As a child of the 1970s, Saturday nights on CBS were a delight. They featured The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show. The first was the first prime time TV show I remember liking. The second I eventually came to like even more.

I found Newhart, who played psychologist Robert Hartley—known universally on the show as “Bob”—to be instantly likable.

I also found the weekly juxtaposition between the sober, sensible Hartley and the crazy people who entered his office, lived in his apartment building, and otherwise regularly crossed his path to be both irresistible and consistently funny.

Who could ever forget the next-door neighbor, airline navigator Howard Borden (played by Bill Daily), who deprived Bob of the peace and quiet he craved by regularly walking into the Hartleys’ apartment, unbidden, to borrow something, invite himself to dinner or breakfast, and otherwise be a genial but general nuisance?

Howard was aided by Bob’s beautiful and capable wife Emily (played memorably by Suzanne Pleshette), who was far more tolerant of Howard than Bob was since she recognized that the navigator of sophisticated jets flying all over the world was essentially helpless.

Emily was the decisive voice. Despite Bob’s occasional bluster, it was crystal clear that he would never deny his beloved wife anything she really wanted. 

Characters at least as helpless as Howard Borden followed Bob wherever he went. Of course, part of this was a result of his being a psychologist. His group therapy sessions always genially explored Bob’s patients’ inability to cope with the demands of modern life. I liked all of Bob’s regular patients but I was particularly fond of two:  the timid Mr. Herd, a sometime salesman whose door-to-door sales technique involved standing quietly on the porch for a few minutes and, if the door did not open, going to another door, hoping that it would be the one to open without any need for him to knock.

The other was Dr. Hartley’s most demanding patient, Elliot Carlin (played by the inimitable Jack Riley). Carlin was a wealthy real estate developer who took delight in pointing out the trivial nature of his fellow patients’ problems and the inadequacy of Hartley’s proposed solutions, but whose own phobias were more numerous and intractable than all the other group therapy patients put together. 

The people who worked in the offices next to Dr. Hartley’s were as memorable as the patients, and the banter between Jerry Robinson the dentist (Peter Bonerz) and Carol Kester Bondurant the receptionist (Marcia Wallace) was often the highlight of the episode.

The show never flagged or faltered.  But, after six seasons, Newhart wisely decided to end the popular show while it still was top-notch.

Then he did it again: he was the star of a second successful prime-time comedy series, Newhart, in which Newhart played Dick Loudon, a writer of how-to-do books who had moved from New York City to rural Vermont. His residence in Vermont was a colonial house that was also an inn run by Loudon and his wife Joanna (played by the lovely Mary Frann). Because of Vermont’s wintry climate and the drafty old inn, Frann often wore sweaters.

Once again, Newhart’s Loudon tried to remain an island of relative calm in a town filled with eccentrics, including the inn’s handyman, George (played by Newhart friend Tom Poston), and the quintessential yuppie couple, the thoroughly spoiled Stephanie Vanderkellen (Julia Duffy) and her doting boyfriend, Michael Harris (Peter Scolari).

But the most eccentric characters in the town were a trio of woodsmen, whose entrance was inevitably followed by this introduction:  “I am Larry and this is my brother Daryl and this is my other brother Daryl.”  So good was their act that people who never watched the show knew who “Larry, Daryl, and Daryl” were.

Neither Daryl ever spoke until “Newhart’s” final episode, in which Dick Loudon is hit on the head, loses consciousness, and wakes up, as Dr. Robert Hartley, lying in bed with Emily. He describes the strange dream from which he had just awakened, then finishes the series by giving Emily this unforgettable advice: “You really should wear more sweaters.”

Bob Newhart created two successful prime-time series, both of which was popular with the general public, well-regarded by critics, and consistently funny. Each series remains eminently watchable, and each can be watched by the entire family. There is no sex, no graphic talk about sex, no profanity, and no violence. 

That Newhart was both consistently funny and consistently clean was a result of his keen intelligence and his deep—though never ostentatious—Catholic faith. 

Newhart’s intelligence was evident from the beginning of his career as a comedian. He essentially created the world of comedy records, beginning with his Grammy-winning recording of his stand-up routines, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart. The album included a technique Newhart invented, the telephone monolog. That technique was used in the ever-relevant skit about Abraham Lincoln receiving advice on the Gettysburg Address from Madison Avenue.

Newhart remained sharp until the end. A few years ago, I read an interview with Newhart in a publication of Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus. The interview was conducted because of a major faux pas by the Jesuits. The publication had just done an article on well-known comedians who had attended Jesuit institutions but omitted the most famous member of the club, Newhart himself. 

Newhart was asked about his high school alma mater, St. Ignatius High School in Chicago. Referring to the magazine’s praise for John Mulaney, a far more recent graduate of S. I. H. S., Newhart deadpanned that:

“Saint Ignatius is known as the ‘comedian’s high school’ because every 53 years a stand-up comic comes out of there.”

Newhart was generous toward fellow Jesuit alumni. Peter Bonerz, Jerry the dentist, went to Marquette High. Jack Riley, who played Mr. Carlin, went to the same high school I did, St. Ignatius in Cleveland.

A cousin of Riley is a member of a small group that counts the money collected at each weekend Mass at our parish. My wife is a member of that same group. This morning, Riley’s cousin posted this about Bob Newhart: “I got to meet him several times. What you saw on TV is how he is. The nicest guy!!!”

Bye, Bob.  We were lucky to have known you, whether through our TVs or in person. 

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

(Correction: the 17^th paragraph of the original version of this article incorrectly stated that Bob Newhart’s original comedy record won an Emmy Award. It won a Grammy Award.)