Reviews

How amazing to find this discussion about one of the best (but worst-named) shows on television. I have been mulling over this show for 45 years but have never met another human being who remembers it. Like some of the other folks commenting here, I also traipsed in vain to the TV Museum in New York hoping to find some of the episodes. At a time when TV comedies and dramas were formulaic, trite, contrived and wrapped up with little moral lessons, It's a Man's World was about unspoken feelings, confused aspirations, nuance, pain and hope. It anticipated Robert Altman techniques: in one episode where Glenn Corbett and his girlfriend visit a bank officer, his office is being painted by a guy on a ladder in the background; the possibility of a paint can being turned over completely dominates the scene, making it almost impossible to actually follow the dialogue. This business of the background overtaking the foreground is very Altmanesque. I recall as well some scenes with overlapping dialogue that make it difficult to actually hear what is being said -- like pretty much the entire soundtrack to McCabe & Mrs Miller. Judging from the other comments here, this show obviously had a powerful effect on a lot of teenage kids who responded to the realism and subtlety of the show. I simply want to see it again to see if it truly is as good as I remember; how nice to discover I am not the only one who feels this way.