From ‘Charlie’s Angels’ to ‘Wonder Woman’: Why 1976 Was a Huge Year for Women on TV

Happy days, quite literally, were here again for a nation watching TV in the banner year of 1976.

The dark shadows of Watergate and the Vietnam War were fading, and America celebrated its 200th birthday all year long with “Bicentennial Minutes” among other patriotic offerings. Yearning for simpler, if not always more joyous, times prevailed in popular series including the Depression-era drama The Waltons and the pioneer-era Little House on the Prairie. Viewers merrily escaped into nostalgia from a more recent past generation as they embraced the 1950s sitcom shenanigans of Happy Days and its brash new spinoff, Laverne & Shirley.