The Monkees, the television series, is a landmark one, despite it lasting only two seasons on the NBC Television network. That's because it directly lead to the what we all know as the MTV concept some thirteen years or so later: stylish videos with quick cuts, special effects, constant motion and having those sequences set to songs.
Sometimes suggested as an attempt to "cash in" on the insane popularity of The Beatles, The Monkees: Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, were collectively referred to by some of the harsher critics of the day as "the Pre-Fab Four," a play on the "Fab Four" reference to the Beatles. The Monkees were a musical group created specifically for the show, which some felt made them inauthentic.
The problem of the program is that it wasn't a video; it was a situation comedy, and a lot of the time the episodes were, if we're kind about it, a little light on scripting. In fact there was at least one episode without any script at all, and a few times where they didn't completely fill out their half-hour and had to pad the episode with other elements.
What that meant was that the series was often an unsatisfying experience as a standard sitcom, because the plots frequently were weak or non-existent! Additionally, when there were solid scripts, they were pretty much lifted from old movies, Vaudeville acts, or parodied other programs being aired at the time - most of which wasn't terribly inspired and often wasn't that funny.
To the good, they did utilize the "psychedelic" elements of the day, with brilliant colors, sets and costumes, which is why their title sequence is still a timeless classic. The visuals were spectacular.
Also, The Monkees, the musical group, had some pretty decent songs (after all, the writers of their tunes were people like Neil Diamond and Carole King!), and those performances were usually the highlight of every episode. If the scripts could have equaled the songs, this show would have been a smash.
But to be fair, the era of the 1960s was a very odd combination of a lot of factors, not the least of which was drugs (hinted at but never directly suggested here), politics (which was emboldened by the programs like "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) and youth and the pop culture movement. And certainly all of this had an impact on the the process of creating the program and the areas covered by the episodes.
In its way, The Monkees captured a lot more of the flavor of that time than nearly every other entertainment program in that tumultuous age and it certainly deserves credit for that.
Sometimes suggested as an attempt to "cash in" on the insane popularity of The Beatles, The Monkees: Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, were collectively referred to by some of the harsher critics of the day as "the Pre-Fab Four," a play on the "Fab Four" reference to the Beatles. The Monkees were a musical group created specifically for the show, which some felt made them inauthentic.
The problem of the program is that it wasn't a video; it was a situation comedy, and a lot of the time the episodes were, if we're kind about it, a little light on scripting. In fact there was at least one episode without any script at all, and a few times where they didn't completely fill out their half-hour and had to pad the episode with other elements.
What that meant was that the series was often an unsatisfying experience as a standard sitcom, because the plots frequently were weak or non-existent! Additionally, when there were solid scripts, they were pretty much lifted from old movies, Vaudeville acts, or parodied other programs being aired at the time - most of which wasn't terribly inspired and often wasn't that funny.
To the good, they did utilize the "psychedelic" elements of the day, with brilliant colors, sets and costumes, which is why their title sequence is still a timeless classic. The visuals were spectacular.
Also, The Monkees, the musical group, had some pretty decent songs (after all, the writers of their tunes were people like Neil Diamond and Carole King!), and those performances were usually the highlight of every episode. If the scripts could have equaled the songs, this show would have been a smash.
But to be fair, the era of the 1960s was a very odd combination of a lot of factors, not the least of which was drugs (hinted at but never directly suggested here), politics (which was emboldened by the programs like "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) and youth and the pop culture movement. And certainly all of this had an impact on the the process of creating the program and the areas covered by the episodes.
In its way, The Monkees captured a lot more of the flavor of that time than nearly every other entertainment program in that tumultuous age and it certainly deserves credit for that.