Though plenty of television adaptations try their hardest to pivot from their source material, M*A*S*H executive producers Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds strayed from the norm when they were developing their own sitcom. Enamored by the 1970 film, itself based on a 1968 novel by Richard Hooker, Gelbart and Reynolds felt that in order to make a quality series, they had to do the film justice.

“From the beginning, Gene and I felt our chief obligation was to remain faithful to the spirit of the film, and as one eventual chronicler of the series, David S. Reiss, would put it, ‘not convert it into a more or less routine service-gang comedy or a high jinx war,’” wrote Gelbart in his memoir, Laughing Matters. “We were determined to maintain the tone of the picture, although we knew we would not be permitted the freedom with profanity and sexual situations on the little screen, as had been employed and enjoyed on the big one.”

Of course, Gelbart and Reynolds were tasked with a balancing act, caught between comedy and social commentary.

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“The prevailing question about the projected series (although Gene and I never asked it) was: ‘How the hell is anybody going to take that subject - people at war - and make it at all funny?’” wrote Gelbart. “It was too early in the game to be able to articulate my feelings, but I knew it was going to have to be a whole lot more than funny. Funny was easy. How not to trivialize human suffering by trying to be comic about it, that was the challenge.”