M*A*S*H, created by producer Gene Reynolds and writer Larry Gelbart, crackled to life behind brilliant performances from Alan Alda (as “Hawkeye” Pierce), Loretta Swit (as nurse Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan), Wayne Rogers (as Hawkeye’s irreverent buddy “Trapper” John McIntyre), Gary Burghoff (as the innocent but seemingly omniscient clerk, Radar O’Reilly), and later Mike Farrell (as B. J. Hunnicutt) and Harry Morgan (as camp commander Sherman Potter).
These programs were commercial and also critical successes. From 1971, when Mary Tyler Moore and All in the Family first appeared, through 1975, those two shows and M*A*S*H dominated the annual Emmy Awards to a remarkable extent. Over those five years, All in the Family won the Emmy as Best Comedy three times, with Mary Tyler Moore and M*A*S*H capturing the other two awards, in addition to the raft of Emmys awarded to the shows’ actors, writers, and directors. But All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and M*A*S*H became landmarks not only because of their excellence but also because of their relevance. After years in which the television networks had deliberately, even defiantly, ignored the fissures in American life opening around them, these three shows, more than any predecessor, finally connected the medium to the moment.
Though M*A*S*H was set in Korea, viewers could not miss the parallels to Vietnam in its brilliant satire of war’s futility
metro.co.uk
