The BEST shows of 1972
Every show that aired an episode in 1972, ranked
We've compiled the average episode rating for every TV show episode aired in 1972 to compile this list of best shows!
#1 - Mission: Impossible
Elite special agents undertook top-secret assignments in crackerjack episodes, which kicked off with the team leader receiving instructions via a tape-recorded message that self-destructed in five seconds. What followed were usually breakneck spyjinks set to a pulsating Lalo Schifrin score. Martin Landau turned down the Spock role in 'Star Trek' to play IMFer Rollin Hand. When Landau left the series in 1969, his replacement was the man who built a career on Spock, Leonard Nimoy.
View Episode Rankings#2 - The Streets of San Francisco
A veteran cop with more than twenty years of experience is teamed with a young Inspector to solve crimes in San Francisco, California.
View Episode Rankings#3 - The Brady Bunch
The misadventures of a large family formed by the marriage of a woman with 3 daughters and a man with 3 sons.
View Episode Rankings#4 - Hawaii Five-O
The investigations of Hawaii Five-O, an elite branch of the Hawaii State Police answerable only to the governor and headed by stalwart Steve McGarrett.
View Episode Rankings#5 - Emergency!
Emergency! is a reality-based show that takes a good look at what goes on in the daily lives of the fire department and hospital work, and everyday life-and-happenings. The series focuses on two locations: LA Fire Station 51 with paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto, and Rampart General Hospital with Doctors Kelly Brackett and Joe Early and Nurse Dixie McCall. Another work of Jack Webb's Mark VII Limited, the show was based on the paramedic program that started in Los Angeles, California in 1969. Produced in cooperation with the Los Angeles County Fire Department and Department of Hospitals, it is well-regarded for its realism. Senator Alan Cranston actually praised the show for informing the public about the value of funding such programs!
View Episode Rankings#6 - Dad's Army
Introducing the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, a bunch of hapless old and young men who have kept people all over the world very amused since the 1960s. Writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft made each episode of Dad's Army as funny as the previous one, with an element of humour which has survived decades. It has many of the most memorable catchphrases of any sitcom and due to its public embracing, is one of the most repeated shows in television history. The BBC keeps an episode on queue in case of a fault at Television Centre and it even successfully invaded the big screen with a memorable, well-loved Dad's Army feature film made by Columbia Pictures.
View Episode Rankings#7 - The Waltons
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, during the Great Depression, the Walton family makes its small income from its saw mill on Walton's Mountain. The story is told through the eyes of John Boy, who wants to be a novelist and go to college. The saga follows the family through depression and war, through growing up, school, courtship, marriage, employment, birth, aging, illness and death.
View Episode Rankings#8 - Are You Being Served?
This comedy series, which follows the exploits of employees at London's fictional "Grace Brothers" department store, is full of sexual innuendo, slapstick, visual gags, and double entendres. Much of the show's humor parodies Britain's class system, and many of the show's characters are based on stereotypes of the period, including the effeminate Mr. Humphries and the rich, but stingy, store owner.
View Episode Rankings#9 - The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was one of the most literate, realistic, and enduring situation comedies of the 1970s. Mary Richards was the idealized single career woman. She had come to Minneapolis after breaking up with a man she had been dating for four years. Ambitious, and looking for new friends, she moved into an older apartment building and went to work as an assistant producer of the local news show on television station WJM-TV. In her early 30s, Mary symbolized the independent woman of the 1970s.
View Episode Rankings#10 - Mannix
Tough, no-nonsense private eye Joe Mannix investigates in this tense and violent detective series. Originally employed by an ultra-computerized organization, he later set up his own shop. But mayhem always predominated.
View Episode Rankings#11 - Sanford and Son
The misadventures of a cantankerous old man and his son, partners in the family junk business in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood.
View Episode Rankings#12 - Adam-12
Follow two Los Angeles police officers as they patrol the streets of Southern California. Adam-12 was the first series to realistically portray the joys/frustrations of being a police officer in the late 1960's-early 1970's. This attention to detail made the show a catalyst for uncounted numbers of people to enter public service as adults. "1-Adam-12" was the radio call number of the unit that Malloy & Reed worked: "1" was the division assigned, "Adam" was LA Phonetic for "A" designating a 2-person patrol unit, and "12" was the beat area assigned. (Although, Malloy & Reed could be seen patrolling the streets anywhere in L.A. from Downtown to the Valley, they retained the number division #1, no matter where they were). The police station used throughout the series was the newly-built (at the time) Rampart Station.
View Episode Rankings#13 - Bewitched
Samantha Stephens is a seemingly normal suburban housewife who also happens to be a genuine witch, with all the requisite magical powers. Her husband Darrin insists that Samantha keep her witchcraft under wraps, but situations invariably require her to indulge her powers while keeping her bothersome mother Endora at bay.
View Episode Rankings#14 - All in the Family
Legendary and controversial series focused on conservative working stiff Archie Bunker fighting the tide of social change and dealing with flighty wife Edith, daughter Gloria and left-leaning son-in-law Michael Stivic.
View Episode Rankings#15 - Monty Python's Flying Circus
And now for something completely different: Monty Python's Flying Circus was simply the most influential comedy program television has ever seen. Five Englishmen, all working under the constraints of conventional TV shows such as The Frost Report (for which the five Englishmen wrote), gathered together with an expatriate American in the spring of 1969 to break the rules. The result, first airing on BBC-1 on October 5, 1969, has influenced countless future men and women in the media and comedy since.
View Episode Rankings#16 - Columbo
A Los Angeles homicide detective, Lieutenant Columbo, uses his humble ways and shrewd demeanor to ferret out even the most careful criminals.
View Episode Rankings#17 - M*A*S*H
The 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital is stuck in the middle of the Korean war. With little help from the circumstances they find themselves in, they are forced to make their own fun. Fond of practical jokes and revenge, the doctors, nurses, administrators, and soldiers often find ways of making wartime life bearable.
View Episode Rankings#18 - Kung Fu
The adventures of a Shaolin Monk as he wanders the American West armed only with his skill in Kung Fu.
View Episode Rankings#19 - The Bob Newhart Show
Bob Newhart is Dr. Robert Hartley, a Chicago psychologist living with his schoolteacher wife Emily. Complicating life for the serene, stammering doc was his neighbor, Howard, a flighty navigator; and Bob's coworkers, dentist Jerry and flippant receptionist Carol. The humor was gentle, sophisticated and, at times, wonderfully surreal.
View Episode Rankings#20 - Doctor Who
The Doctor, a mysterious traveller in space and time, travels in his ship, the TARDIS. The TARDIS can take him and his companions anywhere in time and space. Inevitably he finds evil at work wherever he goes...
View Episode Rankings#21 - Gunsmoke
Marshal Matt Dillon keeps the peace in the rough and tumble Dodge City.
View Episode Rankings#22 - Maude
Well-educated and upper middle class, Maude Findlay is the archetypal feminist of her generation. She lives in suburban Tuckahoe, New York, with her fourth husband, Walter, their divorced daughter, Carol, and grandson Phillip.
View Episode Rankings#23 - Bonanza
The show chronicles the weekly adventures of the Cartwright family, headed by the thrice-widowed patriarch Ben Cartwright. He had three sons, each by a different wife: the eldest was the urbane architect Adam who built the ranch house; the second was the warm and lovable giant Eric "Hoss"; and the youngest was the hotheaded and impetuous Joseph or "Little Joe". Via exposition and flashback episodes and each wife was accorded a different ethnicity. The family's cook was the Chinese immigrant Hop Sing.
View Episode Rankings#24 - Lupin III
Probably the most light-hearted and crazy series of all those dedicated to the gentleman thief.
View Episode Rankings#25 - The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther is a heroic, moral cartoon cat with pink fur and the manners of an English aristocrat. He only becomes flustered or angry at obtuse or offensive humans who try to disrupt his existence, or at troublesome gadgets, rodents, or insects. In most of his cartoons, he stumbles into a difficult situation and stoically endeavors to make the best of it. Episodes of this series feature three theatrical cartoons, two with the Pink Panther, and one featuring the Inspector, a cartoon version of the accident-prone, bumbling French detective, Inspector Clouseau, played in movies by Peter Sellers. The Inspector is often assisted by a Spanish gendarme, Sergeant Deux-Deux, and together they fallibly battle villains of all shapes and sizes in various parts of the world, always on the orders of the long-suffering Surete Commissioner.
View Episode Rankings#26 - Night Gallery
Night Gallery was creator-host Rod Serling's follow-up to The Twilight Zone. Set in a shadowy museum of the outre, Serling weekly unveiled disturbing portraiture as preface to a highly diverse anthology of tales in the fantasy-horror vein. Bolstering Serling's thoughtful original dramas were adaptations of classic genre material--short stories by such luminaries as H. P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, A.E. van Vogt, Algernon Blackwood, Conrad Aiken, Richard Matheson, August Derleth, and Christianna Brand. Variety of material brought with it a variety of tone, from the deadly serious to the tongue-in-cheek, stretching the television anthology concept to its very limits.
View Episode Rankings#27 - The Odd Couple
Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy? This TV adaptation of Neil Simon's classic play deserves its place among the best-known and funniest sitcoms of the 1970s.
View Episode Rankings#28 - Formula 1
Formula 1 is the highest class of international single-seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and owned by the Formula One Group. Formula One consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix which take place worldwide on purpose-built circuits and on public roads.
View Episode Rankings#29 - Kamen Rider
A motorcycle-riding hero of justice rises up to fight an evil force, stopping their evil deeds while using their own power against them.
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