Exclusive Clip: Don Rickles’s CPO Sharkey (Season 2)
For years CPO Sharkey was one of those hard to find pieces of lost TV nostalgia. It was a show loyal fans of Don Rickles’s remembered fondly, but probably didn’t see more than once (when it first aired in the 1970s). Or you know the show from a classic Tonight Show best of clip when Johnny Carson invaded the show’s set to berate Rickles live on air. But it had an odd place in TV history, a throwback comedy in the style of military sitcoms such as McHale’s Navy and Sgt Bilko, in the era of more “sophisticated comedies” like MASH, All in the Family, or Barney Miller. And in fact setting a wacky sitcom in the military less than a year after the Vietnam War probably hurt its potential for mass appeal.
But a big part of the show was the fact that it was at once a throwback to the earliest kind of television comedies (many show Rickles appeared in) and also critical of its out-of-date surroundings and main character; a more lovable and talkative Archie Bunker type. Rickles, the master of insult comedy, finally had a show tailored to his specific brand of humor, and he proves to not only be a great comic, but fine comic actor.
Now CPO Sharkey Seasons 1 and 2 are available on DVD, and you can enjoy an exclusive clip from Season 2 below.
