Grab the Remote: A Brutally Honest Guide to the Best (and Worst) TV From 1979 That You Can Actually Stream Today
Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and 1979 television is basically a full prescription. The year gave us some genuine classics that deserve every bit of their legendary status — and also some shows that are best appreciated as artifacts of a very specific, very particular moment in American history. We love them all, but we're not going to pretend they're all equally watchable in 2024.
So here's the deal: we went through the 1979 TV landscape with honest eyes and ranked what's worth your time, what's worth watching for the vibes alone, and what you should maybe just read about instead of actually sitting through.
The Ones That Actually Hold Up
Taxi — Still Genuinely Funny After All These Years
If you haven't watched Taxi, you've been missing out on one of the tightest ensemble comedies ever assembled for American television. The 1978-1979 season was hitting its stride, and the cast — Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch, Andy Kaufman, Tony Danza, Marilu Henner — was operating at a level that makes most modern sitcoms look underpowered by comparison.
What makes Taxi hold up so well is that it never really leaned on topical humor the way a lot of its contemporaries did. The comedy comes from character — from the specific, beautifully observed weirdness of each person in that garage. Andy Kaufman's Latka Gravas in particular is a performance that still feels completely unlike anything else on television before or since. Highly recommended for modern viewing. Find it, watch it, thank us later.
Mork & Mindy — Robin Williams at His Most Unfiltered
The first season of Mork & Mindy (which ran through '79) is essential viewing not because it's perfect television — it isn't — but because it's a document of Robin Williams at the exact moment the world was realizing it had no idea what to do with him. The show's writers frequently just let him go, and what resulted was something that felt genuinely alive in a way that scripted TV rarely achieves.
Watch it for Williams. The plots are thin, the supporting cast is uneven, and the premise is pure late-'70s network cheese. But every time Williams opens his mouth and just runs, it's electric. That's not nostalgia talking — it's just true.
The Dukes of Hazzard — Complicated, But Undeniably Watchable
Look, we're not going to pretend The Dukes of Hazzard doesn't come with baggage. It does. But as a piece of late-'70s American television, it's a genuinely entertaining watch if you go in with clear eyes. The car chases are legitimately thrilling for their era, the chemistry between the leads is real, and the show has an almost hypnotic energy that's hard to explain until you're two episodes in and suddenly it's midnight.
Approach it as a time capsule rather than a comfort watch, and you'll get a lot out of it.
The Glorious Artifacts — Great for the Vibes, Not Always the Content
Charlie's Angels — Peak '70s Aesthetic, Uneven Everything Else
By 1979, Charlie's Angels had already gone through cast changes and was starting to show its age. The show remains an absolutely iconic piece of American pop culture — the fashion, the hair, the aesthetic — but if you're expecting tight plotting or complex characterization, you're going to be waiting a while.
That said, there's something genuinely fascinating about watching it now as a cultural document. The show's relationship with its own female leads — simultaneously empowering and exploitative — is a whole conversation worth having. Watch a few episodes, enjoy the aesthetic, and appreciate how much it influenced everything that came after it.
The Muppet Movie (1979 Theatrical Release — But It Was EVERYWHERE on TV)
Okay, technically a film, but The Muppet Movie was such a massive cultural moment in 1979 that it basically counts. It aired on television shortly after its theatrical run and became appointment viewing for an entire generation. Revisiting it today is a reminder that Jim Henson and his team were doing something genuinely sophisticated beneath all the frog jokes and felt. The film holds up beautifully, and the Rainbow Connection sequence remains one of the most quietly moving things ever put on screen for a family audience.
Fantasy Island — Delightfully Weird in Ways You Forgot
"Ze plane! Ze plane!" If you grew up in America anywhere near this era, you know the line. Fantasy Island is one of those shows that sounds completely unhinged when you describe it to someone who's never seen it — a mysterious island where guests pay to have their deepest fantasies fulfilled, run by the enigmatic Mr. Roarke and his excitable assistant Tattoo — and it is, in fact, completely unhinged.
But that's exactly what makes it so watchable today. It's earnest in a way that modern television almost never is. It takes its own absurd premise completely seriously, and Ricardo Montalbán plays it straight with such magnificent commitment that you can't help but get swept up in it.
The "Just Read the Wikipedia Article" Category
The Love Boat — Better as a Memory Than a Viewing Experience
Everybody remembers The Love Boat. The theme song is permanently installed in the American cultural hard drive. But actually sitting down and watching an episode in 2024 is a different experience than the warm fuzzy feeling the show's memory tends to generate. The pacing is slow even by the standards of the era, the guest-star-of-the-week formula gets repetitive fast, and the humor has dated considerably.
This is one where the nostalgia is genuinely more satisfying than the product. Love it for what it meant — don't necessarily commit to a full binge.
Most Game Shows of the Era — Fascinating for Five Minutes
The $20,000 Pyramid, Match Game, Password Plus — the late-'70s game show era was its own magnificent universe, and a few episodes of any of these is a genuinely fun window into how Americans entertained themselves on a Tuesday afternoon in 1979. But the format limitations mean most of them work better as YouTube clips than sustained viewing sessions. Sample liberally; commit cautiously.
The Verdict
1979 television was a landscape in transition — network dominance was still absolute, cable was just beginning its long slow rise, and the creative experimentation that would define the '80s hadn't fully kicked in yet. What you get is a mix of genuine brilliance (Taxi, early Mork & Mindy), comfortable nostalgia (Dukes, Fantasy Island), and earnest, slightly creaky entertainment that works best when you meet it on its own terms.
The best approach? Start with Taxi. Seriously. Just start there.
