Tabitha on DVD

Recently as a Christmas gift my wife got me the DVD series Tabitha. It was a spin off of the old Bewitched series in the 60’s. Tabitha and her brother Adam were now in their 20’s and working at a local TV station. It was full of lighthearted fun that it parent series had. It stared Lisa Hartman as Tabitha and Robert Urich as her co-worker Paul. While both became famous for their dramatic acting they proved in this series that they could handle comedy. Especially, Mr. Urich as he played the Ted Baxter type role that Ted Knight made famous earlier on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. However there were several things wrong with it that doomed it to be done in less then 13 weeks. First is for fans of Bewitched they got the continuity wrong. Tabitha and Adam would have been children in the 1970’s. So it really should have been a school comedy more like Sabrina was years later. Secondly, Adam in the first episode referred to Tabitha as his kid sister. That was wrong as Tabitha was born first. Her character was added to the Bewitched series in 1966 and Adam was born in 1971. So Adam was her kid brother. The only way to have done this series the way they did it was to ignore continuity and that is what the producers did. Either that or they never were fans of Bewitched to begin with. The third thing wrong is that the show was mediocre comedy. When watching the DVD set I had to admit I had seen better sit-coms. However, I also had to admit that I had seen worse and most of that was recently. Being mediocre in television is worse then being bad because rotten TV grabs the audience attention and if they comeback to watch each week then the show will stay on and it has a chance to get better. If you are mediocre then hardly anyone watches and you get canceled. Another thing that killed the show was its time slot. It was on Saturday nights at 8 pm. It replaced the show Fish that stared Abe Vigoda. The main competition was on CBS. It was the Bob Newhart Show in its last year. Perhaps in time Tabitha could have grown into a really good comedy. However, the audience didn't want to wait for that when it already had a seasoned show already in that slot for them to watch. Still I liked the show and I am glad to see it again. It was gone so fast that I missed half of the series and now I can catch up. It was lighthearted innocent fun and we need to see that now more then ever.