Return to Mayberry is a 1986 American made-for-television romantic comedy film based on the 1960s sitcoms The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D.. The film premiered on April 13, 1986, on NBC, and was the highest-rated television film of 1986.

Rance Howard, Ron Howard's father, played the Preacher, and Karen Knotts, Don Knotts' daughter, played a receptionist.

Ron Howard, playing an adult Opie, had quit his acting career by this point to focus on being a film director, and had already directed the hit movies Night Shift (1982), Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985). Return to Mayberry was the last significant acting role for Howard.

The Forty Acres backlot in Culver City, California, where most of the Mayberry exteriors were filmed in the original series, had been razed in 1976. For this movie, the town of Los Olivos, California doubled for Mayberry, with a stretch of Grand Avenue being used for the town square. A reconstruction of the original courthouse set was built in a small park at the corner of Grand and Alamo Pintado Avenues. The mid-intersection flagpole seen repeatedly in the movie is a veterans memorial that was built in Los Olivos shortly after World War I.

Ratings and reception

Return to Mayberry premiered on April 13, 1986 at 9:00pm (ET/PT) as part of NBC Sunday Night at the Movies, and earned a Nielsen rating of 33.0, meaning around one-third of the TV-viewing public had tuned in to the broadcast. It became the top-rated made-for-TV movie of the 1985-86 season, and the second most-watched program that week (behind The Cosby Show).

Although Return to Mayberry was a ratings success, its critical reception was mixed. A review in The New York Times opined that its "slow pace, extremely modest level of humor and straightforward and predictable plotting make Return to Mayberry a less appealing reunion for the audience than it may have been for its actors." Time discussed the film only when it was in its last days of production, saying, "Even on TV's crowded reunion calendar, Return to Mayberry is a special event", but offering no substantive comment on the merits of the finished product.

More recent reviews have been kinder, calling it "marvelous blast from the past"

2004 re-broadcast

Mayberry was rebroadcast on Veterans Day in 2004 by some ABC affiliates as a replacement for the network's unedited rebroadcast of the film Saving Private Ryan. Ryan included language which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had ruled "indecent and profane" in March 2004, and Mayberry was seen as a safer alternative, despite the fact that Ryan had already aired on the network in 2001 and 2002. The chief executive of Citadel Communications — the main affiliate owner to rebroadcast Mayberry — cited the recent 2004 US Presidential election as a justification. "We're just coming off an election where moral issues were cited as a reason by people voting one way or another", the executive said, "and, in my opinion, the commissioners are fearful of the new Congress." In the end, however, no complaints were lodged against ABC affiliates which showed Ryan, perhaps because even conservative watchdogs like the Parents Television Council supported the unedited rebroadcast of the film.

Confusion with later reunion projects

In 2003, four surviving principal cast members (Griffith, Howard, Knotts, and Nabors) came together for a reunion special that featured the actors reminiscing about their time on the show. The production was interspersed with archival footage and short filmed interviews with some of the other surviving cast members. This special was called The Andy Griffith Show: Back to Mayberry. Some media outlets have occasionally called this show, too, Return to Mayberry, which led to some confusion between the two productions. The title, The Andy Griffith Show: Back to Mayberry, distinguishes this production from a 1993 production titled The Andy Griffith Show Reunion.

Home media

The film was originally released on VHS in 1989 by Forum Home Video under license from Viacom (). A budget release from Video Treasures followed. It was released again in 1994 by Regent Entertainment ().

In 2007, the film was released on DVD as a bonus feature included with The Andy Griffith Show box set (), in 2010 as a special feature on the DVD The Andy Griffith Show 50th Anniversary: The Best of Mayberry, and on Blu-ray in 2014 as a special feature on The Andy Griffith Show: Season 1.

It was released individually on DVD on June 13, 2017.

Notes

References

  • Official Ernest T. Bass website