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TV Shows & Series: Popular TV Shows/Series of 1961

TV shows/series in chronological context: 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1961st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 961st year of the 2nd millennium, the 61st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1960s decade. ()

TV Shows/Series of a decade: 1870s | 1880s | 1890s | 1900s | 1910s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s


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113 TV shows/series found (page 1/4):

Top Cat(1961-1962)

24min per episode | Animation, Comedy, Kids & Family
3.7/5 (with 158 votes)

Top Cat is a Hanna-Barbera prime time animated television series which ran from November 26, 1961 to April 18, 1962 for a run of 30 episodes on the ABC network. Reruns are played on Cartoon Network's classic animation network Boomerang.

The Yogi Bear Show(1961-1962)

7min per episode | Animation, Comedy, Kids & Family
3.5/5 (with 99 votes)

From his home in Jellystone Park, Yogi Bear dreams of nothing more in life than to outwit as many unsuspecting tourists as he can and grab their prized picnic baskets all while staying one step ahead of the ever-exasperated Ranger Smith. Yogi's little buddy, Boo-Boo, tries to keep Yogi out of trouble but rarely succeeds. That's okay because not even Ranger Smith can stay mad for long at the lovable, irresistible Yogi Bear.

Directed by William Hanna

The Avengers(1961-1969)

3.8/5 (with 60 votes)

The Avengers is a British television series created in the 1960s. It initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed. Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. His most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women: Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King. Later episodes increasingly incorporated elements of science fiction and fantasy, parody and British eccentricity.

The Dick Van Dyke Show(1961-1966)

30min per episode | Comedy
3.7/5 (with 41 votes)

The Dick Van Dyke Show centers around the work and home life of television comedy writer Rob Petrie. The plots generally revolve around problems at work, where Rob got into various comedic jams with fellow writers Buddy Sorrell, Sally Rogers and producer Mel Cooley.

Mister Ed(1961-1966)

30min per episode | Comedy, Kids & Family
3.3/5 (with 21 votes)

Wilbur Post and his wife Carol move into a beautiful new home. When Wilbur takes a look in his new barn, he finds that the former owner left his horse behind. This horse is no ordinary horse . . . he can talk, but only to Wilbur, which leads to all sorts of misadventures for Wilbur and his trouble-making sidekick Mister Ed.

Directed by Arthur Lubin, John Rich, Alan Young - With Alan Young, Connie Hines, Bamboo Harvester

KVN(1961-)

1h 55min per episode | Kids & Family, Comedy, Talk-Show
3.3/5 (with 8 votes)

KVN is a Russian humour TV show and competition where teams compete by giving funny answers to questions and showing prepared sketches. The programme was first aired by the First Soviet Channel on November 8, 1961. Eleven years later, in 1972, when few programmes were being broadcast live, Soviet censors found the students' impromptu jokes offensive and anti-Soviet and banned KVN. The show was revived fourteen years later during the Perestroika era in 1986, with Alexander Maslyakov as its host. It is one of the longest-running TV programmes on Russian Television. It also has its own holiday on November 8, the birthday of the game, which KVN players celebrate every year since it was announced and widely celebrated for the first time in 2001.

Dr. Kildare(1961-1966)

1h per episode | Drama
2.7/5 (with 8 votes)

The story of a young intern in a large metropolitan hospital trying to learn his profession, deal with the problems of his patients, and win the respect of the senior doctor in his specialty, internal medicine.

Hazel(1961-1966)

26min per episode | Comedy
3.5/5 (with 8 votes)

Hazel is an American sitcom about a fictional live-in maid named Hazel Burke and her employers, the Baxters. The five-season, 154-episode series aired in primetime from September 28, 1961 until April 11, 1966 and was produced by Screen Gems. The show aired on NBC for its first four seasons, and then on CBS for its final season. The first season, except for one color episode was in black and white, the remainder in color. The show was based on the popular single-panel comic strip by cartoonist Ted Key, which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.

Directed by E.W. Swackhamer - With Shirley Booth, Don DeFore, Whitney Blake, Bobby Buntrock, Ray Fulmer, Lynn Borden, ...

Ben Casey(1961-1966)

1h per episode | Drama
2.8/5 (with 7 votes)

Ben Casey is an American medical drama series which ran on ABC from 1961 to 1966. The show was known for its opening titles, which consisted of a hand drawing the symbols "♂, ♀, ✳, †, ∞" on a chalkboard, as cast member Sam Jaffe intoned, "Man, woman, birth, death, infinity." Neurosurgeon Joseph Ransohoff was a medical consultant for the show and may have influenced the personality of the title character.

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends(1961-1963)

30min per episode | Animation
3.5/5 (with 6 votes)

Rocky and Bullwinkle began life in the 1950's television show, The Frostbite Falls Review. It was created by Jay Ward and Bill Scott. Their names in that show were Rocket J. Squirrel and Canadian Moose. The Frostbite Falls Review was not very successful so Rocky and Bullwinkle became the stars of their own show, Rocky and His Friends. The show was co-created by Alex Anderson and premiered on November 29th, 1959 on ABC. Added to the cast were Boris and Natasha, two Pottsylvanian spies. The show also featured various segments; Peabody's Improbable History, Fractured Fairy Tales, Mr. Know-It-All, and Aesop and Son. In 1961, the show moved to NBC and was renamed The Bullwinkle Show. It ran for three seasons and was canceled in 1964. ABC ran reruns until 1974, when the show then entered syndication.

The Morecambe & Wise Show(1961-1983)

50min per episode | Comedy
3.1/5 (with 5 votes)

The Morecambe & Wise Show is the third TV series by English comedy double-act Morecambe and Wise. It began airing in 1968 on BBC2, specifically because it was then the only channel broadcasting in colour, following the duo's move to the BBC from ATV, where they had made Two of a Kind since 1961. The series was popular enough to be moved to BBC1, with its Christmas specials garnering prime-time audiences in excess of 20 million, some of the largest in British television history. After their 1977 Christmas special, retaining its title, the show moved over to ITV.

With Eric Morecambe, Ernie Wise

Car 54, Where Are You?(1961-1963)

30min per episode | Comedy
3.6/5 (with 4 votes)

The misadventures of two of New York's finest in the 53rd precinct in the Bronx. Toody, the short, stocky and dim-witted one, either saves the day or messes things up, much to the chagrin of Muldoon, the tall, lanky and smart one.

Directed by Stanley Prager - With Joe E. Ross, Fred Gwynne
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The Defenders(1961-1965)

1h per episode | Drama
3.0/5 (with 4 votes)

The Defenders is an American courtroom drama series . It starred E. G. Marshall and Robert Reed as father-and-son defense attorneys who specialized in legally complex cases, with defendants such as neo-Nazis, conscientious objectors, civil rights demonstrators, a schoolteacher fired for being an atheist, an author accused of pornography, and a physician charged in a mercy killing.

The Alvin Show(1961-1962)

30min per episode | Animation
4.4/5 (with 3 votes)

The Alvin Show is an American animated television series. It was the first to feature the singing characters Alvin and the Chipmunks, although a series with a similar concept The Nutty Squirrels Present had aired a year earlier. It lasted for one season in prime time on CBS, originally sponsored by General Foods, and initially telecast in black and white. The series rode the momentum of creator Ross Bagdasarian's original hit musical gimmick and developed the singing Chipmunk trio as rambunctious kids–particularly the show's namesake star–whose mischief contrasted to his tall, brainy brother Simon and his chubby, gluttonous brother Theodore, as well as their long-suffering, perpetually put-upon manager-father figure, David Seville. The animation was produced by Herbert Klynn's Format Films.

Four Corners(1961-)

45min per episode | News, Documentary
3.9/5 (with 3 votes)

Four Corners is Australia's longest-running investigative journalism/current affairs television program. Broadcast on ABC1 in Australia, it premiered on 19 August 1961 and celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2021. Founding producer Robert Raymond and his successor Allan Ashbolt did much to set the ongoing tone of the program. Based on the Panorama concept, the program addresses a single issue in depth each week, showing either a locally produced program or a relevant documentary from overseas. The program has won many awards for investigative journalism, and broken many high-profile stories. A notable early example of this was the show's epoch-making 1962 exposé on the appalling living conditions endured by many Aboriginal Australians living in rural New South Wales.

Supercar(1961-1962)

3.4/5 (with 3 votes)

Supercar was a children's TV show produced by Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis's AP Films for ATV and ITC Entertainment. 39 episodes were produced between 1961 and 1962, and it was Anderson's first half-hour series. In the UK it was seen on ITV and in the US in syndication. The format uses puppets in a technique called supermarionation, a name that was first seen in the closing titles of the last 13 episodes. The plot of the show consisted of Supercar, a vertical takeoff and landing craft invented by Rudolph Popkiss and Horatio Beaker, and piloted by Mike Mercury. On land it rode on a cushion of air rather than wheels. Jets in the rear allowed it to fly like a jet and retractable wings were incorporated in the back of the car. Retrorockets on the side of the car slowed the vehicle. The car used "Clear-Vu", which included an inside television monitor allowing the occupant to see through fog and smoke. The vehicle was housed in a laboratory and living facility at Black Rock, Nevada, U.S.A. In the show's first episode, "Rescue", the Supercar crew's first mission is to save the passengers of a downed private plane. Two of the rescued, young Jimmy Gibson and his pet monkey, Mitch, are invited to live at the facility and share in the adventures.

Directed by David Elliott, Desmond Saunders

The Dick Tracy Show(1961)

5min per episode | Animation, Comedy, Crime
3.2/5 (with 3 votes)

The Dick Tracy Show was an American animated television series based on Chester Gould's comic strip crime fighter. The series was produced from 1961 to 1962 by UPA.

Sir Francis Drake(1961-1962)

30min per episode | Action & Adventure
2.0/5 (with 3 votes)

Sir Francis Drake was a British adventure television series starring Terence Morgan as Sir Francis Drake, commander of the sailing ship the Golden Hind. As well as battles at sea, sword fights, the series also deals with intrigue at Elizabeth's court, often caused by Spaniard, Mendoza.

Directed by Clive Donner - With Terence Morgan

The Mike Douglas Show(1961-)

1h per episode | Comedy, Talk-Show
2.7/5 (with 3 votes)

The Mike Douglas Show is an American daytime television talk show hosted by Mike Douglas that originally aired only in the Cleveland area during much of its first two years on the air. It then went into syndication in 1963 and remained on television until 1982. It was distributed by Westinghouse Broadcasting and for much of its run, originated from studios of two of the company's TV stations in Cleveland and Philadelphia.

Password(1961-1966)

30min per episode | Reality-TV
3.6/5 (with 3 votes)

Password is an American television game show which was created by Bob Stewart for Goodson-Todman Productions. The host was Allen Ludden, who had previously been well known as the host of the G.E. College Bowl. Password originally aired for 1,555 daytime telecasts each weekday from October 2, 1961 to September 15, 1967 on CBS, along with weekly prime time airings from January 2, 1962 to September 9, 1965 and December 25, 1966 to May 22, 1967. An additional 1,099 daytime shows aired from April 5, 1971 to June 27, 1975 on ABC. The show's announcers were Jack Clark and Lee Vines on CBS and John Harlan on ABC. Two revivals later aired on NBC from 1979–1982 and 1984–1989, followed by a prime time version on CBS from 2008–2009. In 2013, TV Guide ranked it #8 in its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever.

Directed by Ira Skutch - With Elizabeth Montgomery, David H. Greene

Whiplash(1961)

25min per episode | Western, Drama
3.3/5 (with 2 votes)

Whiplash is a British/Australian television series made by the Seven Network and ATV and ITC Entertainment. Filmed in 1959-60, the series was first broadcast in September 1960 in the United Kingdom followed by Australia in February 1961 and had opening titles featuring the Australian locale and terrain and a dozen wild kangaroos as a Cobb & Co stage passed pulled by a team of five horses driven by Cobb himself.

The Dick Powell Show(1961-1963)

1h per episode | Drama, Comedy, Talk-Show
2.1/5 (with 2 votes)

The Dick Powell Show is an American anthology series that ran on NBC from 1961- 1963, primarily sponsored by the Reynolds Metals Company. It was hosted by longtime film star Dick Powell until his death from lymphatic cancer on January 2, 1963, then by a series of guest hosts until the series ended. The first of these was Gregory Peck, who began the January 8 program with a tribute to Powell, recognizing him as "a great and good friend to our industry." Peck was followed by fellow actors such as Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Glenn Ford, Charles Boyer, Jackie Cooper, Rock Hudson, Milton Berle, Jack Lemmon, Dean Martin, Robert Taylor, Steve McQueen, David Niven, Danny Thomas, Robert Wagner and John Wayne.

A for Andromeda(1961)

45min per episode | Drama, Science-Fiction & Fantasy
2.3/5 (with 2 votes)

Set in 1970, a team of scientists decipher a mysterious signal from space and discover that it provides instructions to build a powerful super-computer. Once built, this computer provokes argument between two of leading team members, Fleming and Dawnay, over the machine's real intentions as it provides further instructions to create a living organism, which Dawnay starts to develop. Later it appears to compel lab assistant Christine to commit suicide, and when the organism is fully developed, it appears in the exact form of Christine, and named Andromeda. But what is the purpose of this "creature" ...?

87th Precinct(1961-1962)

1h per episode | Crime, Drama, Mystery
3.9/5 (with 2 votes)

87th Precinct is an American crime drama starring Robert Lansing, Gena Rowlands, and Ron Harper, which aired on NBC on Monday evenings during the 1961–1962 television season.

Whispering Smith(1961)

30min per episode | Western
2.7/5 (with 2 votes)

Whispering Smith is an American Western series that aired on NBC. Based on a 1948 movie, the series stars Audie Murphy as Tom "Whispering" Smith, a police detective in Denver, Colorado. Filming of the series began in 1959, but the program did not air until May 8, 1961, because of unexpected production problems. Whispering Smith combines elements of CBS's Have Gun – Will Travel starring Richard Boone, NBC's Tales of Wells Fargo starring Dale Robertson, the syndicated Shotgun Slade with Scott Brady, and ABC's The Man From Blackhawk, a Stirling Silliphant production starring Robert Rockwell. While the setting of the series is unique, it is otherwise a standard detective program.

The Joey Bishop Show(1961-1965)

30min per episode | Comedy, Talk-Show
2.7/5 (with 2 votes)

The Joey Bishop Show is an American sitcom starring entertainer Joey Bishop. The series premiered in September 1961 on NBC where it aired for three seasons. The series then moved to CBS for its final season. Executive produced by Danny Thomas, The Joey Bishop Show is a spin-off of Thomas' series The Danny Thomas Show.

Directed by Mel Ferber, Jerry Paris - With Joey Bishop, Abby Dalton, Mary Treen

The Bob Newhart Show(1961-1962)

1h per episode | Comedy
4.5/5 (with 1 vote)

The Bob Newhart Show is an American comedy variety show starring comedian Bob Newhart. It originally ran from October 1961 through June 1962 on NBC, airing on Wednesday nights at 10pm Eastern time, immediately following Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall. The variety show was sponsored by Kraft Foods's Sealtest Dairy division. The show was awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Humor in 1962. It was also nominated for the Writing Achievement in Comedy Award for Roland Kibbee, Bob Newhart, Don Hinkley, Milt Rosen, Ernest Chambers, Dean Hargrove, Robert Kaufman, Norm Liebmann, Charles Sherman, Howard Snyder and Larry Siegel, but they lost to Carl Reiner for The Dick Van Dyke Show. The show also won a Peabody Award in 1961.

Way Out(1961)

25min per episode | Drama, Science-Fiction & Fantasy
2.5/5 (with 1 vote)

Way Out was a 1961 fantasy and science fiction television anthology series hosted by writer Roald Dahl. The macabre 25-minute shows were introduced by Dahl's dry delivery of a brief introductory monologue, sometimes explaining a method of murdering a spouse without getting caught. The taped series began because CBS suddenly needed a replacement for a Jackie Gleason talk show that network executives were about to cancel, and producer David Susskind contacted Dahl to help mount a show quickly. The series was paired by the network with the similar The Twilight Zone for Friday evening broadcasts, running from March through July 1961 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, under the primary sponsorship of Liggett & Myers. Writers included Philip H. Reisman, Jr. and Sumner Locke Elliott. The premiere episode, "William and Mary", adapted from a Roald Dahl short story, told of a wife getting revenge on her husband. In "Dissolve to Black", an actress cast as a murder victim at a television studio goes through a rehearsal, but the drama merges with reality as she finds herself trapped on the show's near-deserted set. Other dramas offered startling imagery: a snake slithering up a carpeted staircase inside a suburban home, a disembodied brain in a jar, a headless woman strapped to an electric chair, with a light bulb in place of her head and half of a man's face erased.

Directed by Paul Bogart

The Rag Trade(1961-)

30min per episode | Comedy
2.8/5 (with 1 vote)

The Rag Trade is a British television sitcom broadcast by the BBC between 1961 and 1963 and by LWT between 1977 and 1978. The scripts were by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, who later wrote Wild, Wild Women, Meet the Wife and On the Buses. Wild, Wild Women was a period variation of The Rag Trade. The action centred on a small clothing workshop, Fenner Fashions in London. Although run by Harold Fenner and Reg the foreman, the female workers are led by militant shop steward Paddy Fleming, ever ready to strike, with the catchphrase "Everybody out!" Other cast members included Sheila Hancock, Esma Reese Cannon, Wanda Ventham and Barbara Windsor. The Rag Trade was revived by ITV company LWT in 1977, with Jones and Karlin reprising their roles. The 1977 version ran for two series, most of the scripts being based on the BBC episodes from the 1960s, and featured Anna Karen and future EastEnders star Gillian Taylforth as factory workers. The theme tune for the LWT series was written and performed by Lynsey De Paul.

The New Breed(1961-1962)

1h per episode | Drama
3.5/5 (with 1 vote)

The New Breed is an American crime drama series that aired on ABC from October 3, 1961 to June 5, 1962, with thirty-six episodes.

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