Norman Lear, who has died aged 101, was the writer and producer of a series of hit shows, including All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude and The Jeffersons, that changed the face of American television. At a time of national division, Lear pulled in huge audiences with sitcoms that confronted controversial issues, but used traditional family humour, expanded to black families and single mothers, to illuminate both sides of a conflict, while holding people together. In 1977, he received a Peabody award for “giving us comedy with a social conscience”. That comedy dominated the 70s; All in the Family might draw a 60% share of the Saturday night audience; at times it and Sanford and Son ranked first and second in the ratings.
Lear’s two biggest hits were both adaptations of British shows. Sanford and Son moved Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s sitcom Steptoe and Son to Los Angeles, with the black comedian Redd Foxx as the irascible junkyard owner. All in the Family reworked Johnny Speight’s Till Death Us Do Part; the East End of London became Queens, New York, with Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker as Warren Mitchell’s Alf Garnett. Lear’s versions gained bite from issues such as the Vietnam war, race relations and terrorism; Archie’s solution to the risk of plane hijacking was to issue each passenger with a gun while boarding.
