The best Andy Griffith’s drama movies

Jenna is a pregnant, unhappily married waitress in the deep south. She meets a newcomer to her town and falls into an unlikely relationship as a last attempt at happiness.

When an uncle is charged with murder, the event reverberates throughout a poor Arkansas family, including a struggling musician and his wife, her mother, her sister, and his father.

The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.

A 14-year-old girl in late 1960's America is inadvertently sucked into an odyssey of sex and drugs. She eventually seeks help.

Follow-up to Andy Griffith's big hit in "No Time for Sergeants" moves the action to the Coast Guard and WW II.

An agoraphobic woman who hasn't left her home in 20 years receives a visit from the spirit of her deceased husband who reminds her of a promise she made to scatter his ashes at his favorite vacation spot. With her daughters unavailable, she sets off to fulfill the promise herself.

Based on a true story, this film tells of a plastic surgeon who was suspected of causing the death of his first wife, the daughter of a wealthy member of Houston society. The doctor then marries his mistress, whom he had been keeping during his marriage. His former father-in-law, convinced that his daughter was murdered, determines to see the doctor punished.

A hard-drinking family man has been successful in his business despite his alcoholism. His daughter, a professional, struggles to meet her father's high expectations while she becomes addicted to prescription drugs; his son, who works for him and who serves as both his whipping boy and his drinking buddy, is becoming an alcoholic like his dad. Then the father's drinking finally takes its toll on his health, and he demands that his son bring him liquor in the hospital as his son's life, and his daughter's, fall apart at home.

Three ad agency executives are pressured into taking a motorbike trip to Baja by a big-ticket client. Along the way, the client is spurned by a young woman whose boyfriend sticks up for her. The client later disables their van, leading to their deaths in the desert. When the executives piece together what has happened, it leads to a showdown.

Wallace a wealthy landowner in Meriwether County, Georgia, has virtually unlimited power in the county, including having the sheriff under his control. When he murders a share cropper he thinks that he is powerful enough to get away with it. Because the act of murder took place in Coweta County, it is under the jurisdiction of the Coweta County sheriff who hunts the murderer without trepidation.

Andy Griffith plays a philandering apartment house manager who picks up a pretty young girl (Suzanne Hildur) in a bar. He takes her home, whereupon the girl's male cronies show up armed with guns. Griffith and his wife (Ida Lupino) are held hostage by the crooks, who plan to use the apartment as headquarters while they pull off a big robbery. Director Paul Wendkos stages the action essentially from the victim's point of view; we see only what they see, and are kept guessing as to the full details of the crime and the ultimate fate of the hostages. Based on a novel by Fielden Farrington, The Strangers in 7A was first telecast on November 14th, 1972 as a CBS Movie of the Week.

A superintendent (Gerald McRaney), trying to save his high school's troubled finances, falls in love with a teacher (Naomi Judd) whose music program he must cut.

This legal whodunit movie served as a pilot for the television series Matlock.