The Kallikaks
| The Kallikaks | |
|---|---|
A promotional photo for The Kallikaks, showing David Huddleston as J. T. Kallikak.
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| Genre | Situation comedy |
| Created by |
Roger Price Stanley Ralph Ross |
| Starring |
David Huddleston Edie McClurg Bonnie Ebsen Patrick J. Peterson Peter Palmer |
| Theme music composer | Stanley Ralph Ross |
| Opening theme | "Beat the System", performed by Roy Clark |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 5 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Stanley Ralph Ross |
| Producer(s) | George Yanok |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | August 3 – August 31, 1977 |
The Kallikaks is a 1977 United States comedic television series starring David Huddleston which centers around a family from Appalachia that moves to California to run a decrepit gasoline station. The show aired from August 3 to August 31, 1977.
Jasper T. "J. T." Kallikak is a coal miner from Appalachia. He inherits a run-down two-pump gasoline station in the fictional town of Nowhere, California. Thinking that as his own boss he will have a better life, he moves his impoverished family – his big-hearted and overly affectionate wife Venus, his status-seeking teenage daughter Bobbie Lou, and his 10-year-old son Junior, who is a smarter version of his father, prone to using big words, and a genius with mechanical things – from West Virginia to California to run the gas station, selling no-name gasoline. J. T.'s boarder and only employee there is Oscar Heinz, a German immigrant who can barely speak English and as a result often gets things mixed up. Bobbi Lou gets a job at a nearby fried chicken stand.
J. T. is conniving, greedy, and inclined toward get-rich-quick schemes; he boasts of never having paid taxes, saying that there is no need to as long as there are fools who do pay their taxes. He and his family are always trying to – in the words of the show's theme song – "beat the system;" for example, they try to apply for welfare even though they are employed, and a social worker has to turn them away. The pumps at their gas station are rigged, and generally, their schemes to get ahead – which always seem to fail – involve conning and cheating someone else.
Stanley Ralph Ross and Roger Price created The Kallikaks. Ross was its executive producer and George Yanok was its producer. Ross, Price, and Ron Kantor wrote the episodes. The title for the series comes from an early twentieth century sociological study whose author, Henry H. Goddard, coined the name The Kallikak Family as the title of his 1912 book about the study.
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