For more than three decades now, one family has transcended its television roots and become part of Americana. The Brady Bunch has had more incarnations, more reunions, more revivals and more popularity than any fictional family. Ever.
Four live-action TV series that cut across all genres — comedy, drama and even musical/variety. An animated series. Made-for-TV movies. Theatrical movies. Live stage productions. Umpteen specials and retrospectives. All featuring that lovely lady raising three very lovely girls and a man named Brady with three boys of his own.
The latest comes Sunday (8 p.m., Ch. 5) when NBC turns Barry Williams' book "Growing Up Brady" into a TV movie. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the 1969-74 sitcom that began as the tale of a father with three boys who married a mother of three girls and transmuted into the all-American family — spawning three decades of Brady-mania.
Williams, who starred as Greg Brady in the original series, remains somewhat surprised by the ongoing interest in the show.
"I think it is amazing. But, frankly, it's hard for me to have a real perspective on it because it's never been any different," said Williams, who has lived with the Bradys for 31 of his 45 years. "It just kind of goes on and on and on. When I look at it by television standards, it is phenomenal what this show has been able to maintain in terms of its popularity — its multi-generational appeal."
"We've got fans that range from 2 to 90," said Florence Henderson, who starred as Carol Brady. "The appeal of the show is so broad, and it's only gotten more popular as the years pass."
Indeed, the show is more popular now than it was when it went into syndication in 1974 at the end of its five-year run on ABC. And, lest you think the appeal has waned, "The Brady Bunch" has been the highest-rated show in the history of Nick at Nite since it joined the cable channel's prime-time lineup in 1998.
And it has become more than just popular entertainment. Just about everyone from their mid-40s on down (and plenty of viewers from older generations) is familiar with the Bradys and their adventures. Williams himself had just heard a New York talk-radio station doing an interview with a porn queen when the subject of the Bradys' multi-episode trip to Hawaii came up.
"It has worked its way into Americana with cultural references," Williams said in a telephone interview with the Deseret News.
And it has, with everything from "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" to "Oh, my nose!" to Jan as the ultimate symbol of middle-child syndrome. There have been literally thousands of TV series in the 31 years since "The Brady Bunch" premiered, but only a handful have come close to the staying power of Mike, Carol, Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby, Cindy and Alice.
"There are a lot of reasons the show is still popular," Williams opined. "There is a quality that's somewhat timeless — the little stories and the idealism that the Bradys represent. It's not a cynical show. It's not a pretentious show. It's just kind of a positive, light, pleasant experience.
"As I look back and I kind of assemble that which people have told me and try and develop a sense of what it is that people enjoy, I think there is a chemistry about the show that transcends the writing. I mean, you can see we really got along, that we liked each other and that there's a genuineness to it. I think the idealism hits a very hopeful and positive chord."
He does worry at least a bit that the show can raise some unrealistic expectations.
"I just hope that people know there is no such thing as a Brady Bunch. It is an ideal. Even in the best adjusted of families it doesn't work like that. It just can't. You don't resolve every problem in 30 minutes. You don't always have a loving mom and dad who understand every word that you say as a teenager and are there to support you through thick and thin without ever raising their voice. It's TV," he said with a laugh.
All those continuing repeats, revivals and retrospectives help fuel the Brady fire.
"I think parents were children themselves when the show was first popular, so it's kind of a reminder of a more innocent, child-like time for them. It's nostalgic," Williams said. "And because of the numerous reunions throughout the years, it's been the American family that we just kind of check in with.
"And then in the meantime, the show has never been off the air ever in 30 years."
In both his book and Sunday's TV movie based upon it, Williams has fun with the Brady legacy without making fun of it.
"I think there's been enough mockery and goofing on the show," he said. "And I'm not saying it's suddenly serious, but I wasn't interested in taking it in a cartoonish vein or a uni-dimensional vein. It would have been kind of easy to exploit and throw the big colors and really play up the fashions and the dialogue — lots of 'groovy' and 'out-of-sight' and stuff like that — and make it kind of corny."
Not that he has anything against corny send-ups of the "Bunch," even going so far as to call the first "Brady Bunch Movie" a parody "in the best sense of the term."
"As opposed to the second feature film, which was just bad, the first one, I thought, was enjoyable and pleasant at a superficial level," Williams said. "But that movie dealt with the characters. It dealt with Jan, Peter, Marcia and Greg. But that's not my subject. My subject is Maureen McCormick and Eve Plumb and Sherwood Schwartz and Robert Reed and Barry Williams. So it's very much different."
There's even a bit of an unusual family angle to "Growing Up Brady." Mike Lookinland is portrayed by his own son, Scott, something Williams called "way cool."
"His son is the spitting image of Mike. They sound the same and the energy is the same — kind of the little giggle and all that," he said. "And there's something poetic about it — about the circle of it. Here we are, the original set's been totally re-created, and Scott Lookinland is playing his dad. And Mike's in a cameo in the film (as a camera operator, something he's done in real life for several years). It was quite something."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com