Do you remember THE 60s?!?!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/514NPSPG4DL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

That is, the tedious exercise in nostalgia mongering done as a miniseries for NBC in 1999. Utterly useless, but now available again for your viewing displeasure as of a few months ago thanks to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8EMNQJ4peA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rALLsN0ayA

As IMDB puts it:

The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune. Meanwhile, the Taylors are an African-American family living in the deep South. When Willie Taylor, a minister and civil rights organizer, is shot to death, his son Emmet moves to the city and eventually joins the Black Panthers, serving as a bodyguard for Fred Hampton.

I didn't realize the world was so small! The cast list alone is a headscratcher. Logically it won two Emmys. I hate stuff like this.

so the wonder years but shitty

Of course there was a sequel the following year:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjA3NzQzMDY1NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjE4MjYxMQ@@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg

This is very much not on YouTube. But enjoy the opening credits?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73nHoPILzwg

Its own synopsis:

May 1970. Byron Shaw is set to graduate from Kent State and is on his way to Columbia Law School. His friend Dexter Johnson opts to stay in the National Guard. Byron's girlfriend, Eileen, and his younger sister, Christie, are also students at Kent State. When Dexter's Guard unit opens fire on student protestors, Dexter quits and moves to Los Angeles; Eileen and Christie move to New York. In L.A. Dexter falls in love with Yolanda, a community organizer. Byron leaves law school to work for the Committee to Re-elect Nixon in Washington, D.C. Eileen abandons her conservative politics in favor of the feminist movement. Christie's modeling career heats up, and she becomes involved with Nick, a fast-living record producer. When Dexter is seriously injured in a shooting, a disillusioned Byron leaves D.C. and moves to Alaska becoming involved in environmental issues. After Nick overdoses, Christie becomes involved in a cult. Fearing for her safety, Byron asks for Dexter's help to kidnap and deprogram her.

Per a friend on FB: "The only film brave enough to fictionalize both Kent State and the recording of Dancing in the Moonlight." Its cast list is also a headscratcher.

XP They did a '70s follow-up (same concept, different characters) the next year!

I'm just surprised this 70s one didn't end with all four of them doing coke at Studio 54 when they hear about Jonestown.

NBC was really into this kind of stuff back then: they also produced biopics on Little Richard and Alan Freed, plus there s surprisingly good two-part miniseries on The Temptations.

Yeah the Temptations one, while still laden with that era of TV's production/lighting cliches in particular, isn't as bad. Certainly better than this stuff here.

I'm pretty sure I saw some of "the '60s," it was terrible. Like "We Didn't Start the Fire: the Miniseries."

ok i’m 99% sure i watched this but i have literally zero memory of it

lol a ringing endorsement there

If you can remember The '60s you didn't really watch it

Sorry, obligatory.

Ha, exactly. I couldn’t quite figure out how to work that into a post myself so a tip of the Hatlo hat to you, my friend.

I was hoping someone would come up with the best riff.

I concur with VG’s assessment

I think I’d left home by the time the 70s one aired

I weirdly remember this well, mainly because I was (too) curious to see what music cues they’d choose, and for which moments. The most bizarre was “All Tomorrow’s Parties” accompanying the sequence where an anti-war protester put a flower in a Marine’s gun. And because period-incorrect music gear in films and TV shows makes me IA, I vividly recall the scene where one of the main characters is talking to someone at Newport in 1965, watching massive (‘80s-vintage, at the earliest) Marshall stacks being set up on stage, and saying, “Hey, what’s with all the amps?”

When Dylan goes electric, he goes ELEKTRIK

I watched part of this because I thought Jordana Brewster was the hottest woman on Earth at the time but zero memory of it.

The two things I remember was that the hippie daughter fell in with some Weather Underground types, and steps out for smokes just before those guys go boom...and the aforementioned Dylan at Newport bit.

Isn't there also a bit showing the start of the Watts riot?

Didn't watch this. Observed The 60's in real time, although I was only 5 years old when they started, so it wasn't until 1964 that I really began to pick up on the plot.

Self-XP I scrubbed through, and yes, that Watts scene is there and...words fail.

1:18:54, for the curious. Watch to the end.

I'd sooner be hit in the nuts than watch this series.

The effect is about the same.

Except an anachronistic Bob Dylan song is playing while it happens.

I was born in the year of the Watts riots. The 60s for me are early childhood and then looking back through the lens of the 70s. I still remember seeing the Vietnam body count every night. I'm sure I couldn't stand this re-imagining.

This miniseries is my go-to comparison for bad/hamfisted period adaptations: it was obvious the writers just had a checklist of Sixties stuff they need to incorporate on a whiteboard, and wrote to fit that. Very Forrest Gump. I seem to recall it ended with the main characters all coincidentally ending up at Woodstock and finding each other again.

I know I watched the Seventies one for a laugh afterward--maybe they were even both on one DVD--but that description upthread doesn't ring any bells, except for the law student who becomes embroiled in Watergate. I must have given up or blocked the rest out.