Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

hfan77 When Andy Griffith decided to leave his own show in 1968 to focus on a movie career, the show continued on under the title Mayberry RFD. Instead of Griffith, Ken Berry, a year after F Troop ended, portrayed a similar character Sam Jones. He was also a widower with a young son, played by Buddy Foster, the brother of actress Jodie Foster. Also returning were the familiar characters of Goober, Emmett, Howard Sprague and Aunt Bee. Also returning was Arlene Golonka as Sam's love interest Millie. She brought beauty to the show. After the second season, Frances Bavier, who played Aunt bee since The Andy Griffith Show began in 1960, left the show and was replaced by Alice Ghostley as Aunt Alice. Even without Griffith and Ron Howard, Mayberry RFD didn't miss a beat and turned out to be a very popular rural sitcom. Unfortunately, with ratings still high, CBS canceled the show as part of the Rural Purge in 1971. It's a show that hasn't had a long run as Andy Griffith and it deserves to be rerun on a network such as METV. Mayberry RFD continued the tradition of wholesome, rural sitcoms and shouldn't have been canceled while it was still on top of its game.

MartinHafer I am about to say something that no-doubt will annoy many. While "The Andy Griffith Show" was one of the best shows in television history, after a while it really outlived its usefulness. Without Barney as a series regular, the show tried a variety of either annoying replacements (Warren!!!) or insipid ones (Howard and Emmett)--none of which gave the show the wonderful comedic balance it once had. To make matters worse, after the show limped through three mediocre such seasons, the powers that be at CBS decided to continue the show even when Andy left!!! The 'clever' plan was to introduce a widower, Sam (Ken Berry), who would move to town with his son AND apparently buy Aunt Bee! Talk about a contrived premise--and a poor copy of the original. So now without either leading man, the show was nothing but insipid characters...period. That, in a nutshell, is "Mayberry R.F.D."--like the original show but with none of the humor or interesting characters. Now this isn't to say that the show was bad--it just was bland and inoffensive and that still made it better than some shows. But who wants to live on a steady diet of bland toast--which is, metaphorically speaking, "Mayberry R.F.D.".

kwo_bubba Mayberry RFD was a pretty good follow up to The Andy Griffith Show. A lot of newer generation TAGS fans aren't even aware of Mayberry RFD's existence. Hopefully one day it will finally make it to DVD. As with TAGS, I haven't watched an episode that I didn't enjoy. Yes, many of the episodes are rehashes of TAGS episodes. The thing that makes it still work though, is it's still Mayberry. It's still the wholesome fantasy world that we loved in TAGS. The main thing that I wished they would have done of this show was include more of the TAGS guest stars like Otis, The Darlings, and Ernest T Bass. The best episode of the show is by far the first one. Andy and Helen finally get married, and Don Knotts makes his final appearance as Barney Fife until Return to Mayberry. Andy makes several appearances as Sheriff Taylor in the first season until he just disappears and is no longer mentioned until in mid season 2 he returns to Mayberry with Helen and their new baby. I always wondered why in TAGS they never did any farewell episodes to outgoing characters. Usually they just disappear, and occasionally they're mentioned later on such as "Otis started doing his drinking in another town." Sheriff Taylor himself disappears in RFD, never to be heard from again after the "Andy's Baby" episode for the rest of the series. Anyway, if you've never seen it, its worth checking out if you can find it.

tfrizzell "Mayberry R.F.D." is basically "The Andy Griffith Show" without the key performers, the direction, the writing or the story-lines. What we are left with are city councilman Ken Berry and a sparse group of holdovers (Frances Bavier, Paul Hartman and Jack Dodson). Surprisingly the public did not seem to care as the show ran the better part of four years and completed 78 episodes. By the late-1960s "The Andy Griffith Show" had become stale though (even Griffith admitted to this) and losses like Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Howard Morris, Denver Pyle, Betty Lynn and Hal Smith were way too much to overcome. CBS held on to the idea out of respect, good manners and consistently above-average ratings, but the writing had been on the wall for quite some time when "Mayberry R.F.D." went the way of the dodo in 1971. Personally, I think this detracts from the original program and I have ended up dismissing it. But that is just me. 2 stars out of 5.