I spend all day, every day, seven days a week, reading the news. Since November 2020, it’s been a deeply depressing pastime, one that has gotten only more grim over the past six weeks. When my workday ends, I want lighter fare, and, of late, that lighter fare has seen me watching popular television shows from the 1990s and the early 2000s. What’s amazing about watching these shows is how minimal the politicization is, as well as the kind of jokes that were still allowed. Everything was so much less fraught and had more room to expand into laughter without malice.

It all started for me with the American version of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? which ran in its original iteration from 1998 to 2007. When that show originally aired, I was busy working and raising children, so I watched almost no TV. Watching it now is revelatory.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it has three regulars—Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, and Wayne Brady—along with a regular stable of guest stars, who are given scenarios and told to improvise jokes and scenes. They do so with elan, an impressive fund of knowledge, and remarkable comedic skills. After a long day of slogging through the news, to laugh until the tears come to my eyes is a wonderful thing.

One of the things I constantly notice as I watch the show is that everyone is comfortable with making jokes about race and homosexuality. Not mean jokes, mind you. Just jokes. These subjects weren’t untouchable then.

Another show, a truly guilty pleasure, is Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which ran from 1994-1997. I assuage my conscience by telling myself that Dean Cain, who plays Clark Kent/Superman, is a conservative. Mostly, though, I like the show because it’s completely ludicrous camp played by actors having fun. The only hint of incipient political correctness is that a few episodes mentioned the importance of recycling. Otherwise, though, it’s mindless nonsense that makes me laugh.

AI generated image of a laughing woman in front of a television.

However, I can readily imagine it being a very different show if it were to be redone today. Teri Hatcher plays Lois as a completely focused career woman, which, in 2023, would have meant male bashing and brittle feminism—just think of the Barbie movie. Instead, though, in fare from slightly less than thirty years ago, she’s a sweet, vulnerable, funny character whose work ethos is admirable but also acknowledged to be potentially self-destructive and isolating. Moreover, the division between men and women—the goals, the energy, the attraction to each other—is celebrated, not obliterated.

The last escapist fare from the 1990s that I’ve been enjoying is Frasier. Again, the fact that the star, Kelsey Grammer, is conservative is a point in its favor. But what really makes it work so well is that it’s a wonderfully written show with people who perfectly inhabit their roles. And again, as with the other shows, it’s not political or, when it is, as with the episode entitled “The Candidate,” it freely attacks both sides of the aisle. That’s not actually correct. It freely attacks the people who may appear on either side of the aisle.

And thinking about it, that’s what makes these shows so eminently watchable—they are people focused, rather than being polemics. It’s the same reason I’m able to read Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, and D.E. Stevenson, despite all of them occasionally showing the casual racism and antisemitism that was the norm for middle- and upper-class Brits in the years before WWII.

Thus, these writers weren’t concerned with making any points, including racial points. Instead, they viewed all humankind as a vast smorgasbord of characters and behaviors and, yes, stereotypes that they could draw upon to create a fictional world. Most especially, these authors, like the writers for Frasier and Lois & Clark, truly appreciated both men and women. They don’t view either as toxic. Instead, it’s all Vive la différence in the most appreciative way.

Incidentally, I’m not alone in this yearning for a more innocent past. My non-political and even leftist women friends are also mining the 1980s and 1990s for entertainment. All agree that TV culture was simply more fun back then.