Edutainment means shows that blend an entertaining story with educational material. For example, The Magic School Bus tells stories while also teaching about science.
There are educational shows for adults, they’re usually called documentaries. But any that blend educational material with fiction? I guess an argument can be made that biographical films fall into this category but they usually take creative liberties and aren’t fully historically accurate. An argument can also be made for medical dramas and legal dramas, but I’m not sure how accurate the medical and legal information in them is. Of course, The Magic School Bus also takes creative liberties and has inaccurate science, but there’s always a segment at the end explaining where they took creative liberties.
How I Met Your Mother kind of had the vibe of a kids show that teaches moral lessons, but for adults. Edit for clarity: the reason I bring this up is I consider “moral of the week” a genre closely related to edutainment but not quite the same thing
Edit: now that I’m thinking about it, I guess Jeopardy and other trivia based game shows could qualify as edutainment. They’re not fictional, but they do blend entertainment and education
many shows of that era. barney miller, sanford and son, star trek, mash. Heck even I dream of genie and bewitched had some moral tales. Honestly morality was really common in shows but the tv fare got sorta crappy at a certain point.
I love Star Trek. And Bewitched
its funny because I did not think much of it or I dream of jenie when they were pretty close to new but rewatching I have respect for the female leads who both played multiple chracters in the show pretty effectively. Where I am at they do a star trek evening block with TOS followed by TNG and now I see diana troys mom in nurse chappel and vice versa. Shows really seem to start going down hill in the late 70’s and through the 80’s but maybe Im forgetting something great.