as the series progressed towards its final seasons it was heavily moving towards being a drama.

The series varies distinctly from its early, middle and late seasons.  The early seasons are extremely faithful to the book and do a better job of portraying the feel of the book than the later seasons.  The middle seasons were perhaps the most comedic, and the late ones the most dramatic.

While this series was enormously popular, its only the really early ones that get the feel of the book, and to some extent, the Korean War, right.  The series ran so long that the tour nature of the war, in which servicemen were in the war for only a little over a year, is completely lost.  Running much longer than the war itself, the series began to have sort of a peculiar feel to it, for those history minded.

One thing worth noting about the series, as compared to the movie, is that the Radar Reilly character, who is played by Gary Burgoff in both the film and the series, and is the only actor to make that transition, was played much differently in the series.  The movie portrays the character much more accurately than the series, outside of its first couple of years, as the movie (and the first year or so of the series) accurately reflects that character as a cynical devious professional soldier, as opposed to the lovably childlike character he later became in the series.

On material details, the most accurate ones in terms of materiality are the early ones, but the series never became bad in these regards.

My review remains the same as the 2016 entry above.

I can be interestingly remember the television advertisements for this series, which made me want to view it.  My father, who was a Korean War era Air Force veteran, didn't show a lot of enthusiasm for watching it, and I can't recall if we watched the early episodes when they originally ran.  We did end up becoming loyal viewers of the series during much of its long eleven season run, although my interest started to wane in the series final years.  By September 1983 I was in university and I missed the final year at that time, including the highly regarded and hugely viewed final episode, which I saw shortly thereafter, probably as a rerun that next year or so.

On the same day, North Vietnam released three American POWs, all aircrewmen.

The Uganda People's Militia attempted an invasion of that country from bases in Tanzania.