RFI: The 1970’s Vaudeville / Music hall / Old-timey variety show revival

I’ve always been kind of fascinated by how many things from the 1970’s I see that seem to be related to what looks like late 19th / early 20th century stage entertainment, and yet how completely this aspect of the 1970’s has been forgotten, and isn’t part of the popular idea of 70’s culture (I’m sure it existed in other decades too, but most things I see like this seem to be from the 70’s).
It seems to have mostly taken the form of TV variety shows, right? The most basic image I can think of is of men dressed in candy striped suits, wearing skimmer hats, twirling bamboo (?) canes and doing a softshoe song and dance. Maybe there weren’t any shows strictly dedicated to replicating the old stage look, but even on the variety shows that didn’t have an “old days” theme, sometimes the regular cast members would put on that stereotypical outfit and do a song and dance routine like that (I know the Brady Bunch Variety Hour did this; I think Sonny & Cher probably did too). There was the Muppet Show, of course, although I think they quickly drifted away from the concept. Some mimes might fit into this too. I want to say Shields and Yarnell, but I think there might have been a male pair of mimes that made the old timey look their specialty. I don’t know if any of this translated over to the UK or not; was stuff like The Good Old Days anything like this? I can even think of a couple of pop songs from the 70’s in which elements of the music seem to refer to the culture I’m thinking of; for example Sweet City Woman by the Stampeders, or Gimme Dat Ding by the Pipkins (I like both of those songs, personally). You know, the sound of a jangly out-of-tune saloon piano, or of quickly strummed (rather than finger picked) banjos
Part of why I’m so interested in this idea is that the impression I get is that this kind of entertainment was the very most mainstream thing in existence, that it was watched mostly by old people and hopeless squares, that it was the flattest and dullest kind of family-safe pabulum at the time. It’s amazing to me that what seems to have been such a large phenomenon has now mostly evaporated into history because it had absolutely no edge to it at all!
It’s not that I like this stuff, really, I think it was probably mostly shit; I’m just amazed at the void that it seems to have left in people’s memories. Was it the case that even at the time no one really liked any of it, but that the people who the programs were aimed at were just the sort of no-brain Nixon-voting TV dinner eaters that would watch whatever was put in front of them that seemed to be the least offensive thing available? (I’m not trying to wallow in the cartoonish invective there, it’s just that having not been around in the 70’s that’s as fleshed out as my idea of the audience for this kind of entertainment product has been able to get.)
Was it even really a revival/resurgence at all, or was it actually just the tail-end of a tradition that had never gone away? What could be considered the end of it? When the Muppet Show went off the air? Or is there something from the last 30 years that I’m forgetting to consider?