The Barkleys while certainly not the nadir of the (now sadly completed) world of Staurday morning network cartoon shows, it was seen as that by some at the time.
In 1972, VARIETY editorialized on the weekend animation as "shrunken adult programming", because all of the shows seemed to be pale imitations of prime-time conterparts.
George Heinemann, the man in charge of NBC's children's programming, weakly defended his products by citing a single example of where this might be true, in that Henry Corden was instructed to try to sound like Carrol O'Connor's Archie Bunker character when doing The Barkleys.
I would say the show is somewhat, at least cast wise,like All In The Family, but at the same time it's like Life Of Riley, too. I'd guess that Corden's voice was probably closer to William Bendix anyway. That he (Arnie Barkley) is a loudmouth bus driver sort of reminds one of yet another classic character, too. "Arnie" was the name of a forgotten series starring Hershel Bernardi that ended the day "The Barkleys" debuted. Just saying.
It and all the other kids shows were, at that time anyway, spared the relentless dogmatic militant politics that had spread like a grass fire through prime time. Arnie had nothing new or socially relevant to say, it was an easy-for-kids to understand slapstick sitcom. The writing flaws are numerous, the story logic fails on many levels, and as been said, the animation is typical low-grade TV value of the time. Did kids really like it? My guess is they ignored it, as it was pitted against The Brady Kids on ABC and Josie And The Pussycats In Outer Space over at CBS.
Review of The Barkleys
