Norman Lear _ who's profiled Tuesday, Oct. 25, on PBS' "American Masters" _ altered the face of TV with his landmark sitcoms such as "All in the Family," "Maude" and "The Jeffersons." But even geniuses like Lear don't bat 1.000: Here are five (largely) forgotten Lear series:
THE DEPUTY (1959-61): Lear's first series was this Western, which featured Henry Fonda as the chief marshal of the Arizona Territory and Allen Case as his deputy, a storekeeper who tried to avoid using a gun. Fonda narrated most episodes and appeared at the beginning and end, leaving much of the drama to Case.
APPLE PIE (1978): Rue McClanahan starred in this comedy, set in Depression-era Kansas City, as a single hairdresser with a very different way of dealing with her loneliness. Only two episodes of the show aired.
AKA PABLO (1984): In this short-lived sitcom, Paul Rodriguez played a struggling Mexican-American stand-up comedian named Paul Rivera (his tradition-minded family insisted on calling him Pablo).
SUNDAY DINNER (1991): Based on Lear's third marriage (to a much younger woman), this sitcom starred Robert Loggia as a 56-year-old widower whose recent engagement to a 30-year-old woman (Teri Hatcher) rankled his three grown daughters. The show, which only aired for five weeks, was set in an unidentified Long Island town.
704 HAUSER (1994): Eleven years after Archie Bunker was last seen on TV, Lear concocted this sitcom based on the idea that a black family was now living in the Bunkers' former Queens home. The twist: The family patriarch (John Amos) was a staunch liberal, while his son (T.E. Russell) was a staunch conservative.
