I'm sure that if you asked a TV Historian about a series called "The Practice," they would first think of a David E. Kelley dramatic series, set in Boston, about a group of lawyers trying difficult cases, including one that crossed over with another Kelley series, also set in Beantown, "Ally McBeal."
That has nothing to do with this.
Predating Kelley's identically titled law show by twenty years, this program was a sitcom about a New York Doctor named Jules Bedford, played by Danny Thomas, and the people that populated his work and home life.
Jules was the sort of "gruff but loveable" character every show of the era wanted. He was knowledgeable, temperamental, witty and continually chomped a cigar, but only sometimes smoked it. His signature style was based on Mr. Thomas' own Catskills club, Borscht Belt stand up rhythm. Example:
Nate: (head waiter in the hospital cafeteria): My thumb. (Nate flexes his thumb in front of Jules' face) It hurts every time I do that.
Jules: Then, don't do that.
The only thing missing was a drum riff after a joke. Ba-dum-ting!
The work squad was comprised of Dr. Bedford's nurse, Molly, played by long time great character actress, Dena Dietrich, and his receptionist Helen, played with Gracie Allen style bubbleheadedness, by soon-to-be beauty school drop out from the motion picture "Grease," Didi Conn. Also helping out was Lenny, an intern at The Practice, played by the better known of the two Lionel Jeffersons from that Norman Lear series, Mike Evans.
Also practicing medicine was Dr. David Bedford, Jules' son, played by David Spielberg, who had a fancy Park Avenue shingle. The two Bedford doctors would share stories about their cases and commiserate about the patients they had to deal with over lunch in the cafeteria where Dad worked, but would also be derisive about their practices, as the younger Bedford catered to a wealthy clientele and the elder Bedford treated "regular people." There definitely were some value judgments when it came to that. Also, the son and the father provided further fodder for funny, as Jules still treated his kid like a child, and David sulkily reminded Dad that he was a full grown adult.
David's wife Jenny was played by Shelley Fabares, who of course grew up on television as the daughter on the long running "The Donna Reed Show." David and Jenny provided Jules with his two grandsons, Paul and Tony, played by Allen Price and Damon Bradley Raskin.
New York played a part because there are a lot of sick people in this town (though some of them are hypochondriacs), and with Dr. Jules still making house calls, there were plenty of places for him to go to check up on patients.
Let's also note this show was created by Steve Gordon who, several years later, would also write and direct "Arthur," the film starring Dudley Moore (who made this NYC 400 list at #377 with "Dudley").
There was an interesting blending of that old style comedy that Mr. Thomas was used to (and likely personally injected into the scripts), and the more modern elements that were starting to happen for sitcoms as we approached the 1980s.
And from the Old School, Danny's friends dropped in for guest shots, people like Lucille Ball, Jayne Meadows, his own daughter Marlo Thomas and Bill Dana (though not playing José Jiménez, as Dana did on "The Danny Thomas Show").
And we can't talk about Danny Thomas and medicine without noting his philanthropy work and how he founded the St. Jude Children's Medical Research Center, which is inarguably his biggest legacy, still going strong today. The concept of helping out families of kids who were going through some devastating medical issues and making sure those families didn't have to pay the costs of treatment and rehabilitation was both genius and needed.
"The Practice" (1976) maybe would have worked better as a brief sketch on a variety series, because it had that sort of off-kilter, cheap joke, go for the laugh sensibility, that had been seen on shows like "Sonny and Cher" and "The Carol Burnett Show" where the premise mattered less than the funny. If they had pulled out all the stops and made it into a complete farce, it definitely would have been a more memorable sitcom.
