Forty-two years after its premiere, The Bob Newhart Show continues to matter. Based on Newhart’s buttoned-up comic sensibility — yes, before making Johnny Carson roar with laughter, Newhart had been an accountant — The Bob Newhart Show was the story of a Chicago psychologist, Bob Hartley; his lovely wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette); and the oddball characters that lived in their building and visited his office. With its simple, straightforward premise — low-concept, even — the show became the template for subsequent comic-driven sitcoms, good and bad.

For six seasons, The Bob Newhart Show ran as part of CBS’s juggernaut Saturday-night lineup, which...