The sound track serves up a luscious, Big-Band rendition of It's Been a Long, Long Time. On the screen, black-and-white photos dissolve one into another: soldiers coming home, couples embracing, homey shots from Main Street. "In the autumn of 1945," a female narrator intones, "America was invincible. The countertops at the soda fountain were still made of marble. Sodas cost a nickel. And Coke -- well, it only meant cola."
In a nostalgic mood yet? If the opening of ABC's Homefront doesn't get you, try CBS's Brooklyn Bridge, a fond look back at growing up in Brooklyn circa 1956. NBC's I'll Fly Away, meanwhile, paints a moodier watercolor of life in a Southern town in the late '50s, just as the civil rights movement was gathering steam. In a medium that is usually more comfortable with the here and now, the timely issue and the hip wisecrack, three of the most ambitious shows of the new season are harking back to the past.
Period pieces have never been a TV favorite. True, the western was once a network staple (and the genre has made a modest comeback recently, with such shows as Paradise and The Young Riders), and a small handful of hit series have been set in the past. But these shows were mainly interested in using the past for its symbolic or mythic value. The Minnesota frontier of Little House on the Prairie and the Depression-era South of The Waltons were essentially the same locale: an all-American Everyplace, where ethical issues and family dramas could be worked out against an idealized backdrop, far from the messy moral ambiguities of modern days.
In the new crop of nostalgia shows, by contrast, a particular period is re- created precisely and dwelt on lovingly. In a sense, these shows are about the past -- a past, moreover, that most viewers personally remember (or, thanks to the media, think they remember). And though none of these eras are portrayed as totally idyllic, they give off a warm, comforting glow. Their problems seem more manageable when viewed in hindsight. We know how everything came out.
The sudden popularity of prime-time nostalgia is hardly surprising. Oldies radio stations are thriving; TV tributes to Ed Sullivan and All in the Family drew blockbuster ratings last season; Natalie Cole hit the top of the charts by bringing back her father's old songs. For David Jacobs, an executive producer of Homefront, the current fascination with the past is reminiscent of fin-de-siecle Europe a hundred years ago. "The last decades of a century are always reflective," he says. But Jacobs and his fellow TV producers insist there is more involved. Says Gary David Goldberg, who has based Brooklyn Bridge on his own childhood: "If the show is an exercise in nostalgia, it will be a brief exercise. The truth of the family has to come out."
In fact, Goldberg's autobiographical series cuts closer to the bone than any of his previous sitcoms (which include most notably the long-running Family Ties). Bridge focuses on 14-year-old Alan (Danny Gerard) and his extended Jewish family, headed by a nosy, domineering grandmother (Marion Ross). Filmed with more attention to detail than most sitcoms (and with no studio audience), the show revels in '50s icons, from mah-jongg games to Brooklyn Dodgers memorabilia to the inevitable rock-'n'-roll oldies on the sound track.