The Brady Bunch

The Brady Bunch
Opening from the final season
Genre	Family sitcom
Created by	Sherwood Schwartz
Starring	Robert Reed Florence Henderson Ann B. Davis Barry Williams Maureen McCormick Christopher Knight Eve Plumb Mike Lookinland Susan Olsen
Theme music composer	Frank De Vol Sherwood Schwartz
Opening theme	"The Brady Bunch" performed by: Peppermint Trolley Company (season 1) The Brady Bunch Kids (seasons 2-5)
Composer	Frank De Vol
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	117 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	Sherwood Schwartz
Producers	Howard Leeds Sherwood Schwartz
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	25 mins. 45–48 mins.
Production companies	Redwood Productions Paramount Television
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	September 26, 1969 (1969-09-26) – March 8, 1974 (1974-03-08)
Related
The Brady Kids The Brady Bunch Hour

The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz that originally aired from September 26, 1969 to March 8, 1974 on ABC. The series revolves around a large blended family which includes six children.

The series aired for a total of five seasons and, after its cancellation in 1974, went into syndication in September 1975. While the series was never a critical or ratings success during its original run, it has since become a popular staple in syndication especially among children and teenage viewers. The Brady Bunch's success in syndication ultimately lead to several reunion films and spin-offs series: The Brady Bunch Hour (1976–77), The Brady Girls Get Married (1981), The Brady Brides (1981) and the 1988 television reunion movie A Very Brady Christmas. The success of the 1988 television movie lead to another spin-off series, The Bradys, that aired on CBS in 1990.

In 1995, the series was adapted into a satirical comedy film entitled The Brady Bunch Movie, followed by A Very Brady Sequel in 1996. A third film, The Brady Bunch in the White House, aired on Fox in November 2002.

In 1997, "Getting Davy Jones" (season 3, episode 12) was ranked No. 37 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time.

Development

In 1965, following the success of his TV series Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwartz conceived the idea for The Brady Bunch after reading in The Los Angeles Times that "30% of marriages [in the United States] have a child or children from a previous marriage." He set to work on a pilot script called for a series tentatively titled Mine and Yours. Schwartz then developed the pilot script to include three children for each parent. While Mike Brady is depicted as being a widower, Schwartz originally wanted the character of Carol Brady to have been a divorcée but the network objected to this. A compromise was reached whereby Carol's marital past was left open (not made clear whether she was divorced or widowed).

Schwartz shopped the series to the "big three" television networks of the era. ABC, CBS and NBC all liked the script but each network wanted changes before they would commit to filming and Schwartz shelved the project. Although there are similarities between the series and two 1968 theatrical release films, United Artists' Yours, Mine and Ours (starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball) and CBS's With Six You Get Eggroll (starring Brian Keith and Doris Day), the original script for The Brady Bunch predated the scripts for both of these films. Nonetheless, the outstanding success of the United Artists' film (the 11th highest grossing film of 1968) was a factor in ABC's decision to order episodes for the series.

After receiving a commitment for 13-weeks of television shows from ABC in 1968, Schwartz hired film and television director John Rich to direct the pilot, cast the six children from 264 interviews during that summer, and hired the actors to play the mother role (whose maiden name was Tyler and first married name was Martin), the father role, and the housekeeper role. As the sets were built on Paramount Television stages 2 and 3, the production crew prepared the backyard of a home in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles as the Tyler home's exterior location to shoot the chaotic backyard wedding scene. Filming of the pilot began on Friday, October 4, 1968 and lasted eight days.

Premise

Mike Brady (Robert Reed), a widowed architect with three sons, Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (Christopher Knight), and Bobby (Mike Lookinland), marries Carol Ann Martin (née Tyler) (Florence Henderson), who herself has three daughters: Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Cindy (Susan Olsen). The wife and daughters take the Brady surname. Included in the blended family are Mike's live-in housekeeper, Alice Nelson (Ann B. Davis), and the boys' dog, Tiger. The setting is a large, suburban, two-story house designed by Mike, in a Los Angeles, California suburb.

This was not the first television series to show a "blended" family. Two series which debuted in the 1950s, Make Room For Daddy and Bonanza, had step-siblings and half-siblings respectively. Nor was it the only network series to start the 1969 season showing life in a blended family: My Three Sons (CBS) brought a new wife and daughter into the Douglas family (which also had an Alice-equivalent, Uncle Charley). At a time when remarriage was becoming more prevalent, these shows reflected a new lifestyle in America.

In the first season, awkward adjustments, accommodations, and resentments inherent in blended families dominate the stories. In an early episode, Carol tells Bobby that the only "steps" in their household lead to the second floor (in other words, that the family contains no "stepchildren," only "children"). Thereafter, the episodes focus on typical pre-teen and teenage adjustments such as sibling rivalry, puppy love, self-image, character building, and responsibility. From season two on, the new family seem to have jelled, the woes of blending soon fade, and the "step" factor only surfaces a handful of times.

Contemporary social issues were sometimes explored. Season two's "The Liberation of Marcia Brady" explored the equality of women, as Marcia sets out to prove a girl can do anything a boy can. The boys challenge the idea and coerce Peter into joining Marcia's club, the Sunflower Girls, to make a point.

Cast and characters

Main article: List of The Brady Bunch characters

Main

The regular cast appeared in an opening title sequence in which video head shots were arranged in a three-by-three grid, with each cast member appearing to look at the other cast members. In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show's opening title sequence ranked No. 8 on a list of TV's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.

Cast of The Brady Bunch, season one. Click on character for actor biography.

Recurring characters

Sam Franklin (Allan Melvin) is Alice's boyfriend. He is the owner of a local butcher shop. Sam appears in only eight episodes, but they span all of the show's five seasons. He is also frequently mentioned in dialogue, and Alice occasionally goes on dates with him off-screen. By the time of the 1981 made-for-TV movie The Brady Girls Get Married, Alice and Sam are married.

Tiger the dog – The original dog that played Tiger was hit by a florist truck and killed early in the first season. A replacement dog proved problematic, so the producers decided the dog would only appear when essential to the plot. Tiger appeared in about half the episodes in the first season and about half a dozen episodes in the second season. Tiger seemingly vanished without an explanation and was not shown again after "The Impractical Joker" (last episode shown with Tiger) and "What Goes Up" (last episode made with Tiger).

Robbie Rist as Cousin Oliver

Cousin Oliver (Robbie Rist) – In the middle of season five, producers added a new character named Oliver, Carol Brady's young nephew, who was sent to live with the Bradys while his parents were living in South America. The character was added in an attempt to fill the age gap left by the maturing Brady children – the youngest (Susan Olsen) was 12 years old during the show's final season. Lloyd Schwartz, son of creator and executive producer Sherwood Schwartz, later admitted that the character threw the balance of the show off and said that fans regarded the character as an "interloper". Oliver appeared in the final six episodes of season five, which proved to be the final season as ABC canceled the series in 1974. The addition of the character has been cited as a "jumped the shark" moment for the series. The term "Cousin Oliver" has been used to describe the addition of a young character to a series in an attempt to save a series from cancellation.

Mr. Phillips, Mike's boss (Jack Collins) – Mr. Phillips' name is given as Harry Phillips in the episode where Carol and Cindy have their tonsils removed, and Ed Phillips in the episode where Greg works after school in Mike's office and loses important designs. Mr. Phillips' appearances span the first four of the five seasons.

Notable guest stars

• Herbert Anderson (known for playing Dennis' father in the 1960s sitcom Dennis the Menace) appears as a doctor who comes to treat the boys' measles in "Is There a Doctor in the House?" (season one)
• Desi Arnaz, Jr. (teen heartthrob son of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball) meets Marcia, who had written about him in her diary in "The Possible Dream" (season one)
• Jim Backus (known for playing Mr. Thurston Howell, III in Gilligan's Island) appears three times in the series, twice in two of the three Grand Canyon episodes, "Ghost Town U.S.A." and "Grand Canyon or Bust", playing Zaccariah T. Brown who mistakenly thinks the Bradys are jumping his gold claim and locks them in a ghost-town jail, and in "The Hustler" (season 5) playing Mike's second boss, Mr. Harry Matthews
• Imogene Coca (known for starring in Your Show of Shows) plays the Brady girls' Great Aunt Jenny, whom Jan fears she will grow up to resemble after seeing a childhood photo of her in "Jan's Aunt Jenny" (season three)
• Don Drysdale (pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers) tries to inject reality into Greg's dreams of being a professional baseball player in "The Dropout" (season two)
• Don Ho (Hawaiian singer) meets Cindy and Bobby and serenaded Cindy in Honolulu in "Hawaii Bound" (part one of a three-part season four episode, filmed on location in Hawaii)
• Davy Jones (former member of The Monkees) performs at a music studio and then takes Marcia to her school dance in "Getting Davy Jones" (season three) (he also satirized his cameo decades later in The Brady Bunch Movie)
• Deacon Jones (defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams) encourages Peter's singing in "The Drummer Boy" (season two)
• E. G. Marshall (known for playing Lawrence Preston in The Defenders with Robert Reed, 1961–1965 — making this a reunion of the two) plays Mr. J. P. Randolph, Marcia's school principal in "The Slumber Caper" (season two)
• Brigadier General James McDivitt (NASA astronaut) signs autographs for Peter and Bobby after appearing on a talk show in "Out of This World" (season five).
• Joe Namath (New York Jets quarterback) visits Bobby because he thought that Bobby had a terminal illness in "Mail Order Hero" (season five)
• Wes Parker (first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers) meets Mike and Greg in Greg's math classroom, thus curing Greg of the crush he had on his teacher Miss Linda O'Hara (played by Gigi Perreau), Parker's fiancée in "The Undergraduate" (season one)
• Vincent Price (horror film actor) appears twice in the series in two of the three Hawaii episodes, "Pass the Tabu", and "The Tiki Caves" from season four, playing the villainous Professor Hubert Whitehead, who holds the Brady boys hostage
• Natalie Schafer (known for playing Mrs. Lovey Howell in Gilligan's Island) is Mike's fussy client, Penelope Fletcher, who is charmed by Cindy's impromptu 'Shirley Temple' routine in "The Snooperstar" (season five)
• Paul Winchell (ventriloquist and actor, known for his 1960s show Winchell-Mahoney Time, and the voice of "Tigger" in Winnie-the-Pooh) appears as Skip Farnum, the TV commercial director in "And Now a Word From Our Sponsor" (season three)
• Marcia Wallace played a salesclerk in "Would the Real Jan Brady Please Stand Up" (season two) and "Mrs. Robbins" in "Getting Davy Jones" (season three)

Production notes

Theme song and credits sequence

The theme song, penned by Schwartz and Frank De Vol, and originally arranged, sung and performed by the Peppermint Trolley Company, quickly communicated to audiences that the Bradys were a blended family. The Brady family are shown in a checkerboard with Carol on the top center, Alice in the middle block, and Mike on bottom middle. To the right are three blocks with the boys from oldest on top to youngest. To the left are three blocks with the girls from oldest to youngest. In season two, the Brady kids took over singing the theme song. In season three, the boys sing the first verse, girls sing the second verse, and all sing together for the third and last verse.

The end credits features an instrumental version of the theme song's third verse. In season one, it was recorded by Peppermint Trolley Company. From season two on, the theme was recorded in house by Paramount musicians.

The Brady house

The house used in exterior shots, which bears little relation to the interior layout of the Bradys' home, is located in Studio City, within the city limits of Los Angeles, California. According to a 1994 article in the Los Angeles Times, the San Fernando Valley house was built in 1959 and selected as the Brady residence because series creator Schwartz felt it looked like a home where an architect would live.

The real house is a Mid-Century modern ranch house located in Studio City, Los Angeles. A false window was attached to the front's A-frame section to give the illusion it had two full stories. Contemporary establishing shots of the house were filmed with the owner's permission for the 1990 TV series The Bradys. The owner refused to allow Paramount to restore the property to its 1969 look for The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995, so a facade resembling the original home was built around an existing house.

In the series, the address of the house was given as 4222 Clinton Way (as read aloud by Carol from an arriving package in the first season episode entitled "Lost Locket, Found Locket"). Although no city was ever specified, it was presumed from references to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Rams, and a Hollywood movie studio, among many others, that the Bradys lived in Southern California, most likely Los Angeles or one of its suburbs. In the episode "Kelley's Kids," when the three neighbor boys tell Greg Brady that they are running away, one of them adds, "Maybe we'll go out west," to which another replies, "You dummy, we ARE out west," thereby further implying the California setting of the show.

The interior of the Brady house was used at least three times for other Paramount shows, twice for Mannix and once for Mission: Impossible, while The Brady Bunch was in first-run production. In the case of Mission: Impossible, the Brady furniture was also used.

Episodes

Main article: List of The Brady Bunch episodes

Season	Ep #	First broadcast	Last broadcast
1	25	September 26, 1969	March 20, 1970
2	24	September 27, 1970	March 20, 1971
3	23	September 17, 1971	March 10, 1972
4	23	September 22, 1972	March 23, 1973
5	22	September 14, 1973	March 8, 1974

Reception

U.S. television ratings

The Brady Bunch never achieved high ratings during its primetime run (never placing in the top 30 during the five years it aired) and was canceled in 1974 after five seasons and 117 episodes; it was canceled shortly after the series crossed the minimum threshold for syndication. At that point in the story Greg graduated from high school and was about to enroll in college.

Critical reception

When the episodes were repeated in syndication, they usually appeared every weekday in late-afternoon or early-evening slots on local stations. This enabled children to watch the episodes when they came home from school, making the program widely popular and giving it iconic status among those who were too young to have seen the series during its prime time run.

According to Schwartz, the reason the show has become a part of Americana, despite the fact that there have been other shows that ran longer, rated higher and were critically acclaimed, is that the episodes were written from the standpoint of the children and addressed situations that children could understand (such as girl trouble, sibling rivalry and meeting famous people such as a rock star or baseball players). The Bradys are also portrayed as a harmonious family, though they do have times when one of the children does not cooperate with his or her parents or the other children.

In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show's opening title sequence was ranked 8 on a list of TV's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.

Awards and honors

Award	Year	Category	Result	Recipient
Young Artist Award	1989	Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award	Honored	Barry Williams
TV Land Awards	2003	Hippest Fashion Plate - Male	Nominated
		Favorite Dual-Role Character	Nominated	Christopher Knight as Peter Brady and Arthur.
		Funniest Food Fight The Brady Pie Fight on the Paramount Lot.	Nominated
		Favorite Guest Performance by a Musician on a TV Show	Won	Davy Jones
		Most Memorable Male Guest Star in a Comedy as Himself	Won	Joe Namath
	2004	Favorite Fashion Plate - Male	Nominated	Barry Williams
		Most Memorable Mane	Nominated	Susan Olsen
		Favorite Made for TV Maid	Won	Ann B. Davis
	2005	Theme Song You Just Cannot Get out of Your Head	Nominated
		Best Dream Sequence For episode "Love and the Older Man," in which Marcia has a crush on her dentist.	Nominated
		Favorite Two-Parter/Cliffhanger For the Greg Brady surfboard accident.	Nominated
		Favorite Singing Siblings	Nominated	Williams, McCormick, Knight, Plumb, Lookinland, Olsen
	2006	Best Dream Sequence For episode "Love and the Older Man"	Nominated
		Favorite Made for TV Maid	Won	Ann B. Davis
		Favorite TV Food Pork chops and applesauce.	Won
	2007	Most Beautiful Braces	Nominated	Maureen McCormick
		Pop Culture Award	Won	Williams, McCormick, Knight, Plumb, Lookinland, Olsen, Davis, Henderson, Lloyd J. Schwartz (producer)

Syndication and distribution

Since its first airing in syndication in September 1975, an episode of the show has been broadcast somewhere in the United States and abroad every day of the year. Reruns were also shown on ABC daytime from July 9, 1973 to August 29, 1975, at 11:30 a.m. EST/10:30 CST. The run was interrupted only once, between April 21 and June 27, 1975, when ABC ran a short-lived game show, Blankety Blanks, in that time slot.

The show was aired on TBS starting in the 1980s until 1997, Nick at Nite from 1998 to 2003 (and briefly during the spring of 2012), TeenNick (under the channel's former name The N) from March to April 2004, TV Land from 2002 to 2010, and Hallmark Channel from January to June 2013.

Episodes in the syndicated version have been edited for time to allow for commercial breaks, down from the original version of 25–26 minutes.

Spin-offs, sequels, and other treatments

Several spin-offs and sequels to the original series have been made, featuring all or most of the original cast. These include another sitcom, an animated series, a variety show, television movies, a dramatic series, a stage play, and theatrical movies:

Kelly's Kids

A final-season Brady Bunch episode, "Kelly's Kids", was intended as a pilot for a prospective spinoff series of the same name. Ken Berry starred as Ken Kelly, a friend and neighbor of the Bradys', who with his wife Kathy (Brooke Bundy) adopted three orphaned boys of different racial backgrounds. One of the adopted sons was played by Todd Lookinland, the younger brother of Mike Lookinland. While Kelly's Kids was not subsequently picked up as a full series, producer Sherwood Schwartz would rework the basic premise for the short-lived 1980s sitcom Together We Stand starring Elliott Gould and Dee Wallace.

The Brady Kids

Main article: The Brady Kids

A 22-episode animated Saturday morning cartoon series, produced by Filmation and airing on ABC from September 1972 to August 1974, about the Brady kids having various adventures. The family's adults were never seen or mentioned, and the "home" scenes were in a very large well-appointed tree house. Several animals were regular characters, including two non-English speaking pandas (Ping and Pong), a talking bird (Marlon) who could do magic, and an ordinary pet dog (Mop Top, not Tiger). The first 17 episodes featured the voices of all six of the original child actors from the show, but Barry Williams, Maureen McCormick and Christopher Knight were replaced for the last five episodes due to a contract dispute.

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour

Main article: The Brady Bunch Hour

On November 28, 1976, a two-hour television special entitled The Brady Bunch Variety Hour aired on ABC. Eve Plumb was the only regular cast member from the original show who declined to be in the series and the role of Jan was recast with Geri Reischl. Produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, the sibling team behind H.R. Pufnstuf, Donny and Marie and other variety shows and children's series of the era, the show was intended to air every fifth week in the same slot as The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, but ended up being scheduled sporadically throughout the season, leading to inconsistent ratings and its inevitable cancellation.

In 2009, Brady Bunch cast member Susan Olsen, with Lisa Sutton, published a book, Love to Love You Bradys, which dissects and celebrates the Variety Hour as a cult classic.

The Brady Girls Get Married / The Brady Brides

The Brady Bunch
Genre	Sitcom
Directed by	Peter Baldwin
Starring	Maureen McCormick Eve Plumb Jerry Houser Ron Kuhlman Ann B. Davis Florence Henderson Keland Love
Theme music composer	Frank De Vol
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	10
Production
Executive producers	Lloyd J. Schwartz Sherwood Schwartz
Producer	John Thomas Lenox
Production locations	Paramount Studios (5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California)
Cinematography	Lester Shorr
Running time	25 minutes
Production company	Paramount Television
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	February 6 (1981-02-06) – April 17, 1981 (1981-04-17)
Related
The Brady Bunch

A TV reunion movie called The Brady Girls Get Married was produced in 1981. TV Guide indicated the movie would be shown in one evening, but at the last minute NBC divided it into half-hour segments and showed one part a week for three weeks, and the fourth week debuted a spin-off sitcom, titled The Brady Brides. The reunion movie featured the entire original cast; this would prove to be the only time the entire cast worked together on a single project following the cancellation of the original series. The movie's opening credits featured the season one "Grid" and theme song, with the addition of the "Brady Girls Get Married" title. The movie shows what the characters had been doing since the original series ended: Mike is still an architect, Carol is a real estate agent, Marcia is a fashion designer, Jan is also an architect, Greg is a doctor, Peter is in the Air Force, Bobby and Cindy are in college, and Alice has married Sam. Eventually they all reunite to see Jan and Marcia both marry in a double wedding.

The Brady Brides series features Maureen McCormick (Marcia) and Eve Plumb (Jan) in regular roles. The series begins with Marcia, Jan and their new husbands buying a house and living together. The clashes between Jan's uptight husband, Phillip Covington III (a college professor in science who is several years older than Jan, played by Ron Kuhlman), and Marcia's slovenly husband, Wally Logan (a fun-loving salesman for a large toy company, played by Jerry Houser), were the pivot on which many of the stories were based, not unlike The Odd Couple. Ten episodes were aired before the sitcom was cancelled. This was the only Brady show in sitcom form to be filmed in front of a live studio audience. Bob Eubanks guest-starred as himself in an episode where the two couples appear on The Newlywed Game.

In the 1990s, The Brady Girls Get Married, including the pilot of The Brady Brides, was rerun as a single two-hour movie on Nick at Nite, to celebrate the release of The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995.

Episode titles

№	Title	Original Airdate
1	"The Brady Girls Get Married (Part 1)"	February 6, 1981
2	"The Brady Girls Get Married (Part 2)"	February 13, 1981
3	"The Brady Girls Get Married (Part 3)"	February 20, 1981
4	"Living Together"	March 6, 1981
5	"Gorilla of My Dreams"	March 13, 1981
6	"The Newlywed Game"	March 20, 1981
7	"The Mom Who Came to Dinner"	March 27, 1981
8	"The Siege"	April 3, 1981
9	"Cool Hand Phil"	April 10, 1981
10	"A Pretty Boy Is Like a Melody"	April 17, 1981

A Very Brady Christmas

Main article: A Very Brady Christmas

A second TV reunion movie, A Very Brady Christmas, aired in December 1988 on CBS and featured all the regular cast (except Susan Olsen; the role of Cindy was played by Jennifer Runyon), as well as three grandchildren, Peter's girlfriend, Valerie, and the spouses of Greg, Marcia and Jan (Nora, Wally and Phillip, respectively).

Ratings for the A Very Brady Christmas were the highest of any television movie that season for CBS.

The Bradys

Main article: The Bradys

Due to the success of A Very Brady Christmas, CBS asked Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz and his son Lloyd to create a new series for the network. According to Lloyd Schwartz, he and his father initially balked at the idea because they felt a new series would harm the Brady franchise. They finally relented because CBS was "desperate for programming". A new series featuring the Brady clan was created entitled The Bradys. All the original Brady Bunch cast members returned for the series, except for Maureen McCormick (Marcia), who was replaced with Leah Ayres.

As with A Very Brady Christmas, The Bradys also featured elements of comedy and drama and featured storylines that were of a more serious nature than that of the original series and its subsequent spin-offs. Lloyd Schwartz later said he compared The Bradys to another dramedy of the time, thirtysomething. The two-hour series premiere episode aired on February 9, 1990 at 9 p.m. on CBS and initially drew respectable ratings. Subsequent episodes were moved to 8 p.m. where ratings quickly declined. Due to the decline, CBS canceled the series after six episodes.

Reboot

On July 31, 2012, it was announced that CBS would be producing a new The Brady Bunch series, produced by Vince Vaughn. The series will act as a sequel, in which the plot revolves around an adult Bobby Brady who has been divorced, but remarries to start a new family.

Specials, documentaries, and other revivals

Barry Williams, Christopher Knight and Mike Lookinland ("Greg", "Peter", and "Bobby" respectively) at the Big Apple Convention in Manhattan, October 1, 2010

The Brady Bunch has met with a remarkable amount of television coverage, most of which has capitalized on the show's continuing iconic cult status.

• The World of Sid & Marty Krofft at the Hollywood Bowl; Thanksgiving weekend, 1973; the kids sing at the Los Angeles venue; Robert Reed and Ann B. Davis watch from box seats.
• Donny & Marie; October 1, 1976; Florence Henderson, Maureen McCormick, Mike Lookinland, and Susan Olsen appear as their Brady characters on an episode the variety show in several comedy sketches
• All Star Anything Goes, 1977-78: on two episodes, four members of the cast, including Geri Reischl (from the variety series), competed twice against four members of the DeFranco family singers, with the DeFrancos winning the first time and the Brady cast the second
• The Love Boat; October 29, 1983; Robert Reed and Florence Henderson appear in a cameo (though the name "Brady" is not mentioned) and talk about how they can take a cruise since the kids are all grown up (other famous television couples appear in the episode)
• Day by Day: "A Very Brady Episode" (NBC) February 5, 1989; Robert Reed and Florence Henderson reprise their roles; other Brady veterans also appear, including a then-pregnant Maureen McCormick. In the episode, a teenage boy in the family (Christopher Daniel Barnes) dreams he is Chuck Brady and escapes to the Bradys' world after he is scolded for his poor scholastic habits due to watching a Brady Bunch marathon. Barnes was later cast as "Greg Brady" in the theatrical Brady Bunch movies)
• Free Spirit: "The New Secretary" (ABC) December 10, 1989; Robert Reed and Florence Henderson play a couple (the name 'Brady' is not mentioned) seeking a divorce
• The Real Live Brady Bunch; stage show featuring re-enactments of series episodes; Andy Richter played Mike, and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on November 9, 1992 almost a year before becoming the sidekick on Late Night with Conan O'Brien; Jane Lynch played Carol Brady
• Bradymania: A Very Brady Special, 1993; based loosely on Elizabeth Moran's book Bradymania; hosted by Florence Henderson and includes clips comparing Brady behavior with that on other sitcoms
• The Brady Bunch Movie, 1995; theatrical release; a tongue-in-cheek parody to the original series; some Brady veterans appear in cameos (scenes with Mike Lookinland and Susan Olsen were filmed, but were cut from the final film)
• A Very Brady Sequel, 1996; theatrical release; same cast as The Brady Bunch Movie with Tim Matheson playing a villain impersonating Carol's first husband
• Brady Bunch Home Movies, May 23, 1995; Tribute special to Robert Reed using 8 mm movie camera footage filmed by the cast using cameras given to them as a gift from Reed; Susan Olsen was executive producer
• Groovin' with the Bradys, a 1998 VH1 special
• Attack of the Bradys, a second 1998 VH1 special
• The E! True Hollywood Story: The Brady Bunch, June 6, 1999; members of the cast retell their anecdotes
• Unauthorized Brady Bunch: The Final Days, May 16, 2000; television movie focusing on the final season, which was marred by dissension among the cast pertaining to their business arrangements and creative direction of the show
• Growing Up Brady, May 21, 2000; television movie inspired by Barry Williams' 1992 autobiography of the same name
• Pop-Up Brady (VH-1) July 18, 2001; several episodes of series with textual commentary added in the form of on-screen balloons modeled after Pop-Up Video
• The Weakest Link (NBC) September 24, 2001; all surviving cast members including Robbie Rist (sans Davis) appeared; Rist later joked "I hope I don't kill this show, too!"
• The Brady Bunch in the White House, November 29, 2002 ; television movie that aired on Fox with Gary Cole and Shelly Long reprising their roles as Mike and Carol Brady.
• The Brady Bunch 35th Anniversary Reunion Special: Still Brady after All These Years, September 29, 2004; reunion special featuring all surviving cast members; hosted by Jenny McCarthy
• My Fair Brady, 2005; reality television series about Christopher Knight and Adrianne Curry (the first America's Next Top Model winner) and their relationship, post a stint on VH1's The Surreal Life (Barry Williams, Florence Henderson, Susan Olsen and Mike Looklinland make appearances)
• Coming Together Under One Roof, 2005; Sherwood Schwartz narrates this documentary about the creation of the original series for the DVD release of the first season
• Biography: The Brady Bunch, (A&E) June 24, 2005
• The Brady Bunch Cast Back in Hawaii, 2005; Florence Henderson, Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, Mike Lookinland and Susan Olsen return to Hawaii; Don Ho appears as himself, as he did in the September 1972 episode "Hawaii Bound"
• A Very Brady Musical June 6, 2008; a stage musical which debuted in Los Angeles written by Lloyd J. Schwartz and sister Hope Juber; music written by Hope and Laurence Juber, directed by Lloyd Schwartz
• A Very Brady Reunion August 31, 2008; Barry Williams, Susan Olsen, and Mike Lookinland return to Kings Island (where the November 1973 episode "The Cincinnati Kids" was filmed) for a four-show special of song, dance, and Brady Bunch stories.
• What Was Carol Brady Thinking? (NickMom, 2012–present); similar format as Pop-Up Brady, with the emphasis on a motherly point of view from Carol Brady.

DVD releases

Paramount Home Entertainment released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1 from 2005 to 2006, before CBS DVD took over DVD rights to the Paramount Television library (though CBS DVD releases are still distributed by Paramount). Paramount/CBS has released the series on DVD in other countries as well.

A Complete Series box set was released in 2007 by CBS and Paramount, which includes the TV movies A Very Brady Christmas and The Brady 500, as well as two episodes of The Brady Kids animated series. The box art for the set features green shag carpeting and 70s style wood paneling.

The first two seasons are also available on Region 2 DVD for the Nordic countries, with audio in English and subtitle choices in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or Finnish. The series has also been released on VHS, but the VHS tapes have gone out of print.

Seasons one and two have also been released in the UK.

DVD name	Episodes	Release dates
		Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
The Complete First Season	25	March 1, 2005	August 27, 2007	September 19, 2007
The Complete Second Season	24	July 26, 2005	March 24, 2008	March 6, 2008
The Complete Third Season	23	September 13, 2005	—	September 4, 2008
The Complete Fourth Season	23	November 1, 2005	—	April 2, 2009
The Complete Fifth Season	22	March 7, 2006	—	June 18, 2009
The Complete Series	117 (with extras)	April 3, 2007	—	—

See also

• It's a Sunshine Day: The Best of The Brady Bunch
• Tam Spiva, a Brady Bunch script writer
• Christmas with The Brady Bunch, an album released by Paramount Records in 1970.
• Sunshine Days, The X-Files episode inspired by The Brady Bunch.

External links

• The Brady Bunch at IMDb
• The Brady Bunch on TV Land
• Encyclopedia of Television
• Love to Love You Bradys (book by Susan Olsen)
• The Brady Bunch Shrine (fan site)
• Danielle's Brady Bunch House (fan site)
• Bradyworld.com (fan site)
• The Unofficial Brady Bunch Home Page (archive of fan site)
• Interview with Barry Williams on "The Greg Brady Project"
• The Brady Bunch Cast:Where are they now? (2010, carries some editorial errors)