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The writer and producer Norman Lear, who died on Tuesday<\/a> at 101, got his start in television in the 1950s, selling jokes and sketches to comedians like Jerry Lewis. After dabbling in film as a screenwriter and a director, Lear \u2014 already approaching his 50s \u2014 found unlikely success and a new career path when he convinced CBS to take a chance on his sitcom \u201cAll in the Family\u201d in 1971. Though the show was based on the British series \u201cTill Death Us Do Part,\u201d Lear made his version distinctly American and of the moment, bringing spirited arguments about race, class, religion, politics and the generation gap into living rooms across the country.<\/p>\n When \u201cAll in the Family\u201d became a phenomenon, Lear and his colleagues started producing spinoffs and similar series, filling the airwaves throughout the 1970s with critically acclaimed and high-rated shows about families from varied ethnic and economic backgrounds.<\/p>\n Lear\u2019s golden touch dimmed by the end of the decade, as the audience\u2019s tastes changed. But he\u2019s still regularly cited as an influence and even sometimes as a direct mentor by TV writers and producers interested in engaging with pressing social issues in entertaining and provocative ways. And his original work had an unusual revival in the 21st century, which saw a modernized version of Lear\u2019s \u201cOne Day at a Time\u201d and multiple broadcast TV specials in which actors performed old Lear scripts live, treating them like canonical theater pieces.<\/p>\n Here are six of the best shows Lear was involved with:<\/p>\n \u2018All in the Family\u2019 (1971-79)<\/strong><\/p>\n For much of the 1960s, television producers tried to compete with the movies by making their shows more visually dynamic \u2014 more \u201ccinematic,\u201d in other words. But with \u201cAll in the Family,\u201d Lear and his frequent writing-producing partner Bud Yorkin<\/a> took TV back to its roots in live theater, staging what were essentially weekly one-act plays about the Queens-based Bunker family: the grouchy bigot Archie (Carroll O\u2019Connor<\/a>), his doting but dim wife Edith (Jean Stapleton<\/a>), his feminist daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and his feisty liberal son-in-law Mike (Rob Reiner).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the early seasons especially, the plots were minimal, and mainly an excuse to let these characters trade insights and insults while debating the issues of the day, in lengthy scenes at once uncomfortably intense and explosively funny.<\/p>\n Buy it on <\/em>Apple TV<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Maude\u2019 (1972-78)<\/strong><\/p>\n The first \u201cAll in the Family\u201d spinoff flips the original\u2019s premise, shifting the setting from a ultraconservative, working-class Queens neighborhood to a proudly liberal upper-middle class home in Westchester County. In \u201cMaude,\u201d Bea Arthur<\/a> plays the title character: an opinionated suburbanite who, like Archie Bunker, is certain she knows what\u2019s wrong with the world \u2026 and who argues a lot about it with her family and neighbors.<\/p>\n A terrific show in its own right \u2014 featuring groundbreaking episodes that tackle topics like abortion, alcoholism and domestic violence \u2014 \u201cMaude\u201d is also the perfect counterpoint to \u201cAll in the Family,\u201d making it clear that Lear and Yorkin saw the humanity and the flaws in people across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n Buy it on <\/em>Amazon Prime Video<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>Apple TV<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Good Times\u2019 (1974-79)<\/strong><\/p>\n In the early seasons of \u201cMaude,\u201d the heroine occasionally clashed with her maid, Florida Evans (Esther Rolle<\/a>), who had little patience for her well-meaning but often obstinate boss. Rolle\u2019s performance earned her a sitcom of her own, playing Florida again, in a show about a close-knit but economically struggling Black family in the Chicago projects.<\/p>\n \u201cGood Times\u201d gave Lear and the series\u2019s cocreators, Eric Monte and Mike Evans, the chance to explore the ways that the problems of the working classes fell differently on the Evanses of the world than they did for the Bunkers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018The Jeffersons\u2019 (1975-85)<\/strong><\/p>\n Just as \u201cMaude\u201d is a ritzy suburban spin on \u201cAll in the Family,\u201d so \u201cThe Jeffersons\u201d is like an upscale \u201cGood Times,\u201d weighing the issues a rich Black family faces in a high-end Manhattan neighborhood.<\/p>\n George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley<\/a>) is another indelible creation like Archie and Maude: a self-made man with a lot to say about the state of society and how to succeed. His ego is checked by his wife Louise (Isabel Sanford<\/a>), who has to deal everyone he offends \u2014 from their privileged white neighbors to their sharp-tongued maid, Florence (Marla Gibbs).<\/p>\n Buy it on <\/em>Amazon Prime Video<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018One Day at a Time\u2019 (1975-84)<\/strong><\/p>\n Though it lacked the \u201cfrom the front lines of the culture wars\u201d hook of earlier Lear-produced sitcoms, \u201cOne Day at a Time\u201d proved to be one of his most durable series \u2014 and, in its own way, it was strongly reflective of its time.<\/p>\n Set in a late 1970s and early \u201980s Middle America hobbled by inflation, stagnant wages and broken homes, the show follows the divorced mother Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin<\/a>) and her precocious teenage daughters, Julie (Mackenzie Phillips) and Barbara (Valerie Bertinelli), as they try to avoid driving each other nuts in their tiny Indianapolis apartment. It\u2019s a heartwarming dramedy that\u2019s also honest about the emotional and economic strains of modern family life.<\/p>\n Buy it on <\/em>Amazon Prime Video<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>Google Play<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018One Day at a Time\u2019 (2017-20)<\/strong><\/p>\n The original \u201cOne Day at a Time\u201d was much softer in tone than \u201cAll in the Family,\u201d but the 21st-century remake flashes more of a cutting edge, while still retaining all the heart and humor of its forebear. Developed by Gloria Calder\u00f3n Kellett and Mike Royce (with Lear onboard as a producer and godfather), the new version features a Cuban American family in Los Angeles, led by an Army vet named Penelope (Justina Machado) and her traditionalist mother Lydia (Rita Moreno). Spanning the tumultuous Trump years, this \u201cOne Day at a Time\u201d hearkens back to Lear\u2019s early shows in its style \u2014 with a lot of long scenes set in one cozy living space \u2014 and in the writers\u2019 willingness to tackle everything from PTSD to immigration law to gender identity.<\/p>\n Stream it on <\/em>Netflix<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n