The first series of the show consists of 25 episodes, and they’re all included on this DVD box set. Overall, the characters are amusing, the situations they get themselves into are both realistic and wacky (the perfect mix for any sitcom) and the era certainly doesn’t hurt either! The comedy is solid throughout and definitely funny… and not just because the show is set in the ’70s (though it has to be said that the disco episode does employ amusing ’70s dance moves to superb effect). Characterisation helps the comedy along admirably, as we get to learn the characters’ quirks and see them react (sometimes quite convincingly) to all manner of different situations, such as Red Forman having to take a Christmas job at his neighbour Bob’s electrical store because of job cut-backs at the plant he works in. We don’t see the teenagers at school often, which would only bolster the cast numbers, but we encounter them instead during those in-between times – after waking up and before school, after school and before bed, and of course at the weekends. Issues dealt with include dating, sex, friendships, homosexuality, drugs, family values and responsibility. It’s a fairly large cast to introduce quickly, but in the show we experience the characters not merely as their obvious stereotypes, but also as their individual storylines progress… so it’s not quite such an ordeal to learn who everyone is as it might first appear.Īs with many sitcoms – and as with Happy Days in particular – the series revolves around teenagers transitioning from childhood to an adult state. To a lesser degree we also get to know Donna’s parents, next-door neighbours to the Formans: prehistoric buffoon Bob (Don Stark) and bimbo/emerging-feminist Midge (Tanya Roberts). Also occupying a deservedly large part of the spotlight are Eric’s parents – nervous, pre-feminist wife and mother Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp) and stern dad Red (Kurtwood Smith) – and they have plenty of interaction with their son and his friends. Eric generally hangs out with his friends: Donna (Laura Prepon), his next-door neighbour and romantic interest goofy Michael Kelso (Ashton Kutcher) paranoid pothead Hyde (Danny Masterson) the rich and spoiled Jackie (Mila Kunis) and foreign exchange student Fez (Wilmer Valderrama).
The show focuses on the day-to-day lives of a fairly large core cast of characters, but the key protagonist is unquestionably Eric Forman (played by Topher Grace). Created by the same team behind 3rd Rock from the Sun, That ’70s Show is set in Point Place, Wisconsin, a fictional suburb of Green Bay. So after a few bumpy naming moments, That ’70s Show adopted its correctly-punctuated title and from this point on it went from strength to strength, becoming the only newly-introduced Fox sitcom to survive the 1998-99 season.Īnd with a title like that, it’s not really that hard to work out what the series is like – That ’70s Show is firmly rooted in sitcom tradition and is to the ’90s what Happy Days was to the ’70s – a humorous and oft-nostalgic glance over one’s shoulder at life two decades past. So why did its moniker change for the final time? Well, test audiences in focus groups kept referring to it simply as ‘that ’70s show’ and (to their lasting credit) the creators decided to go with this ‘suggestion’. However, after legal issues challenged both of these titles, it became ‘Feelin’ Alright’ – not a particularly catchy name, true, but one that could have worked nonetheless. That ’70s Show started life titled ‘Teenage Wasteland’ and then progressed to another reference to a song by The Who, ‘The Kids are Alright’. Bex takes a look at the recent R1 release of the first series of this show. Funny and charming, this sitcom focuses on Eric Forman and his friends and family, as they tackle life from 1976 onwards. That ’70s Show is to current times what Happy Days was to viewers in the ’70s.