The parody of a soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman debuted in January of 1976, to become the "Bicentennial Soap"—much like Rocky became the Bicentennial movie. But while Rocky hearkened back to a simpler type of hero, Mary...

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (sometimes abbreviated as MH2) was a 1976-1977 syndicated prime-time soap opera parody produced by Norman Lear and directed by Joan Darling. The soap was written by sitcom writer Gail Parent and soap writer Ann Marcus, who was...

Entrepreneurs looking to launch an innovative start-up -- and sell it for big bucks -- could learn lessons from Norman Lear, creator of a string of TV hits in the 1970s. Among the lessons?Knock on opportunity's door. In the late 1960s, Lear noticed a squib...

[On] "Mary Hartman"—the material is there, just as life is there; the writers respond to the absurdities they perceive around them; the actors either identify with the writers' impulses or substitute their own…. And this is appropriate since, if "Mary Hartman" is about anything, it is about reactions. Specifically, it is about the way working-class people in a factory town of tract homes, who are intellectually, morally, and emotionally outfitted by soap oper...

Confession: "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" caught me almost completely by surprise. It doesn't broadly parody soap operas, and it isn't the sort of flamboyantly "controversial" sit-com that one has come to expect from Norman Lear; which is to say that "Mary Hartman" doesn't signal its comedy in any of the usual ways…. "Mary Hartman" has its awful jokey spasms, as when a character is called a "prevert" … bu...

[With "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," Lear and his company] are taking the venerable broadcasting form of soap opera and are attempting to work simultaneously on two levels: one straight, to be taken seriously; the other slightly bent, to be sampled with a sense of humor that is "satirical, humanistic, and realistic."… A press kit explains that "far from being a broad parody of soaps, the series would subtly satirize people as they behave in day-to-day situations ...