'Live in Front of a Studio Audience' Viewers Still Loving the 'All in the Family' and 'Good Times' Special

ABC's Tuesday night schedule might have been a rerun of Live in Front of a Studio Audience, but [...]

By Christian Long

ABC's Tuesday night schedule might have been a rerun of Live in Front of a Studio Audience, but viewers loved the encore presentation all the same. The special, which first aired back in December, recreates two episodes of classic Norman Lear sitcoms, All in the Family and its spinoff, Good Times.

The castmembers for the All in the Family episode include Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei as Archie and Edith Bunker, Ike Barinholtz as Meathead, and Ellie Kemper as Gloria. For Good Times, Viola Davis and Andre Braugher take on the roles of George and Florida Evans, with SNL alum Jay Pharoah as J.J. Evans. While the scripts and performances are lifted directly from their 1970s counterparts, set designer Bernard Vyzga told PopCulture back in May that recreating the original sets wasn't done with quite the same scrutiny — and for good reason.

"We talked about not matching the sets exactly, but capturing the spirit of them," Vyzga said. "So we researched, and we have some drawings from All in the Family. We found some drawings from Good Times, but we weren't looking for exact replicas of everything but trying to get a sense of recreating the set with the spirit of the original."

Accuracy aside, viewers were plenty happy to relive some classic TV nostalgia for the night. Here's a snippet of what was talked about online.

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