The New Bob Cummings Show
The New Bob Cummings Show is an American sitcom broadcast by CBS from October 5, 1961 to March 1, 1962. Originally titled The Bob Cummings Show when it first appeared in 1961, effective December 28, 1961, the title was changed to The New Bob Cummings Show because of confusion between this program and the earlier series The Bob Cummings Show.
Synopsis
The New Bob Cummings Show began two years after production had ended on Cummings's previous, successful sitcom The Bob Cummings Show, which was still being rerun on ABC's daytime schedule under the title Love That Bob.The new program, like its predecessor, took advantage of Cummings's real-life interests; once again, the character he played, Bob Carson, was a pilot. Carson owned two planes, a conventional, twin-engine plane that he used for long trips, and the Aerocar, which he used for short hops near his California base. As its name implied, the aerocar was a vehicle that could be flown or, with its wing detached, driven on highways as an automobile.
In addition to his activities as a charter pilot, Carson was an amateur detective, a fact that provided the basis for the plots of most of the episodes. In contrast to Cummings's earlier program, which had several co-stars, the only recurring roles in The New Bob Cummings Show other than Cummings's own were that of "Lionel", Carson's bodyguard, played by Murvyn Vye, and "Hank", the tomboyish-yet-precocious teenage daughter of the owner of the airstrip where Carson's planes were based, played by Roberta Shore.
Production
When The Bob Cummings Show ended, Cummings said he was not keen to do comedy for his next series. However The New Bob Cummings Show was very much in the same vein as the first one. The show was announced in April 1961. The network said Cummings's character would do anything that was not "illegal, immoral or underpaid". It was filmed by Revue Studios/Revue Productions and sponsored by the Kellogg Company breakfast cereal manufacturers and Brown & Williamson Tobacco.The show replaced Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, a Western anthology series, featuring short stories and plots inspired by Western author Zane Grey and hosted by Dick Powell.
Reception
The show aired on Thursday nights, initially from 8:30 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time, then, from 7:30 to 8 p.m. E. T. It was opposite two popular shows, The Real McCoys, a hill country rural comedy starring Walter Brennan, Richard Crenna, and Kathleen Nolan, set in California on ABC / CBS, and the medical drama Dr. Kildare with Richard Chamberlain and Raymond Massey on NBC.The New York Times said "the style but not the setting is about the same as his past series... Fast talk, pretty girls and breezy comedy are still the main ingredients. It's bright, quick, inconsequential and inoffensive."
Filmink said the series "had the same flaws as My Hero – i.e. a weak concept and no sense of family."