LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE MARATHON
Decades, 12:00 p.m. ET
From 1969 to 1974, ABC presented a relative rarity on TV: a prime-time comedy anthology series. Love, American Style had no fixed cast, and presented anywhere from a single story to a handful of shorter vignettes within each week’s program. But if you want a show that preserves, in televised amber, a perfect representative slice of the period in which it was made, Love, American Style is it. If you want to see how the free-love Sixties flowed into the less altruistic Seventies, you’ll see it here. From noon today, the Decades channel is running a weekend marathon of selected episodes, including tomorrow’s 6 p.m. ET telecast of 1972’s “Love and the Happy Days,” Garry Marshall’s backdoor pilot for his super-successful Happy Days series. Today’s lineup has its treats as well, including the recently departed Jerry Stiller and his wife, Anne Meara, in an episode at 11 p.m. ET – and another then-married show-biz couple, Sonny & Cher, co-starring in their own Love, American Style installment at 5:30 p.m. ET (pictured).