I videotaped most of the series when it reran on WNET some 20 years ago, and I keep trying to like it. But even to this avid TV viewer who lived through that era and is fascinated by cultural anthropology, the show is largely unwatchable.The problem is that except for a couple of episodes (episode 2 and maybe the one with Lance in Paris), it's dull and slow. What made it shocking in 1973 -- the strangeness of being able to peek into someone else's day-to-day life -- has now been eclipsed by a torrent of tell-all talk shows and contrived "reality shows." Without the show's original voyeuristic shock value, ten of the twelve hours are unadulterated tedium (though I imagine a nifty 100-minute documentary could be culled from the footage).

One of the key aspects that makes this series compelling is the director's insistence that it somehow adheres to strict rules (if such are even theoretically possible) of cinema Veriee. So much of the "reality" we observe in this precursor to the current deluge of reality shows is very subtly contrived. Given the fact that Pat and Bill were on the outs well before the series started, plus the fact that Lance had already come out, much the seemingly real-time tension viewers experience is really quite contrived in much the same manner as a scripted soap opera. The show--even in all of its heavy handed scandal-mongering--does illustrate the strains present in many modern nuclear families and does elicit much interest if only for the fact that it captures the strange transition between the spontaneous daily drama of life as seen from a fly on the wall and the media's shaping of such drama to suit its own thesis. By watching Lance, who even goes so far as to tip off the audience by self-consciously parodying his on-stage persona, we can readily observe the innocent wonder years of PBS well before it grew into the great dictator of perception that it is today.

God I wish this was available on DVD or video, I remember seeing it years ago on PBS, late at night, just came upon it by accident and was completely hooked. It was truly fascinating. The 70's were so strange and interesting, and this is the real deal, real life. The quintessential portrait of an American Family at an interesting time in history. Series like this should be well preserved and available for future generations, it's a tragedy.

An early version of the peek and see webcams of today like MTV's original'Real World' and 'Jennicam', the William Loud family of Santa Monica California allowed a television crew [PBS] to set up a camera and photograph >the Loud family in their daily activities barbeques, sibling hassles, petty squabbles between Pat Loud and her husband Bill, it was certainly a very unusual thing, this documentary it was sort of like peeking over your neighbor's fence and spying on them...a most unusual television production!