In an era in which situation comedies emphasized how social climes were changing, The Brady Bunch was one of the few series that hearkened back to the traditional family values seen in such sitcoms as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Executive producer Sherwood Schwartz conceived of the premise: a widower, father of three boys, marries a widow, mother of three girls. The concept worked as a springboard for dramatizations of an array of childhood and adolescent traumas. The cluster of children—Greg (Barry Williams), Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Peter (Christopher Knight), Jan (Eve Plumb), Bobby (Mike Lookinland), and Cindy (Susan Olsen)—provided male and female versions for three separate stages of youth. With this group, the show managed to portray the typical crises of orthodontia, first crushes, neighborhood bullies, and school plays, as well as such home-bound issues as sibling rivalry and problems with parental restrictions. Father Mike Brady (Robert Reed) was always there with a weekly homily that would explain to the children the lessons they had learned. Although mother Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) was initially written as a divorcée, and episodes of the first season did deal with the problems of children getting used to a new mother or father, the half-hour show repeatedly and firmly upheld the family as a tight unit of support, love, and understanding.

Unlike All in the Family or even Julia, The Brady Bunch tried to steer clear of the political and social issues of the day. Rarely were nonwhite characters introduced into the series. Women’s liberation and gender equality were boiled down to brother-sister in-fighting. The counterculture of the 1960s was represented in random minor characters portrayed as buffoons—or in the scene of Greg trying to impress a girl with hippie jargon.

The series’ representation of childhood as a time of blissful innocence was in marked contrast to what was happening off camera. Many of the boys and girls playing the Brady children dated each other secretly, making out in their trailers or in the doghouse of the Brady’s pet, Tiger. The oldest boy, Williams, attempted to date Henderson and filmed at least one episode while high on marijuana. All these incidents (as well as Reed’s homosexuality) were obscured behind closed doors, coming to light only in the years after the series originally aired.

The decided emphasis of the series on the Brady children made it very popular among younger audiences. ABC capitalized on this appeal, programming the show early on Friday evenings. This popularity also resulted in various attempts to create other profitable spin-off products: The Brady Kids, a pop rock group (patterned on the Archies and the Partridge Family), a Saturday morning cartoon called The Brady Kids (1972–74), and regular appearances of the young actors and actresses (particularly McCormick and Knight), in teen fan magazines.

Following its initial network run, The Brady Bunch became inordinately popular in rerun syndication. This success can be attributed in part to children’s afternoon-viewing patterns. Often programmed as a daily “strip” in after-school time periods, the show found new viewers who had not previously seen the series. The age distribution of the cast may have created appeal among a range of young viewers, and as those viewers aged, they were able to take a more ironic viewing stance toward the entertainment of their childhood.

The ongoing success of the Brady characters has continually brought them back to television. The Brady Bunch Hour, produced by Sid and Marty Krofft from 1976 to 1977 on ABC, had the family hosting a vividly colored, disco-oriented variety series. The Brady Brides, on NBC in 1981, was a half-hour sitcom about Marcia and Jan as they dealt with their new husbands and the trials of being married. In December 1988, CBS aired the TV-movie A Very Brady Christmas, which became the network’s highest-rated made-for-TV movie that season. This led in 1990 to a short-lived hour-long dramatic series called simply The Bradys.

Although the dramatic series faded quickly, a live-stage parody of the original series quickly became a national sensation after its debut in Chicago in 1990. Playing the original scripts as camp performance, The Real Live Brady Bunch seemed to tap into viewers’ simultaneous love for and cynicism toward the values presented by the series. The stage show and the subsequent films The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) and A Very Brady Sequel (1996) reveled in the kitsch taste of 1970s culture, complete with “groovy” bell bottoms and day-glo orange and lime-green color schemes. Yet, although the stage production and the films gleefully deconstructed the absurdity of the wholesomeness of the Brady family, an admiration remained. Many children who grew up with the show came from families of divorce, or were “latch-key” children with both parents working. Consequently, some of those amused at the naiveté of the series also admittedly envy the ideal nuclear family that they never had and that the Bradys represent.

Much like Star Trek, another Paramount-produced television series of the late 1960s, The Brady Bunch was underappreciated by critics and network executives, but fan loyalty has made the series a franchise for book deals, memorabilia, and feature films. A cultural throwback even in its time, the family led by “a lovely lady” and “a man named Brady” has become celebrated in part precisely for its steadfast obliviousness to societal change.