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"Green Acres" is a very funny sitcom which ran for six years starting in 1965. Eddie Albert played a naively idealistic lawyer named Oliver Wendell Douglas, who moved to a farm with his glamorous wife Lisa (played by Zsa Zsa Gabor's sister Eva).

The strange show sprang to life when the network demanded another series about rural America like "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Petticoat Junction." But this one was wackier, with "Mr. Douglas" adjusting to life in the farm belt, his peculiar assortment of neighbors, and some cartoonishly impossible problems.

Mr. Haney was the county swindler, always arriving in an old truck and cheerily offering ridiculous bargains. Once he promised the back of his truck hid a secretary who could type any message onto a birthday cake. "Will you get out of here, Mr. Haney?" the lawyer-farmer replies, and he's immediately handed a birthday cake with "Will you get out of here, Mr. Haney?" written across the top in frosting.

But other townspeople were equally exasperating. A slow-talking farmer named Mr. Ziffle lived nearby, and his pig Arnold, would frequently visit the Douglas's household to turn on their TV! Eb, the farm's slow-witted farmhand, always insisted on calling Mr. Douglas "Dad." This format actually had its roots in a 1950s radio show called "Granby's Green Acres," which its creator simply updated for television. Executive producer Paul Henning had even produced a famous radio show with George Burns and Gracie Allen, which also followed the same pattern. A "straight man" finds himself at the center of wacky dialogue from his wife and a recurring parade of neighbors.

But the fate of the Douglas's farm was never the real point. What made "Green Acres" stand out was all the crazy gags it managed to include. Glamorous Mrs. Douglas's was a terrible cook, and once tried to make jelly using the only fruit she had in her kitchen - bananas. But the writers would extend these gags, like the way her pancakes would only bubble ominously on the farmhouse stove. Paying a visit to Mr. Drucker's store, the farmer is told excitedly that "Mrs. Douglas's hotcakes are on the radio." The newest hit single is, impossibly, a recording of her bubbling pancakes.

Often the show would even break "the fourth wall" of television, with Mrs. Douglas apparently aware of some of the trappings of their TV show. In one episode she tells a visitor that the "Executive Producer" credit is about to appear in their kitchen - and it does. And when Mr. Douglas launches into a speech about the great American farm, his wife says she'll cue the fifer whose job it is to play "Yankee Doodle" in the background.

"Green Acres" mixed fast-moving stories with wordplay, slapstick, and lots of sight gags, and it was my favorite show when I was a child. I remember one episode which began with a simple plan to promote the town's agriculture. It ends with Mrs. Douglas throwing turnips from a hot air balloon, which causes Air Force jets to scramble in the mistaken belief it's a bombing raid.

With "Green Acres" you never knew what would happen next. But it was always very funny.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
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