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Clip o’ the Day: It’s Like M*A*S*H But Different

Just when you think you’ve seen the main title to every show from the ’70s, you find another one. This show, called Roll Out!, ran on CBS in the 1973-4 season, and was a half-hour comedy set during World War II. It looks a lot like M*A*S*H, which had premiered the previous season, and the creators of the show were the producers of M*A*S*H — Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds. The network asked them to come up with another war comedy, so to counterbalance M*A*S*H, a show with no black regulars (after Spearchucker was dropped during the first season) they created a period war comedy that would comment on contemporary race issues. I’ve never seen the show so I have no idea how good or bad it was. IMDB says Gelbart wrote seven of the eleven aired episodes himself, the same season he was writing fourteen episodes of M*A*S*H. A prolific man, is what I’m saying.

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