Anyone watch this at any point and believe the show was intended to be a serious show?
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There was someone who posted, a couple years ago now, I think (since 'scrubbed' from the board), that 'no one' claimed when the show came out that it was supposed to be humorous, and that the idea that it WAS intended to be humorous was only invented in the past few years in order to sell DVDs.
Yeah, a real brainiac.
Serious show no. But not a sitcom, either. Batman used to be listed in TV Guide back in the 1970's as action-adventure. Action-adventure with a light tone would be a good description. Also, the writing was done in a way to satisfy kids who were not overly worldly in the 1960's and have humor to satisfy adults of the 1960's,
shareI was twelve in 1966 and I knew it was meant to be humorous. Kids in the '60s were far more sophisticated than kids now, who are cloistered with their parents watching them all the time.
share[deleted]
I was 4 years old in spring 1968 when this show was cancelled. At that time, I thought it was a serious drama. I think most of the kids I knew believed it was a serious drama at that time.
Then about 7 years later I saw it in rerun, and I realized it was a big joke.
http://flapdoodlefiles.blogspot.com/
A few of the books I've read seem to take the show seriously at times, but the best publications don't inject the author's personal views and spin into the analysis (e.g. taking aim at Warden Crichton's "liberal" policies while ignoring that the whole show was lampooning everything and everyone, regardless of political or other affiliation.)
Of course, that's taking the books seriously - which one shouldn't do, unless the books weren't professional in construct (bibliography notes, liners, sources, clearances for photos, et cetera... there really are use for professional publishing companies and editors...)
As for the Batman show, I don't know anyone who ever took the show as being a serious drama.
As for the Batman show, I don't know anyone who ever took the show as being a serious drama.
When it comes to people wearing masks, costumes, and committing crimes in some kind of psychopathic way, it was hard to take seriously even as a kid. It was funny and it takes a mature mind to process some of the content. As campy as it was, it was still light years ahead of a couple cheesy superhero shows in my day; "Mr. Terrific" & "Captain Nice." They were just one summer release 40-50 years ago. Captain Nice was portrayed by a young William Daniels who went on to do great things including the voice of Kitt in "Knight Rider."
shareMaybe kids but I think the appeal to the show is the tongue and cheek dialog the cheesiness and just the pure camp. It's funny that William Dozier the creator had never read comics and when reading some issues of Batman for research he said the only way to do it would be as a camp art pop comedy. It worked so well maybe it was the time but I can't imagine Adam West Batman being a serious drama show.
shareThat depends what you mean by serious. It was not intended to be serious like a high-brow play. But it is intended to be serious to a large extent.
It is certainly not a comedy, although it does have some funny elements.
I just came to this page's listing here in IMDB and saw that some idiot wrote an inaccurate synopsis which calls this show a "parody." It's not a parody. Whoever wrote that is imprinting his of her own warped opinion onto the show, and misleading others by misrepresenting that opinion in the form of a seemingly factual synopsis.
I don't know of anyone who took it seriously. I would describe it as light hearted or tongue in cheek.
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I saw it in the late seventies for the first time when I was about twelve. I was born the year this show came out.
I actually did catch that Batman movie as a late movie a couple of years earlier, just stayed up and watched it.
I took superheroes seriously and really didn't notice so much campiness, such as the BIFF! BANG! ZOWIE! stuff, or Batman's dance in one episode, it was the endless repetition, over and over.
Rob a bank, try and stop me, Batman!
To the batcave, na-na-na-na-na-na!
Holy this-and-that.
Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!
Racing thru Gotham.
Curses! Foiled again!
I would have preferred more things like Catwoman falling in that cave or something. They might as well have had Dick Tracy deaths for villains like that, poetic justice.
It was just every so-called 'adventure' or 'threat' was 'foiled' in the same amount of time.
I saw it as a kid. Batman and Robin seemed clearly to be "spoofing it," but they managed to hire some pretty talented actors(including some past, present and future Oscar winners) to play the villains. And some of the villain's "cliffhanger" killling traps were pretty sadistic. And every villain had a real hottie for a moll. One "took seriously" the sexual impact of those beautiful dames(in later years, I came to wonder: did some of those villains actually , uh, make it with their molls? King Tut -- no. The Riddler. Maybe. The Bookworm had a total hottie moll but looked like maybe it wasn't women he liked. )
The most exciting part of every show (for a kid) was the fight at the end of each episode. Forget the POWs and BAMS ...it was good fist fighting barroom brawl action until all the bad guys were knocked out and B and R were the last men standing...I think boys at least took THAT seriously.
Interesting: in the first several "two-part" episodes of Batman, there was no big fight in Episode One. You had to wait all the way to the end of Episode Two("the end of the hour") for the fight. After awhile, that changed: you got one fight (Batman and Robin versus the henchmen) in Episode One and a FINAL fight in Episode 2.
Interesting: once Batman hit big in the 1965-1966 TV season on ABC, over at NBC the spy show "The Man From UNCLE" was re-tooled into a Batman clone of sorts. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kurakin (Robert Vaughn and David McCallum) had "Batman fights" with henchmen in every episode and the show got so campy that they had to go "more serious" in the next season. Which was its last: 1967-1968. Like Batman, The Man From UNCLE died mid-season in the same season.