The Don Knotts Show

Not long ago I did a series on variety shows. In doing some research for that series I found some shows I did not know about and others that I was reminded of. One thing that I was reminded of was that 3 of those shows starred members of a hit sit-com from the 60's. It was the Andy Griffith Show. After Don left Andy's series for the movies he came back to television with his own variety series. It aired on Tuesday nights on NBC from September 15, 1970 to July 6, 1971. He had a good supporting cast, some of them had been in his movies. One was the man of a million voices Frank Welker and another was future MASH star Gary Burghoff. The actors were good but the writing was not. That is pretty much what killed the show. There were two segments were always on each week. One was Mr. Knotts complaining in a funny way on how hard it was to put on a TV show each week. That might be funny once or twice but not every week. The other was Don sitting on the front porch talking to his guest star of the week. The was an obvious attempt to bring back memories of the Andy Griffith show. It was ok but didn't really work until the episode where Andy himself was on the show. After it was canceled there may have been a few lean months in the Knotts household but he made up for them when he was cast in a few Disney movies. Don finally found a steady job when they cast him as the landlord on Three's Company. Rumor has it that when they were recasting the part the producers said they wanted a Don Knotts type of actor. They had trouble finding that type till they said well let's see if Don Knotts himself is availble. He was and I think he got a better residual deal on the syndication then he did on Andy Griffith. Remember in the 60's they just did the show and got paid only for the first run. No one back then knew it was keep airing. So few actors thought of asking for part of the syndication rights.