Television was one of the forces shaping the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when a blockbuster TV series could reach up to a third of a country's population. This book explores television's impact on social change by comparing three sitcoms and their audiences.

It reconstructs TV reception in history (very rare, if not unique). It develops new methods to reconstruct historical reception processes. It is a three-country international comparison (very rare). Its main argument is about TV’s impact on whole societies (also rare; media studies typically shy away from the question of social impact). It looks at television as an international and transnational phenomenon (which is a new trend, approx. five years old only). It brings the methods and sources of the historian to a field almost exclusively populated by media and film studies scholars. It’s the first scholarly monograph on any of the three sitcoms (i.e. the first scholarly history of All in the Family, Till Death Us Do Part and Ekel Alfred/ Ein Herz und eine Seele). NB. In Germany the series is better known under its colloquial name ‘Ekel Alfred’ rather than its official name ‘Ein Herz und eine Seele’.