How the election ruined TV reruns

I wanted this to be a column about escaping the presidential election with some calming, apolitical TV - I need a break and thought you might, too.

It turns out, though, that although it's easy to recommend tuning out Sunday-morning talk shows and the 24/7 blather of cable news, it's not so simple to come up with a watch list that's entertaining and politics-free.

Because this election season seems to have divided us on more fronts than usual.

From the start, I ruled out two of my favorite new streaming shows, Amazon's 1970s newsroom drama, Good Girls Revolt and Netflix's Elizabeth II biography, The Crown, figuring the themes of women seeking or learning to exercise power might not entirely bridge the gap between Hillary Clinton's supporters and Donald Trump's.

Both shows will be waiting when things settle down.

The past still seemed a promising place to flee a divisive present. And where better to find it than Turner Classic Movies?

On Sunday at noon, Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford star in the 1973 romance The Way We Were. Or, as TCM describes it, "A fiery liberal fights to make her marriage to a successful writer work."

So, OK, maybe not that one.

Streisand and Redford are followed, at 2:15 p.m., by Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, a 1936 Frank Capra movie in which Cooper plays a man who inherits $20 million, is made fun of in the media, and ultimately has his sanity questioned.

Oops.

At 5:45, Cooper is back in 1957's Love in the Afternoon as an "aging tycoon" who courts a Parisian played by Audrey Hepburn, who was 28 years younger than her costar (and looked like his granddaughter). Read into that what you will. I've seen it and disqualified it for sheer ickiness.

Even Cary Grant - Cary Grant! - couldn't make the cut for viewing that shouldn't require a trigger warning for election themes.

At 8 p.m. Sunday, TCM is showing his 1937 film When You're in Love, whose synopsis raises the specter of immigration fraud: "An Australian opera singer [Grace Moore] hires a husband [Grant] so she can work in the U.S." And where do these two hatch their nefarious romcom plot? Mexico.

Fortunately, Sunday also marks SundanceTV's entry into the increasingly popular retro-TV game.

To promote a new daytime block that, like TV Land, MeTV, Cozi TV, and others, serves up reruns of old series for viewers unsatisfied by the hundreds of new ones, Sundance plans to air 48 hours of MASH episodes, beginning at 6 a.m.

A comedy set in an Army medical unit during the Korean War, MASH should be less politically charged now than it was in 1972, when the U.S. was still in Vietnam and the show's commentary on war's absurdities seemed more pointed. But liberal Alan Alda still pushes some people's buttons.

After this weekend, MASH will be featured every Monday on Sundance from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Tuesday - Election Day - brings seven hours of All in the Family, the classic Norman Lear sitcom that was never afraid of getting political (and that's already in heavy rotation on Logo and Antenna TV).

Rounding out the week are The Bob Newhart Show on Wednesdays, Mary Tyler Moore on Thursdays, and The Andy Griffith Show on Fridays.

Andy Griffith, you say? What could possibly be less political than watching Sheriff Andy Taylor impart life lessons to his redheaded son, Opie (Ron Howard)?

As someone whose husband follows the doings in Mayberry so closely I made the show's theme song his ringtone on my phone, I've tended to dismiss it as the fictional (not to mention startlingly white) small-town America some may long to return to.

So I was startled a few weeks ago to see a battle of the sexes break out in an episode from 1960 in which Ellie (Elinor Donahue) became the first woman to run for Town Council.

Introduced as a potential love interest for the widowed Andy, Ellie was the town's new pharmacist, which was groundbreaking enough for that time.

Her decision to run for office brings out some cringe-worthy comments from Andy about not worrying her "pretty little head" about "government business."

The sheriff's condescension turns to regret when he hears Opie aping his sexism. He eventually speaks in Ellie's favor and helps her win the election.

It's Andy's decency, not the outcome, that sticks with me. He had his biases, but he wasn't interested in passing them on to his son.

Whatever happens Tuesday, our politics could use a dose of Sheriff Taylor's civility.

Without it, we may never be able to watch reruns together again.