The New Andy Griffith Show Information

The New Andy Griffith Show is an American situation comedy broadcast in the United States on CBS in 1971 on Friday Night at 8:30 EST.

History

Actor Andy Griffith had left his first sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show, voluntarily after the 1967-68 season while it was still number one in the Nielsen ratings and despite a high-dollar offer from CBS to continue it, in order to pursue his other interests, singing and motion picture acting, and to prevent his being typecast solely as a rural Southern sheriff.

When he decided to return to network television two years later, in the fall of 1970, it was in Headmaster, a drama, in which he played the headmaster of an exclusive Californian private school. When that program very quickly sank in the ratings, Griffith replaced it immediately with this one, which was much closer in tone and content to his earlier, more successful role, and this program replaced Headmaster on the CBS Friday night schedule effective January 8, 1971.

Synopsis

This time the setting was a mid-sized North Carolina town called Greenwood (pop. 12,785, ten times the number of people that lived in Mayberry), with Griffith portraying Andy Sawyer, a returning hometown boy who instantly becomes the town's new Mayor Pro-tem.

Andy Sawyer was the model family man, always agreeable and understanding, spending lots of quality time with his children.

Dressed in a humble yellow ochre vest, white shirt and gray slacks, Andy Sawyer was much simpler and more deferential than Andy Taylor ever was; often the lines they gave Andy to mouth would have been more appropriate coming from Gomer Pyle.

Lee Meriwether was cast as Andy's wife. Meriwether was already well-known to TV audiences as a former Miss America who went on to play Catwoman in the Batman movie and Dr. Ann MacGregor on Time Tunnel from 1966-67. Meriwether had also starred with Andy Griffith, in the unsuccessful 1969 theatrical film Angel in My Pocket.

Marty McCall and Lori Rutherford were seen as his children, T.J. and Lori, there was a live-in relative - Lee's sister Nora, played by Ann Morgan Guilbert (Millie Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Yetta on The Nanny). Instead of matronly and supportive like Aunt Bee, Nora was constantly complaining, neurotic, meddling and superstitious.

Rotund country comic Glen Ash was cast as town councilman Buff McKnight. Don Knotts discovered Ash, introducing him to TV audiences when he hosted The Hollywood Palace in 1968. As a result, Ash made the rounds on The Leslie Uggams Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Mayberry RFD, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, Petticoat Junction and others during the 1969-70 season.

Reception

Despite a successful premiere, and its greater similarity to his earlier, successful role and series, The New Andy Griffith Show was little more successful than Headmaster had been. In fact, after 10 first-run episodes of The New Andy Griffith Show had been exhausted (the last first-run episode airing March 12, 1971, with repeats through May 21, 1971), CBS chose to rerun Headmaster during the summer instead.

Episode list

Episode #	Episode title	Original airdate
1-1	"My Friend, the Mayor" (pilot)	January 8, 1971
1-2	"Get Me Glen Campbell"	January 15, 1971
1-3	"Berries, T.J. and the Law"	January 22, 1971
1-4	"Town Square"	January 29, 1971
1-5	"Nearly Nuptials For Nora"	February 5, 1971
1-6	"Otis Burfoot Is A Hundred Years Old"	February 12, 1971
1-7	"Big Noise, Small Claims"	February 19, 1971
1-8	"The Connection"	February 26, 1971
1-9	"The Millionth Vistor Is A Bum- Or Is He?"	March 5, 1971
1-10	"A Visit From Cousin Billy Jim"	March 12, 1971