I’ve noticed that American movies from the 1940s or 50s have their content “toned down” when it comes to depictions of sex or violence, even in romance where the lead characters kiss (they pause every 3 seconds) with zero nudity except maybe a bra & crime or noir flicks always involving the protagonist/s winning (like the narrative shows police must be victorious rather than admitting defeat towards criminals) to list a few.
It infected TV, too, though I don’t know if there was an official code. Famously, married couples were shown to sleep in separate beds.
That’s broadcast TV. The major networks (ABC/NBC/CBS) had censors. Cable gets away with a lot more, and if it’s streaming only there are basically no rules.
Broadcast TV is always more censored because it uses public airways, so the feds have jurisdiction… but for the purposes of this discussion of old-timey censorship, there is only the big three to worry about–cable and streaming were nary a glimmer in little Ricky’s eye.
First thing I thought of was Bert and Ernie.
I Love Lucy had the couple in the same bed, but the Dick Van Dyke show had separate twin beds.
I suspect it’s because Lucy and Desi were married
They definitely had separate beds in I love Lucy
Keep watching, there are many scenes where the beds are pushed and made together as one (under a single blanket), and even in the later season they had one bed with a full frame that didn’t separate
That’s interesting. So the implication they were avoiding is that unmarried actors would never even be in the same bed under the covers under lights with a full cast and crew filming them? Wild. Or maybe it’s just something Lucy was able to insist on, and that she was married gave the studio a way to forbid it for everyone else.
faulty towers had that and it was british.
Might that be more about Fawlty himself? From what I recall of British television, it would not be unusual to have breasts and bums bouncing around your TV screen after a certain hour.
Here’s a little analysis from the Guardian, for which I did have to brave the search term BBC:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2016/feb/02/flashing-the-flesh-a-history-of-tv-nudity-penis-mr-darcy
no idea. just know when they filmed the scenes it was two seperate beds.