From
television. Either a
sitcom minus the sound of
laughter, or a
drama with a great
sense of humor. The term can
retroactively apply to much older examples, such as certain episodes of
Bonanza or
Burke's Law, or the entire run of
The Wild, Wild West, but it was coined for a pair of short-lived
ABC shows:
Hooperman, starring
John Ritter, and
The Slap Maxwell Story, with Dabney Coleman. They were
sitcoms that dispensed with both the canned-laughter laugh track and the live studio
audience.
(There was probably an episode or two of M*A*S*H that dispensed with
the laugh track as well, and there may have been an episode of The Odd
Couple that did the same, during a time in which its two stars revolted
against the use of canned laughter in the first or second season of the show - I believe an episode was broadcast one week minus the laugh track that had originally been dubbed onto it).
Audience reaction to Hooperman and Slap Maxwell was lukewarm,
perhaps because they didn't have the crutch of being told when the actors were making with the funny stuff. Both shows were cancelled rather quickly. Perhaps the best example of a dramedy would be a longer-running series, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.