| Genre: | Comedy drama |
| Theme Music Composer: | Frank De Vol (main title) |
| Composer: | Laurence Juber |
| Opentheme: | "The Bradys" performed by Florence Henderson |
| Endtheme: | "The Bradys" (instrumental) |
| Country: | United States |
| Company: | Brady Productions Paramount Television |
| Num Seasons: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 6 |
| List Episodes: | The Bradys#Episodes |
| Executive Producer: | Sherwood Schwartz Lloyd J. Schwartz |
| Producer: | Barry Berg |
| Cinematography: | King Baggot |
| Editor: | Steve Shultz |
| Camera: | Multi-camera |
| Runtime: | 44 - 48 minutes |
| Channel: | CBS |
The Bradys is an American comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from February 9 to March 9, 1990. The series is a sequel and continuation of the original 1969–1974 sitcom The Brady Bunch, focusing on its main characters as adults, and was the second such continuation after the 1981 sitcom The Brady Brides.
Airing on Friday nights, The Bradys failed in the ratings against Full House and Family Matters as part of the TGIF lineup on ABC and was canceled after one month; the last of the six episodes produced aired on March 9, 1990. In its short run, the show went through three different theme songs based on that of The Brady Bunch, the last featuring revised lyrics sung by Florence Henderson.
In 1988, CBS commissioned a Brady Bunch reunion telefilm for its Christmas season programming. A Very Brady Christmas premiered on December 18 and drew a 25.1 rating and 39 share, very high ratings for a television film at the time. The success of the film convinced series creator Sherwood Schwartz that two more TV movies about the Brady family could be a hit, and work began on the show in December 1989. However, as CBS felt that it would be more lucrative as a series, it was instead commissioned as a weekly series. CBS re-aired A Very Brady Christmas on December 22, 1989, using it as a promotional tool for the upcoming new show.
Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, Ann B. Davis, Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Mike Lookinland and Susan Olsen all returned in their original roles from The Brady Bunch. Jerry Houser and Ron Kuhlman, also, reprised their roles from The Brady Brides. While Maureen McCormick had appeared in A Very Brady Christmas, Leah Ayres ended up assuming the role of Marcia. McCormick declined to return for this series, having just given birth to her daughter, and thus unwilling to commit to a weekly grind after a last-minute switch at the CBS to convert the TV movies to a weekly series; in addition, having dealt with substance issues in the past, she was not keen to the storyline of Marcia becoming an alcoholic.[1]
The Bradys involved more dramatic storytelling than that which viewers had seen in the previous Brady series.[2] [3] Unlike the original 30-minute sitcom, The Bradys was an hour long and featured far more serious plot lines. Among them:
Despite the more dramatic tone, the show did include a laugh track.
An unproduced script had Mike Brady die in a helicopter accident when he went to check out a progress at a fire break and the chopper hit a downdraft due to a wind shear caused by a flame. The script also called for Carol to sing at the funeral. In addition, Jan would have finally gotten pregnant, Gary would have proposed to Cindy and Peter would have taken over Mike's position as city councilman and the Mobile Trauma Unit that he helped build would have been named after Mike.[4]
Notes
In April 2007, the two-hour pilot episode, The Brady 500 (a.k.a. "Start Your Engines/Here We Grow Again"), was released as a bonus feature on The Brady Bunch: The Complete Series 21-disc DVD box set issued by CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment.[5]
In 2019, the series was released on DVD as a part of The Brady-est Brady Bunch TV & Movie Collection.