SPECIAL PREMIERE: For a TV history professor, this is the mother lode: An ABC experiment in which episodes of two of Norman Lear’s groundbreaking 1970s comedies,
All in the Family and its spinoff
The Jeffersons, are performed and broadcast live. I like the casting – Woody Harrelson as Archie Bunker and Jamie Foxx as George Jefferson – because both have solid experience in sitcoms. And you couldn’t find a better sitcom director than James Burrows, period. Norman Lear and Jimmy Kimmel (whose idea this was, though it long post-dated my own concept for
Rerun Theatre) host. For my full reaction to this upcoming production on NPR’s
Fresh Air with Terry Gross, visit the Fresh Air website later today, or listen to today’s broadcast on your local public radio station.