This video is the 2002 documentary "Eight Characters in Search of a Sitcom" - The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was one of the special features when the DVDs of Season 2 came out.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is my favorite situation comedy of all-time, created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns and starring Mary Tyler Moore. It originally aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977. Moore, who several years earlier had achieved fame as Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show, starred as Mary Richards, an unmarried, independent woman focused on her career as associate producer of the fictional WJM news program in Minneapolis.
Ed Asner co-starred as Mary's boss Lou Grant, alongside Gavin MacLeod (Murray Slaughter), Ted Knight (Ted Baxter), Georgia Engel (Georgette Franklin), and Betty White (Sue Ann Nivens), with Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern and Cloris Leachman as Phyllis Lindstrom, friends and neighbors of Mary. What a cast! It's hard to believe that they've all passed on, but what memories they left us every Saturday night on CBS.
The show is remembered for its complex, realistic characters and storylines, unlike what was usually seen on TV at that time. In addition to the goings-on in Mary's home life, this budding journalist loved the scenes in the newsroom, which were hilarious, and as I later found out, very realistic. The show enjoyed high ratings and critical acclaim in its original run, earning 29 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series from 1975–1977.
In the "The Making of Season One" documentary about TMTMS (also available in this playlist) they concentrated on the show's beginning. This one is of more overall scope; they focus on each of the characters and what made them so great, then add some more interview footage.
This doc was written and directed by Matthew Asner and Danny Gold. Ed Asner was executive producer, Matthew Asner and Gold were producers, and Jonathan Oakes was co-producer.
Copyright Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Endless Classic Television, or any other party. I don't claim the rights to, and don't profit from, this video. I just posted it for historical and educational purposes, and for those who will enjoy it as much as I did.