March 18, 2024

What's on TV? Sunday, March 20, 1955




Some small but interesting tidbits in today's listings: singer Caterina Valente makes her American TV debut on the Colgate Comedy Hour; she's unknown enough that her first name is misspelled "Katerina." (She, along with Gordon MacRae and Kaye Ballard, make a formidable lineup, but I'd still give the edge to Ed Sullivan.) At 8:00 p.m., ABC carries a simulcast of Walter Winchell's 15-minute radio program; you might get a glimpse of him later at one of his favorite haunts, Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club, where tonight Billingsley welcomes Les Paul and Mary Ford. And if you're looking for a movie or two to watch, it's your day; there are no less than 18 of them on between the five stations in the Chicagoland Edition, and even though many of them are only an hour long, that should still fill the bill for fans of the flix.

March 16, 2024

This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1955




Xometimes you find the lede buried deep in the pages of TV Guide, calling no attention to itself, betraying no outward significance. Once I find that hook, that something-or-other that I can latch onto, it's clear sailing the rest of the way. That doesn't mean there has to be one, but it does tend to make things much easier. 

This week's lede almost slipped away from me; in fact, I was about three-quarters of the way through writing this before I found it. It comes on the final page of the listings for the final day of the week, and if you know the rest of the story, you'll find it almost audacious in its simplicity. It's the listing for Edward R. Murrow's interview show Person to Person (9:30 p.m. CT), in which we read that "Ed's off to the wide open spaces, where he stops at the Dallas, Tex., home of multimillionaire Clint Murchison." Clint Murchison is, in fact, one of the richest and most influential businessmen in the United States, and if that was all there was to it, you'd probably think that was all well and good, and then wonder what the late show is. And it's then that we begin, for Clint Murchison's story is as entertaining as anything we're apt to see in the dramatic anthologies that fill the nightly primetime schedule.

Murchison made his fortune in the oil fields of West Texas, and soon added natural gas to his portfolio. Having created one of the largest oil companies in the country, he began to diversify his interests, and soon he owned everything from the New York Central Railroad to Lionel Trains, plus publishing firms, insurance companies, banks, and industrial building materials suppliers. His business acumen made him hundreds of millions, and snagged him the cover of Time magazine.

It was the oil and gas business that remained his first love, though, and propelled his interest in politics, fighting to keep the government from regulating private industry. Not surprisingly, he also became an ardent anti-communist. He was a friend of J. Edgar Hoover (he was a stockholder in Henry Holt Publishing and used his influence to have them publish Hoover's book Masters of Deceit), the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (he hosted them at his ranch in Mexico), Dwight D. Eisenhower (he played a role in encouraging Ike to run for president), and Lyndon B. Johnson (he supported him for president in 1960). His patronage ensured the continuation of the oil depletion allowance, which saved him millions in taxes every year

What's more interesting, however, is Murchison's implication in several of the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy; supposedly, he hosted a party the night before Kennedy's death—a party at which Hoover, Johnson, Richard Nixon, and fellow billionaire H.L. Hunt were in attendance—after which Murchison is quoted as having said, "After tomorrow, those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat. That’s a promise." This story has been debunked considerably, particularly Nixon's attendance; he was seen that same night with Joan Crawford at the at the Empire Room of the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Dallas. The singer they were watching backs up the story; he even pointed Nixon out to the audience. That singer? Robert Clary. The Hogan's Heroes Robert Clary! I tell you, you can't make these things up. (As far as I know, Murchison was not an acquaintance of Clay Shaw, but who knows?) When Murchison died, in 1969, his worth was estimated at a half-billion dollars.

And the Murchison story doesn't end there! His son, Clint Murchison Jr., was also a successful (and wealthy) businessman. His distinction? He founded the Dallas Cowboys football team, among other things*. It was his idea to build Texas Stadium, and to leave the famous opening in the roof so the field would still be exposed to the elements. It was also at his instigation that the Cowboys became the first team to utilize computers in scouting; Murchison had a masters from MIT. He's a member of both the Texas Business Hall of Fame and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. Ironically, the Cowboys helped rebuild Dallas's image, which had been so tarnished—after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

*Murchison's supposed co-conspirator in the JFK assassination, H.L. Hunt, was the father of Lamar Hunt, one of the founders of the American Football League, and the inventor of the name "Super Bowl." His AFL football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, started out life as the Dallas Texans, competing with Murchison Jr.'s NFL Cowboys team for supremacy in Dallas; Hunt agreed to move his team to Kansas City when it became apparent that two teams could not survive in Dallas. 

In retrospect, it's no wonder that the soap opera Dallas was so popular with viewers. It provided almost as many salacious details, and was a lot easier to follow than real life.

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One of the reasons it was so important to come up with a hook for this week is that there's nothing particularly exceptional about this issue. There are no spectaculars, no close-ups jumping off the page, and because the era of contemporary movies hasn't yet begun, most of the features are B-movies from the 1930s and '40s. What was I to latch onto?

Well, this is, after all, the Golden Age of Television, an exciting time of boundary-breaking broadcasts: live drama anthologies from New York featuring soon-to-be famous directors and actors; variety shows starring some of the biggest names in entertainment, original programs that captured the affections of the viewing public. And boxing: in 1955, there are no less than four primetime boxing broadcasts each week.

All these shows are presented in TV Guide, for the most part, with little to no fanfare. Those working behind the scenes in the television industry knew that they were part of something special, something  revolutionary, not to be duplicated. Were viewers aware they were part of the Golden Age, though? Once they got beyond the simple miracle of television itself, these were just the shows they watched every week, some better than others, but all in all, nothing out of the ordinary. Just open the pages, and there they are. Let's take a look at some of them.

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Normally, Saturday night's highlight is The Jackie Gleason Show, but this week it's Stage Show (7:00 p.m. CT, CBS), hosted by Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and this week featuring special guest Nat King Cole. We're reassured that the Gleason show returns next week, but that didn't stop TV Guide from putting Art Carney on this week's cover. As Frank De Blois's accompanying story tells, Carney for years played a second banana for some of the biggest comics in show business: Fred Allen, Edgar Bergen, Morey Amsterdam, Milton Berle, and Henry Morgan among them.

Carney, Joyce Randolph, Gleason, and Audrey Meadows   
Carney's career started in junior high school, performing in front of the Elks Club in Mount Vernon, New York. After acting in a movie with James Stewart and playing on local radio in New York City, he first hit the big time with Morey Amsterdam in 1949, where his portrayal of Newton the Waiter evolved eventually into the Ed Norton character he plays today. By 1951, the Honeymooners skits were a regular part of Gleason's Cavalcade of Stars show, where the Norton character took full flight. He also found time for other roles; shows with Berle, Morgan, and Bert Lahr, and a turn as the Mad Hatter in a television adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. He has nothing but good things to say about those he's worked with, and credits Amsterdam for teaching him "plenty" about humor. "Morey’s a stand-up gagman. He’s not afraid to pass a gag along to another fellow. He’s not afraid you’re going to steal his act from him." Gleason's like that, too, he says; "The good ones aren't scared to let you have a laugh or two of your own."

Lately, as his fame has increased, he's started to branch out into dramatic roles, appearing on Studio One, Kraft Theatre, Suspense, and Climax. He's too busy, he says, for movies and Broadway. He lives modestly with his wife and three children, playing the part of, as De Blois says, "the most inconspicuous-looking $75,000-a year man in captivity." He could, in fact, be mistaken for "a fellow named Norton." 

As is typical for the time, nothing is mentioned of the alcoholism which Carney would battle for many years. And, as successful as Carney is at portraying Ed Norton (he would win multiple Emmys for the role), he would equal that success in the two forms that he said he was "too busy" for; he receives great acclaim as the original Felix Under in the Broadway version of The Odd Couple, and was nominated for a Tony for Lovers, while he wins a Best Actor Oscar in 1975 for the movie Harry and Tonto (during which he finally conquered his addictions), and later received the Best Actor award by the National Society of Film Critics for The Late Show. And every once in awhile, he'd show up as Norton in a revival of the Honeymooners. Not bad for someone who, in Carney's words, "started at the bottom in this business, and worked my way right into the sewer."

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A few weeks ago, I reviewed The Adams Chronicles, the PBS miniseries about America's illustrious Adams family. That series was based on the Adams family papers, which were donated by the family to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1954. As it turns out, that wasn't the first TV series based on the family papers; Sunday's Omnibus (4:00 p.m., CBS) presents another installment of newsman Allan Nevins's series on the family, "based strictly on the recently released Adams family papers." This week Nevins covers author and historian Henry, and his brother, railroad executive Charles Francis. The script is by Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian James T. Flexner, author of the definitive four-volume biography of George Washington; the series would later be awarded an honorable mention by the Peabody Awards.

Monday
 night features a quartet of programs that helped define CBS's success during the Golden Age,  starting with Burns & Allen at 7:00 p.m., followed by Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts at 7:30, I Love Lucy at 8:00, and December Bride at 8:30—talk about an early version of "Must See TV." December Bride is, arguably, the least-well-remembered of the four, and yet it ran for five successful seasons and 156 episodes, and spawned a successful spinoff, Pete and Gladys. Later, it's two of television's most respected drama anthologies; first, Charles Drake stars as a ruthless young actor climbing his way to the top on Robert Montgomery Presents (8:30 p.m., NBC), while Nina Foch, Glenda Farrell, and Edward Andrews headline "Miss Turner's Decision" on Studio One (9:00 p.m., CBS). And we can't forget Voice of Firestone (7;30 p.m., ABC), which began on radio in 1928 and would continue on TV, off and on, until 1962.

Tuesday features one of the great head-to-head matchups of all time: Milton Berle's variety show, currently called The Buick-Berle Show (7:00 p.m., NBC), vs. Bishop Fulton Sheen's Life is Worth Living (7:00 p.m., DuMont). It's a good-natured rivalry; Bishop Sheen once referred to himself as "Uncle Fultie," while Berle joked of Sheen that "He's got better writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." Two stalwarts of the 1950s follow: Make Room for Daddy (8:00 p.m., CBS), starring "one of America's great entertainers," the now all-but-forgotten Danny Thomas; followed by The Red Skelton Show (8:30 p.m., CBS), with Red's guest, singer-comedienne Mary McCarty.

Wednesday evening starts with one of the most important shows in the evolution of 1950s television: Disneyland (6:30 p.m., ABC). Not only did it stabilize a network in desperate need of a signature hit, its success signaled the arrival of the major movie studios into television production; it also, by the way, financed the construction of Disneyland. Tonight's episode is the Academy Award-winning short Seal Island, accompanied by a short that gives viewers a look at how the Disney team of naturalist photographers goes about gathering the footage for their nature films. Here's a video of the Seal Island show that was broadcast on November 10 of the previous year, but the description suggests that the show's content is much the same as it is tonight. Later in the evening, it's Kraft Television Theatre (8:00 p.m., NBC), the anthology series which began in 1947 and, when it left the air in 1958, was the longest-running show in television history. Tonight's episode, "The Story of Mary Surratt," stars Doreen Lang, Bruce Gordon, and Paul Mazursky. Oh, and there's more boxing.

Friday and Smith on the trail of "The Big Number"    
We start Thursday with another anthology, Climax (7:30 p.m., CBS), and "The Darkest Hour" starring Zachary Scott and Joanne Dru, directed by John Frankenheimer. Climax ran for four seasons; two of its most notable episodes were "The Long Goodbye," with Dick Powell reprising his role as private eye Philip Marlowe; and "Casino Royale," the first adaptation of a James Bond story, with American Barry Nelson playing the superspy. You can't celebrate the Golden Age without an episode of Dragnet, now, can you? Jack Webb's groundbreaking police drama is in its fourth season: tonight (8:00 p.m., NBC), Friday and his partner Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) track down a bank robber in "The Big Number." Another anthology rounds out the evening: Four Star Playhouse (8:30 p.m. CBS); the four stars, who co-own the production company and rotate as stars, are Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven, and the aforementioned Dick Powell.

Friday night has a host of familiar shows, beginning with The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (7:00 p.m., ABC), in its third of 14 seasons. That's followed by Topper (7:30 p.m., CBS), which only ran for two seasons but remains a part of pop culture; Our Miss Brooks (8:30 p.m., CBS), the spinoff of the long-running radio series with Eve Arden; The Line-Up (9:00 p.m., CBS), a very good police drama which could be thought of as the San Francisco version of Dragnet and ran for six season, starring Warner Anderson and Tom Tully; and Edward R. Murrow's interview show Person to Person (9:30 p.m., CBS), which set the stage for celebrity interview shows, albeit with Murrow's gravitas thrown into the mix. 

And this doesn't include daytime shows, such as Today (7:00 a.m.), The Garry Moore Show (9:00 a.m., CBS), and Arthur Godfrey Time (9:30 a.m., CBS); The Tonight Show, in its second year with Steve Allen; the CBS soap operas Love of Life (11:15 a.m.), Search for Tomorrow (11:30 a.m.), and The Guiding Light (11:45 a.m.); and kids' shows like the nationally-franchised Romper Room (11:00 a.m., WGN) and Howdy Doody (4:30 p.m., NBC), which started in 1947 and continues as a daily show until next year, when it moves to Saturday mornings. 

Many of these programs have since become cherished institutions, part of television history. Others, while big at the time, are just footnotes today. And while some of them look dated to us today, some are as fresh as ever, stories that stand the test of time. 

You just have to know where to look. 

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Speaking of familiar faces, one of the most familiar faces of the era is Tennessee Ernie Ford, the country and gospel singer currently hosting a weekday variety show (11:00 a.m., NBC). That's one of the shows featured in this week's Program of the Week review. It's a pleasant-enough show, our critic reports, but there's nothing unique about it, nothing special. The fault lies not with Ernie himself—he's "an accomplished and versatile singer"—and his supporting cast, headed by 15-year-old Molly Bee, is personable enough, mixing well with Ford. No, what really drags down the show is Ernie's interviews with his guests; while he's "glib enough to make his interviews interesting" when he's got the right material, too often they simply "plod along." One wonders, perhaps, "that the 'real' Ernie isn't strong enough to carry a day-after-day show." 

One wonders, on the other hand, if perhaps they should simply have let Ernie be Ernie. Later in the year, he'll score his biggest-ever hit with "Sixteen Tons," which holds the number one position on the Billboard country chart for ten weeks, before crossing over to the Billboard pop chart where it's number one for an additional eight weeks, and next season, Ernie lands in primetime with The Ford Show, featuring the animated versions of the Peanuts gang in segments directed by Bill Melendez. The Ford Show runs for five successful seasons, and the "hillbilly characterizations" which seemed not to win the critic's favor in this issue seem not to be a liability here. 

Of course, Ford can also a polished and smooth personality when he so chooses—on The Ford Show he would famously do adaptations of The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan—but he would demonstrate that he knew, perhaps better than the experts, how to reach his audience. "Television's still in its infancy, as far as entertaining a live audience is concerned. There is a lack of knowledge on how to entertain in the home," he would tell TV Guide five years later. "People get kinda used to thinkin', 'Well, tonight's the night ol' Ernie will be here.'" As for the hymns that he sings to close his show, the executives were against it; "They told me I couldn't sing hymns because it 'brings people down.' That's ridiculous. I don't think the good Lord cares for a bunch of deadheads. I mean, you don't have to put on sackcloth and sit in a pile of ashes to sing a hymn. Some of the most beautiful music is in hymns. Well, sir, I won, and now the hymns are the biggest think we have on the show."

The second show being reviewed this week, The Star and the Story, falls at the other end of the familiarity spectrum. It's another dramatic anthology, with the "gimmick" that each week's star chooses their own play, i.e. playing to their own strengths. So far the series has offered excellent performances by Edmund O'Brien, Angela Lansbury, and Judith Anderson, among others, and they've demonstrated that they know "both the type of character they can best portray and what makes for good TV viewing." (Not unlike Ernie Ford, come to think of it.) The verdict on The Star and the Story is that "the stars and the stories, aided by fine production, [make] this a high-quality entry." Maybe so, but I dare say it doesn't have as long a shelf life as Tennessee Ernie Ford does.

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MST3K alert: Lost Continent (1951) A rescue mission discovers a "Lost Continent." Cesar Romero, Hillary Brooke. (Sunday, 9:00 a.m., WGN) This brief description hardly does the movie justice, and editing it down to fit a one-hour Sunday morning timeslot doesn't help things. But without the interstitial MST3K features, you don't have a movie anyway: Crypto-dad Hugh Beaumont as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, rock climbing, and Cesar Romero—really, who could ask for anything more? TV  

March 15, 2024

Around the dial




We begin this week at Comfort TV, where David continues his night-by-night retrospective on 1970s television with Friday, 1973: a night that begins with the final season of The Brady Bunch, and continues with such favorites as Sanford and Son, The Odd Couple, Room 222, Love American Style, and The Dean Martin Show. Not bad at all.

At Cult TV Blog, John looks at an episode from the first season of The Avengers that no longer exists: "Dance with Death." Well, I mean, obviously it did exist, and it still does, in the form of a Big Finish audio version, but this post is based on the original TV script, and it is absolutely well worth reading. Both the script and John's review, that is.

Ready for another dose of The Avengers? You'll find it at A View from the Junkyard, where Roger and Mike compare notes on "You'll Catch Your Death," as Steed and Tara battle a nursing academy that's a front for a deadly organization peddling a allergen to which nobody is immune. I'd hate to think that this resembles any recent situation we might recognize.

Martin Grams dips into the crossover zone with the 1949 movie The Life of Riley, based on the popular radio comedy of the same name, starring William Bendix as Chester Riley, with most of the original radio cast. It was this movie that kept Bendix from reprising his role as Riley in the television version of the show, which instead cast Jackie Gleason in the lead.

Remember the 1960s sitcom Camp Runamuck? What's that? You don't? Well, it's a good thing for you that Television Obscurities does, and this week Robert takes us back to look at the episode "Say, You’re a Bleeder, Aren’t You? Asked Tom Cuttingly." Got to love a show that can work a Tom Swiftie like that into the title.

Albert Salmi: whether or not you recognize the name (and I'm betting a lot of you do), you'll certainly recognize the face of one of television's more recognizable character actors of the classic era. But do you know the tragedy of his real-life story? You can find out the grim details this week at TravalancheTV  

March 13, 2024

Keeping you on the edge of your seat




I had a mildly interesting experience the other night; call it a kind of epiphany, if that isn't too heavy a word to use. We were watching Jericho, the 1966-67 World War II espionage series that ran for 16 episodes on CBS*, and could be combined as a kind of cross between Mission: Impossible and Hogan's Heroes. In this particular episode, the teamcode name Jericho, hence the titleis attempting to retrieve an SS safe that contains the names of leaders of the French Resistance. 

*One of the reasons you might not be familiar with it is that it ran opposite Batman on ABC and Daniel Boone on NBC.

For reasons that aren't important right now (and might not have been that important to begin with), conventional safecracking methods aren't an option. Fortunately, however, the resistance just happens to have a duplicate safe, one which they procured during a previous mission. And so, if you can't break into a safe, our heroes decide to do the next best thing: steal it, and replace it with the duplicate. This involves hauling the duplicate safe to the top of a building across the street from where the safe with the list is located, transporting it across the street via a pully, lowering down to where it can be brought in through an open window (well, at least it was open after one of the Jericho members was done with it), and switching it with the safe belonging to the SS, which is then removed from the building and brought back to resistance headquarters via the same procedure in reverse. (Where are Barney and Willy when you need them?) Got all that? 

Now, the men of Jericho have to be careful in pulling off a safe transfer of the safes (so to speak); they can't afford to make any noise, so as not to alert the SS officer in the other room. (The Rat Patrol's Hans Gudegast, whom I swear must have played a Nazi officer in every World War II TV drama that's ever been made before he changed his name to Eric Braedon and became a soap opera idol.) But it turns out that the wheels on the bottom of the safe squeak, which means it has to be placed on its side on an Oriental rug and dragged across the floor to the window, and then the duplicate safe dragged back in its place. 

It's a surprisingly tense scene, even though we know that Jericho, by virtue of being the good guys, is contractually bound to succeed. At one point, as the safe is being pushed into place, it bumps against the wall—and Gudegast's reaction tells you he hears it and almost decides to investigate, but dismisses the noise. And as I watched, I found myself unusually caught up in the drama. I was leaning forward on the couch, my muscles tensed; I might have even been holding my breath.

But why should I have felt that way? The outcome of this audacious move wasn't really in any doubt. Had the scene come earlier in the episode, when there was a time for a backup plan to be attempted in case this one failed, there might have been cause for concern. But for an experienced television viewer who knows about things like running times and four-act structures, there was no reason to be worried; there wasn't really enough time to try anything else. Oh, it could have ended in a wild shootout, I suppose, but that isn't really how Jericho operates, and it would have been kind of a letdown. 

I found myself pondering this after the episode had concluded—and, I should stress, the scene was suspenseful enough that this thought didn't interrupt me as I was watching. But as I considered the reason, I thought back to a concept I've written about before: that of false jeopardy, the idea of putting one or more of the main characters in a situation, the outcome of which is predetermined by their status as a series regular. If the show's namesake, for example, is on trial for murder, suffers from a potentially fatal illness, or is being held hostage, you know everything's going to turn out all right in the end, unless you've got reason to believe there are some nasty contract negotiations going on behind the scenes. The only valid suspense involves how the situation is going to resolve itself. It's an awful premise around which to shape an episode.

Will the men of Jericho get out of this safe-ly?
However, false jeopardy can work in a limited sense. In this case, where a genuinely suspenseful situation exists—will the safe swap succeed without Gudegast finding out about it?—a viewer can get caught up in the tension of how the scene unfolds. I mean, you knew that the Mission: Impossible team was going to pull off their incredibly intricate capers each week; the magic was in seeing them actually do it. 

But then, Mission: Impossible was an exceptionally well-written and acted series, with plots that were intricately detailed down to the nth degree and that revealed themselves only a bit at a time, so that while you knew the mission would succeed, you weren't at all sure just how it would happen. Most series aren't like that; Jericho, for instance. It had the potential to be entertaining, and the best episodes were legitimately exciting. However, it had neither the consistency nor the talent (on either side of the camera) to reassure the viewer that each week's adventure could succeed on its own merits, without suffering one of those "Oh, come on!" moments that requires said viewer to suspend disbelief beyond a certain point. 

Which brings us back to Jericho. In thinking about it, I realized that, for me at least, the tension arising from the scene was not so much about the outcome; rather, what was keeping me in suspense was whether or not the scene would pivot around something stupid happening, something so wildly implausible and illogical that I'd have to believe either the Nazi officers involved were among the most inept any military had ever seen—men who would put Sergeant Shultz to shame—or that the agents of Jericho were luckier than anyone who'd ever gotten rich playing the slots in Vegas. I think you know the kind of thing I'm talking about here; it's something that's so distracting, so beyond the realm, that it brings the entire scene to a standstill, and causes you to wonder it, perhaps, you might have a future in scriptwriting if this is the best that Hollywood has to offer.

The good news is that this episode of Jericho passed the test. Oh, the boundaries were pushed a little; the reason Gudegast doesn't go to investigate the noise he hears is that his secretary (a Belgian national who's actually a member of the resistance, with her name on that list inside the safe, and is working with Jericho) is supposed to be in the room putting on some jewelry that Gudegast has given her in an attempt at seduction, so of course a gentleman wouldn't go barging in on her at a time like that. A little weak, perhaps, but we'll give it it a pass since this part of the storyline was introduced organically and had been present from the beginning, as opposed to being dumped on us all of a sudden.

(I did wonder why none of the German soldiers guarding the building noticed a safe being pulled back-and-forth on a rope over their heads, but this was all happening at night, and I suppose it isn't exactly the kind of thing you steel yourself to be on the lookout for when you go on duty that night. Besides, you'd expect this part of the plan to be implausible, and you'd be right.)

My question to you is this: how many times have you experienced something similar, during a show you were enjoying, when you discovered that the only reason you were holding your breath was not because of the innate tension of the scene, but because you were worried that the writers or the director might ruin the moment with something stupid? Now that I think about it, it's happened to me more than a few times, and it's always a disappointment. Maybe I'm too demanding when it comes to plausibility (Maybe? you say), but this issue of false jeopardy, or whatever you want to call it, is something real, something that can diminish the quality of a episode or cheapen the suspense it's trying to generate. In this case, Jericho was able to pull it off. I wish I could say that more often about more programs. TV  

March 11, 2024

What's on TV? Thursday, March 14, 1968



By now, I've done probably close to 30 TV Guides from Northern California, and never before have I remembered seeing a listing for a program called Assignment: San Francisco (10:00 p.m., KGO). In fact, I paid scant attention to it this week (after all, KGO is in San Francisco, so it could be some kind of public affairs program) until I noticed that it's hosted by Jake Ehrlich, the famed attorney who was the basis for the legal drama Sam Benedict. That made me stop and read the program description, and what do you know: it is an episode of Sam Benedict, just under a different title! I Googled "Assignment: San Francisco" and wasn't able to find anything—admittedly, I didn't look too hard for it—so I'm assuming it might have been a local version, especially considering Ehrlich's presence. Can you recall any other examples of syndicated shows being hosted by the real-life person who inspired the lead character?

March 9, 2024

This week in TV Guide: March 9, 1968




It's an election year, 1968 is, in case you hadn't noticed. And things kick off this Tuesday with the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Primary, one of the most fateful editions in the Granite State's history. The Republican side is pretty much cut-and-dried; after Michigan Governor George Romney dropped out of the race two weeks ago, the way has been left open for Richard Nixon, who wins a decisive victory en route to the Republican nomination. However, the Democratic race is anything but cut-and-dried, and it is Senator Eugene McCarthy's surprise showing against President Johnson (although he finished second behind LBJ, his 42 percent vote total was a deadly blow to the president) that is the story of the night.

The networks have plans in place for coverage of the primary results; both CBS and ABC plan hour-long reports beginning at 10:00 p.m. ET*; NBC's coverage runs a half-hour, from 11:30 p.m. to midnight, although they plan a ten-minute update during Tuesday Night at the Movies (Invitation to a Gunfighter, in case you're keeping score). In fact, you can see the CBS broadcast here, which includes coverage of the day's other big news event: the appearance of Secretary of State Dean Rusk before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ("Networks may pre-empt regular programming to cover the hearings," we're advised.) As far as things go, it's all Vietnam, all the time.

*Richard K. Doan, in an article that was already dated when it appeared in the following week's issue, mentioned that the networks had "canceled plans for prime-time primary-night specials in favor of bulletins and brief late-evening vote summaries." Had they reassessed those plans in light of a McCarthy rise in the polls, or was the decision made after this edition went to press? We may never know.


Last month, Walter Cronkite had delivered his verdict on Vietnam ("To say we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. . . Negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could."), and now, as we see in The Doan Report, the media gloves are off. Cronkite's CBS colleague Eric Sevareid says LBJ is trapped in a situation "largely of his own making," and that a bombing pause could "pretty certainly save thousands of lives." On NBC Radio, David Brinkley argues that U.S. policy is achieving nothing, that "It is destroying Vietnam in the process of saving it." ABC's Bob Young "couldn't agree with Brinkley more," and says that the threat touted by the Administration "is yet to be proved out." Of the regular nighttime newsman, Doan says, only Howard K. Smith and Chet Huntley could be said to be supporting LBJ's war policy; Huntley calls a potential bombing pause "extremely hazardous," and says that more troops "are the only route open to us so far." All the newsmen hasten to add that these are their views, not their network's.

I mention all this not just because it's here, but to demonstrate how much Vietnam dominates everything right now. Even the civil rights movement has become entangled with it, with figures from Martin Luther King Jr. to Muhammad Ali speaking out on it. This is the beginning of a hectic few months in the news business, and we'll be witness to it all: Johnson drops out, Kennedy drops in, King and Kennedy are both assassinated in a matter of weeks, and then there's the Chicago convention. And, although we won't know about it for awhile, the same day that Kennedy announces his candidacy, there's a massacre in My Lai. Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy ride. And, as we'll see next, we're not the only ones wondering about how television presents it.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

It's not often that Cleveland Amory steps away from the world of entertainment to review a news program; even less often does he step away from prime time altogether to critique a Sunday morning show. That's the case this week, though, as Cleve takes on the venerable NBC press conference of the air, Meet the Press. And what happens when the press meets Cleveland Amory?

Meet the Press is, Amory stresses, an important show. It is one of the few live programs still broadcast on television, which makes it "a sort of last best hope for the kind of public figure who, before he reaches your screen, is so often carefully cut, edited and fitted in to the politics of the news show involved." There are, however, some "very strange things" about the show, things that make one think that the show could do better. One is the statement, repeated on every program, that "The questions asked do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the panelists." Does this, Amory wonders, mean that "the line of questioning for the panelists is planned in advance"? If so that really renders them as little more than mouthpieces, playing roles in a predetermined story that follows a script written by someone else. Another is the producer and regular panelist, Lawrence E. Spivak, whom most people think of as 
the face of Meet the Press. "Either Mr. Spivak is one of the country’s rudest men or he feels that, for the good of his show, he should appear to be ruder than he is. We prefer to believe the latter—in any case, he regularly chooses extraordinarily rude panels." Again, if this is true, it means that the show is more interested in providing entertainment than simply presenting the facts. It kind of reminds you of the shows on the so-called "news" channels today, doesn't it?

There is, of course, another possibility. In a recenpartt show, featuring three well-known anti-war activists: Senator J. William Fulbright, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Rev. William Sloane Coffin, the guests "were subjected to a grilling that would have embarrassed Joe Pyne," the controversial conservative talk-show host. By contrast, a program featuring General William Westmoreland and Ellsworth Bunker, ambassador to South Vietnam—"two guests whose pompous complacency fairly cried out for at least one reasonably puncturing question"—featured such deference that it "made you feel that the Messrs. Spivak and his associates were either already employees of President Johnson or confidently hoped, by their performances, to become so." Yet another program saw the scheduled guests bumped in favor of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, at the request of the White House; once again, "the fact remained that here again the panelists fairly oozed unctuous subservience." Especially in an election year, this is a bad look for a program that purports to represent the best in television journalism. Meet the Press, Amory insists, can do better than that. "Otherwise it may find that it may not, like so many programs, just go off the air—it may be the first to be actually voted off." It's still on the air, 56 years later, but is it doing any better?

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The Hollywood Palace
is pre-empted Saturday night for "Götterdämmerung," the conclusion of ABC's epic three-night adaptation of William Shirer's best-seller The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. (9:30 p.m.) Parts one and two aired last Wednesday and Friday nights; the documentary, from David L. Wolper's production company, is narrated by Richard Basehart and boasts a score by Lalo Schifrin, parts of which were later used, virtually intact, on Mission: Impossible

Now what, I ask you, are the odds of this? Sunday afternoon at 5:30 p.m., KGSC in San Jose has the movie Blondie's Secret, part of the long-running film series (28 movies!) with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake as the famed comic strip characters Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead. At exactly the same time, Bay Area station KBHK is showing Blondie's Hero, part of the same series, featuring the same stars. Can you believe it? And as if that enough, Sacramento's KOVR, again at the same time, is showing Li'l Abner, yet another movie with comic strip roots. Well, maybe it's something to watch while you're reading the Sunday funnies.

Let's get a little more serious about movies, with ABC's Sunday movie presentation of The Bridge on the River Kwai, David Lean's 1957 Oscar winner starring Alec Guinness, which won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. (8:00 p.m.) As Judith Crist points out, the significance of its first airing on September 25, 1966 is part of television history: the movie, with a running time of three hours and 47 minutes, was presented uncut, in one night (rather than being split into two parts), and, with a record audience of 72 million (a 61 percent audience share), "programmers were convinced that feature films were the method of drawing an audience." That the figures are now equally high for "cheap-Jack tailored-for-television melodramas and far lesser motion pictures" is, she adds, "a comment on viewers rather than on Bridge."

Here's an interesting preview of things to come: on Monday night's Andy Griffith Show (9:00 p.m., CBS), it's the first of three episodes featuring Ken Berry as farmer Sam Jones, whom Andy and friends persuade to run for city council, even though Emmett has his eye on the same office. These episodes, coming near the end of the show's final season, set the stage for its successor, Mayberry R.F.D., which stars Berry in the lead role. That has to be one of the better transitions in spin-off history.

Speaking of history, Tuesday's history comes later in the evening, but in the meantime, KOVR, the one station that apparently wasn't showing Blondie movies on Sunday, makes up for it with Blondie's Anniversary (6:00 p.m.), meaning we only have 25 movies in the series to go. Later, The Red Skelton Hour gives us an interesting pairing of guests: Mannix star Mike Connors and singer Tom Jones (8:30 p.m., CBS), while Don Rickles has a double appearance, first on The Jerry Lewis Show (8:00 p.m., NBC) with Michele Lee, and later on Pat Boone in Hollywood (8:30 p.m., syndicated), with Frank Sinatra Jr., Cesar Romero, and Judy Carne. 

Ed McMahon is the host on Wednesday's Kraft Music Hall (9:00 p.m., NBC), in a salute to "Vaudeville '68," with Shelley Berman, Joan Rivers, Ed Ames, Sonny and Cher and the Young Rascals. It's along way from Perry Como, isn't it? After that, it's The Jonathan Winters Show (10:00 p.m., CBS), which I remember having enjoyed back in the day—but then, how can you not like Jonathan Winters? Anyway, his guests are Robert Morse, Vikki Carr, and the Young Saints (not to be confused with the Young Rascals, one supposes). 

Thursday, it's the final episode of Batman (7:30 p.m., ABC), which isn't a final episode at all, befitting the times. It's actually a little disappointing, in fact; for all the great signature villains appearing through the show's three seasons—Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, and either Julie Newmar or Eartha Kitt—the show says farewell with one of the gimmicky celebrity appearances that happened more and more in the final season: Zsa Zsa Gabor as Minerva. One wonders what might have been had the series actually moved to NBC for the fourth season, but, alas, the sets had already been dismantled by the time NBC made its move. I do like TV Guide's programming note mentioning the last show int the series, though; you'll have to see if you can find it in this coming Monday's piece. We're nowhere near the final episode of Ironside, but tonight's script is noteworthy in that it was co-written by mystery novelists Brett Halliday, the creator of detective Michael Shayne, and Bill S. Ballinger. Tonight, the burly chief investigates the connection between a plane bombing and an infant abandoned in his van. (9:00 p.m., NBC)

Friday
features a trio of varied programs that we'll look at to close out the week: first, The Actor (8:30 p.m., ABC) takes a psychological look at the occupation of stage actor, as prominent actors and actresses from the British stage give their impressions of the actor and his work; Alec Guinness narrates from a script written by critic Kenneth Tynan. On the nighttime version of The Hollywood Squares (9:30 p.m., NBC), Adam West is among the players, plugging his now-deceased show. Holy cancellation, Batman! And that's followed by the Junior Miss Pageant, live (or, in this Northern California edition, live-on-tape) from Mobile, Alabama (10:00 p.m,, NBC). Lorne Greene and Joanie Sommers are the co-hosts, and if you look it up, you'll find that the winner is Miss Oklahoma, Debi Faubion. 

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Once upon a time there was a woman named Candy Howard. "A cute little blonde," as Leslie Raddatz describes her. On December 20, 1965, she appeared on the inaugural broadcast of The Dating Game. A year later, she was a contestant on Dream Girl of '67, a program designed to identify "the most marriageable girl in America." Candy Howard did well on this program, but had to drop out because she married a young man she met on The Dating Game. Together, she and her new husband went on to appear on The Newlywed Game. Had it lasted longer, it's reasonable to assume she and her family might have made it to The Family Game as well. These four shows, last season, accounted for eleven hours per week on ABC, and they all come from "the current genius of the TV industry," Chuck Barris. Ah, only in America. 

For some psychiatrists, the success of the Barris shows is indicative of something deeper in society. Dr. Martin Grotjahn, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Southern California, compares them to group therapy and sees in them "the need to confess, the need for release everyone seeks in the horrible isolation in which we all live." And Dr. Steven Topel, another L.A.-based psychiatrist, adds, that "The people who play these games on television do so because they want to communicate. But if someone said, 'You have just revealed yourself—this is the way it is'-—they would say, 'Oh, no, we were just playing a game.' There are so many forces barring communication today that people find it difficult to communicate unless they think they are playing a game." I wonder how closely this correlates to the confessional state we see in social media—I mean, do people think that, somehow, baring their souls (and, in some cases, a lot more!) on X or Instagram doesn't really count, that they were, as Dr. Topel says, "just playing a game"? Boy, are they in for a surprise.

Ask Barris about the success of his shows, and he offers a more earthy answer. "I don’t know what contribution we’re making to science or literature—the shows have to be fun," Barris tells Raddatz. Candy Howard Bell, an aspiring actress, "went on for the exposure," but adds, "Most of the people go on to meet someone." And a contestant on Family Game had another explanation: "Greed—if it weren’t for the money, most of them would never do it."

Five couples who met on The Dating Game have since married, and one of those marriages has already broken up. (I wonder how that compares with, say, The Bachelor?) One actress ditched her date after a couple of days in Italy and went by herself to Denmark, leaving the date and their chaperone on their own. The article doesn't say who she was; I wonder if anyone knows, or if that's just one of those urban legends? And by the way, the chaperones? "They are usually the young, mini-skirted members of Barris’s staff of 100-odd," Raddatz notes, with the only requirement that they be over 21. And, one supposes, authorized to perform hits on behalf of the CIA.

What about the people who watch these shows? Says Dr. Topel, "People who watch these shows do so because they enjoy seeing people communicate." The most popular form of communication, not surprisingly, is the double-entendre, which tends to be more prevalent on daytime shows than those airing in primetime. While contestants are wanted not to "talk dirty," the briefings they are given are often "laced with Borscht Belt jokes that become so vulgar that one woman contestant on The Family Game said, 'My husband was ready to tell that guy he didn’t allow language like that in front of his wife.'" Barris says the purpose is to "enliven the atmosphere" and make things fun, but as one staffer says, "You never know the results until they spit it out." I'm sure that most of us who've seen these shows can insert our favorite examples here, otherwise, you can probably find them on YouTube. 

Not that long ago, Chuck Barris was working at ABC, in charge of daytime programming in Hollywood. He then started his own company, and shortly thereafter sold The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game to the network. His big break, he says, came courtesy of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. You see, the day The Newlywed Game premiered, CBS preempted Password to carry a speech by McNamara. (Vietnam, you know.) People not in the mood for current events switched to ABC, giving the show a much bigger audience than it otherwise would have had. Many of them stayed as time went on. Eventually, CBS cancelled Password. And the rest—including, or perhaps especially, Chuck Barris—is history.

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A little behind-the-scenes news: NBC's changed its mind about The Saint after sponsor feedback; instead, the network's decided to renew I Dream of Jeannie and add a new sitcom, Julia, starring Diahann Carroll. (The Saint does make it on the schedule, though, as a summer replacement for Star Trek.) The network failed in its efforts to sign Tennessee Ernie Ford, so in his place they're planning a variety hour with Phyllis Diller. (Good luck with that.) 

In other news, ◀ Burl Ives will be playing Gepetto, replacing Art Carney, in the Christmas Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of "Pinocchio," with Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits playing the wooden marionette. Carney, meanwhile, is said to be heading to London to costar with the aforementioned Phyllis Diller in the movie, The Adding Machine. He doesn't appear in that either, though; I wonder if his noted problems with alcohol played any part in either of these.

Barbara Rush and Tippy Walker are "all set" to join the cast of Peyton Place as mother and daughter, which they do. Steve Allen's coming back with a new talk-variety show, which will be available to local stations in both 60- and 90-minute versions. Political humorist Art Buchwald has been signed by CBS to be a "very special commentator" on their coverage of the Republican and Democratic conventions; will people remember him as much as they do William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal over at ABC? 

And in case you're wondering about the question on the cover—Is Television Really Keeping Us Informed?—the answer, at least according to Neil Hickey, is No. Television news, currently, is "a medium of headlines and short feature stories, and has neither the time nor the capacity to describe a day’s worth of world and local events in the fullness of their detail and meaning," with the result that "many Americans are now thinking and voting their prejudices—and even shaping their lives— based on television’s skeletal version of what’s really going on in an increasingly complex and incomprehensible world." How very like today, don't you think? TV  

March 8, 2024

Around the dial




We meet a new writer this week at barebones e-zine, as Jack introduces us to the first of two Calvin Clements scripts in the Hitchcock Project: season seven's "Beta Delta Gamma," a creepy episode that I remember well from years past, with Burt Brickerhoff, Joel Crothers, and Duke Howard.

At Cult TV Blog, John reviews The XYZ Man, a 1976-77 British series with an intriguing, if totally discredited premise, that of a man genetically predisposed to crime. Despite the bad reputation the series has had from critics, it's worth checking out if for nothing more than its depiction of the Seventies, and as you know, we're big here on how television accurately presents a period in time.

We've linked to Bobby Ellerbee's fantastic site Eyes of a Generation many times in the past, but never before has Bobby been part of another story we're linking to—until now. Check out Garroway at Large, where Jodie tells us how some of Bobby's prized camera collection is now part of Jodie's prized camera collection!

At Inner Toob, it's a tribute to Jerry Springer, now part of Inner Toob's "Television Crossover Hall of Fame" for the many times he played different versions of himself on other television shows. I've mentioned before that Springer was a character in the first book I ever wrote (but didn't publish; maybe someday), so I'm always up for scenarios like this.

Martin Grams reviews a quartet of books this week, biographies of four varied stars whom you'll surely recognize from their work on television, in the movies, or both: actors Ray Danton, Robert Horton, and Herbert Marshall; and film director Arthur Penn. Each of them has a fascinating life story to tell, and any of these books would be valuable adds to your library.

Speaking of books, at Pop Matters, Peter Thomas Webb has a review of a book on a very interesting topic: Eleanor Patterson’s Bootlegging the Airwaves, a history of radio and television as seen through the eyes of bootlegging communities from the pre-digital era. Regardless of your thoughts on copyright law, groups like these are responsible for keeping alive much of media history.

Terence pays tribute to comedian Richard Lewis at A Shroud of Thoughts. Lewis, who died last week, aged 76, was a much-loved mainstay of the Carson-Letterman shows, as well as co-star of the sitcom Anything But Love and regular on Curb Your Enthusiasm. But, as Terence points out, that barely scratches the surface of his six-decade career.

I usually cover the Avengers reviews at The View from the Junkyard, so I thought I'd remind you that you also get regular summaries of episodes from Land of the Lost, the Seventies Saturday morning series whose theme will stay with you for days once you start to think of it. This week, Mike looks at the episode "A Nice Day," which is what I hope you're having this Friday. TV  

March 6, 2024

The New Top Ten: Maigret




The first time I saw Maigret on television, I was young and impressionable and didn't know the ways of the world. It was 1993, and Maigret was running on Mystery!, the anthology series on PBS. Michael Gambon was playing Maigret, and I suppose I was attracted to the series because I'd seen and liked Gambon in The Singing Detective a few years before; I'd never heard of the character Jules Maigret, the famous French detective created by Georges Simenon. (I'd never heard of Simenon either, for that matter.) 

The first thing that puzzled me was that Maigret and all the actors were speaking British English, with no French accent, and I found this tremendously disorienting. As I say, I was a naif when it came to things like this; I was used to American television, and wasn't familiar with the British practice of having actors speak naturally, without trying to put on phony accents, French or not. I kept checking to make sure this was set in France, and that they hadn't moved the action to England or something like that, and frankly it distracted me from following the stories. I can't even remember if I saw all of the episodes. Did I mention that I was also stupid back then?

The years passed, and while I didn't pursue Maigret any further—either the series or the books on which it was based—I didn't forget about it, either. When Rowan Atkinson took his turn as Maigret in 2016, I was intrigued—The Black Adder, you know; it seems as if I was always coming to Maigret through some other series the lead actor had appeared in—and recorded it with the intention of watching it later. Well, you know what they say about intentions; by the time we could have gotten to it, we'd moved, and I lost all the episodes that were on the DVR because we changed cable companies. Oh well; c'est la vie, as Maigret would have said.

But for some reason unknown to me, either then or now, I started looking into Maigret more seriously. I even caught an adaptation of a Maigret story that was produced on Studio One back in the early 1950s; "Stan, the Killer," it was. The actor playing Maigret (Romney Brent) didn't leave that much of an impression on me, which was understandable, I suppose, since Eli Wallach was the star. But—and here's what remains a mystery to me—I started researching various versions of Maigret, trying to find which version critics considered the definitive one, if such a thing existed. 

And that's how I stumbled onto Rupert Davies. Maigret had been played by many actors both in the movies and on television; even Charles Laughton took his turn, as the first English-language Maigret. Bruno Cremer played him in the 1990s into the early 2000s and those were well-reviewed, but the versions online didn't have subtitles, and since they were all in French, they were useless to me. But the Davies version—almost everyone with an opinion thought his was the best, or one of the best. Georges Simenon himself said, "At last, I have found the perfect Maigret!" Well, that was good enough for me. Davies had played Maigret on the BBC for four seasons, from 1960 to 1963, and, remarkably for the Beeb, all 52 episodes still existed.  And eventually, as so often happens if you're willing to be patient and keep your eyes open, the series popped up on YouTube and the Internet Archives. (It's also on DVD, but it ain't cheap.)

By this time I'd gotten to know the character a little better. I still hadn't read any of Simenon's books—that would come later—but I was familiar enough with him to know that Maigret was no knuckle-dragging savage, of which no better example exists than Law & Order: SVU's Elliot Stabler; or a smart-ass know-it-all, as in every investigator who's ever appeared on NCIS. He's a shrewd judge of character, puffing on his ever-present pipe with a world-weariness offset by wry good humor, and a blunt, direct style of questioning; he's able to sense when things don't add up, skeptical when the pieces fall into place too easily, and not easily fooled. He's also experienced in the human condition, with an ability to look beyond the surface, and an unwillingness to condemn people based on imperfections in their past lives. 

Indeed, the impression that Davies-as-Maigret gives off is an overwhelming sense of humanity; he displays a particular ability to put himself in place of the victim and see where it leads him, which imbues in him an extraordinary sensitivity toward those he investigates. Even the satisfaction of solving a case comes with a particular cloud, for he knows that when he wins, someone loses his liberty, or his life. People complain that I'm too soft on criminals, he notes in one episode, but unlike the magistrates and prosecutors—bureaucrats, Maigret dismissively views them—he lives in the world of crime, and understands the human drama that plays out within. 

In her essay, "Maigret's Law," sociologist Susan S. Silbey notes that "Maigret is a believer in sociological justice [who] works to repair the torn fabric of social relations to recompose the troubled lives that end in murder." Oftentimes, "he arranges outcomes in which the guilty person feels the need to confess, or to execute their own punishment." While the bureaucrats are eager to categorize and name everything as soon as they come across it, Maigret "simply lets it register; the sorting, the understanding comes later." But then, to the bureaucrats, crime is a form waiting to be filled out, "'satisfied that [they] had done [their] duty' if they named the rules and issued notices, willing to let others do the work." For Maigret, the human element is never far from the surface; perhaps it remains there all the time, in plain sight for those like Maigret who understand it. Is this what is so often missing from American police stories? Perhaps. . .

If all this sounds terribly dense, as if one needs an advanced degree of some kind to enjoy it, forget it. The 52 episodes, all taken from the Simenon's fantastic oeuvre—he wrote 75 Maigret novels, and 28 short stories—do an impressive job of condensing the often-complex narratives into 50-minute timeslots. The cases are always interesting and the outcomes not always predictable, but the pleasure is in watching Maigret solve them—and it is a real pleasure.

What else? The location shots, all done in France, the music, and the use of colloquial French terms throughout—Maigret is always referred to by his subordinates as patron, or chief—establish the setting admirably; no concerns here that the actors don't speak with French accents! The supporting cast is led by Ewen Solon as Maigret's loyal number two, Lucas, a man with the unique ability to combine cynicism and good humor; Neville Jason as young Lapointe and Victor Lucas as muscular Torrence round out Maigret's closest associates. Helen Shingler plays Maigret's devoted wife Louise, who understands him all-too-well; as a couple, they compliment each other perfectly, and Maigret himself knows he would be an incomplete man without her.

In the end, it was very easy to come to the conclusion that Maigret should be part of the new Top Ten. I was sold on it from the first episode. There was a warmth I felt toward him—toward both the character and the actor, really; that warmth being a reciprocation of the warmth which emanates from Rupert Davies himself as he projects Maigret's inner humanity and desire for justice. Indeed, as I look through this, I find that I might have used the word "justice" many more times than I have, since justice is the unifying aspect that joins Maigret to so many of my favorite characters on television: the justice that Judd seeks for his clients, the justice that Dr. Baxter searches for in the diagnoses of his patients, the justice that is (seemingly) unattainable for Dr. Richard Kimble, the justice that is an overriding concern for the Doctor as he travels in his Tardis. And why not; the dictionary tells us that "justice" comes from the Old French justitia, which in its Latin root meant "righteousness and equity." It's a companion to the Latin justus, meaning "upright and just." The well-drawn character can demonstrate such justice, but it requires the actor to bring it out, to project it on the screen.

There had to be a reason, after all, why Simenon considered Rupert Davies the "perfect" Maigret. And while there are other Maigret stories to be told, other actors to play him and other series to watch, he'll always be Maigret to me. TV