The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau

I vividly remember watching this show with an almost religious fervor. As I recall, there were generally about 4-6 shows produced each year during it's run, and each was always worth watching. Some ended up being fairly premature given more recent developments in various aspects of the science, but most were generally very well founded and provided new insights into some of the conditions of marine life and sea life behaviors.

Near the end of the run, it became more schmaltzy and wasn't as interesting as the early shows, but that could be just me growing from age 10 to age 17. It turns out that it also gave us tons of idiosyncratic and stereotypical culture references that various humorists have been using for decades.