The first series of The Dick Van Dyke Show is really good fun, as well as being a textbook example of how to develop rounded, likeable characters. However, this is the season which really gets going, comedically-speaking. It's a mixture of old-fashioned comedy - slapstick, Borscht Belt one-liners, musical interludes - and modern tropes which now make up the staple of sitcoms everywhere. The humour of contemporary domestic tensions, social relationships and suburban pressures was really pushed to the fore for the first time, with smart characters stuck in unavoidable farce yet showing unexpected moments of self-awareness that were previously unseen on television. This season of the show particularly is a fascinating bridge from old to new.
Mary Tyler Moore, who was written very much as the straight-man in the first season simply because she was a newcomer and untested, starts getting lots of really juicy comic material to play around with. She really shines in the celebrated 'The Night The Roof Fell In', famous for its much-imitated format of two people telling their differing versions of a story, and she gets to do a stonking calypso number in 'Somebody Has To Play Cleopatra'. Her clothes are also to die for. Girly squeal over. Larry Matthews as young Ritchie is frequently ridiculed, and although I can see where the criticism comes from, I think his woodenness is sort of endearing and not a million miles away from how a lot of young kids actually speak. Besides, in the absolutely cracking season opener 'Never Name A Duck' he suddenly comes over all heartwrenching and really puts a lump in the throat. Matthews' lack of aptitude would become more of a problem in later series, but here he is perfectly adequate to the task.
Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie as Rob's co-workers also get given opportunities to shine (considering the absolute monarchy the show's title implies, it was actually pretty generous to the ensemble), in The Secret Life of Buddy and Sally and I Was A Teenage Head Writer. Amsterdam, who at face value seems like the most two-dimensional character, unexpectedly gets stretched. In Hustling The Hustler, the irreverent wisecracker is for once genuinely perturbed by the arrival of his nogoodnik brother; and in Divorce he is led to believe his wife has been cheating on him, and does a damn good job with it, too.
But of course, Van Dyke is the real star. He is absolutely effervescent - there is no other way to describe it. Every moment he's on screen literally buzzes with energy, and every movement he makes is imbued with loping elasticity which at any moment might spring into flashes of slapstick genius. There are some really outstanding sequences in this season - his armed patrol of the house when a burglar is on the loose springs to mind.
That said, the physical comedy which he did better than almost anyone else often overshadows the subtler comedy, which actually makes up the majority of the show. The clever adult farce of The Square Triangle and All About Evesdropping make them two of the season's best episodes and should not be overlooked. Straddling the line between slapstick and verbal dexterity are a couple of the season's most memorable episodes - the hilarious and mildly racy (we know pretty clearly what 'hugging' means) Don't Trip Over That Mountain, and the uniquely bizarre It May Look Like A Walnut, a surreal pastiche of the Twilight Zone.
Van Dyke is also a very fine dramatic actor, as he demonstrates constantly - his growing confusion and neurosis in The Two Faces of Rob, where a prank played on Laura makes him question her devotion, is really beautifully drawn out. Furthermore, I'm No Henry Walden and My Husband Is A Check-Grabber deal with Rob's social insecurities with humour which is surprisingly incisive as well as witty. Rob is a really interesting character - an early 1960s male trying to maintain a traditional position as breadwinner and head of the family whilst embracing the newer ideals of sensitivity and negotiation in domestic life. And although he is pretty goofy and an obvious softie, credit should go to the writers for not making him the 'blustering, dumb sitcom husband' that we see so much of today, and instead really doing something more complicated with his character.
The second half of the season is slightly weaker than the first, but only in the sense that it contains fewer stone-cold classics. Otherwise, the tone is refreshingly consistent, with plenty of steam right up until the final episode - of which there are 31, a testament to the relentless hard work of 1960s casts and crews. The boxset is a solid investment, coming with a bunch of special features of varying degrees of interest, but the episodes themselves are what make this an essential for anyone with even a passing interest in TV comedy.
Top 5 episodes
1. All About Eavesdropping (the charades scene is probably my favourite sitcom moment of all time)
2. Never Name A Duck
3. Don't Trip Over That Mountain
4. The Night The Roof Fell In
5. I'm No Henry Walden
9/10
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