The Beverly Hillbillies

Several series have tried to be funny based on the "misunderstanding" principal, but "The Beverly Hillbillies" did it first and funniest. The characters included Jed, a poor but wise mountain man who used his good old country wisdom and saying to rationalize everything, Granny, the world's oldest Confederate widow with moonshine in one hand and a shotgun in the other, Jethro, the idiot savante who thought he was a genius and then Elly Mae, the demurely sexy tom boy who could fight like a wild cat. Add to this the cheap and opportunistic banker Milburne Drysdale and his voice of reason, Jane Hathaway, who starts out as the only normal person in the series but who later turns out to be as crazy as the rest because of her Birdwatchers Club, and you have a recipe for disaster. This show had a great cast and numerous wonderful episodes and storylines that continued sometimes for eight to ten episodes, a thing unusual for a Sixties series. My favorite character is and always be Shorty Kellums, the short innkeeper from back home who was quite the ladies man up until the next storyline.