October 23, 2014

Brit TV, stars when they were young, old sports announcers, holiday specials, and prunes!

Lots to cover today, so let's get to it, shall we?

Oh, my. The Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland offers a picture of Kevin Whately and John Thaw, Lewis and Morse respectively, from the start of the series Inspector Morse.  Were we really that young once?

Cult TV is back with allegory in the epic Prisoner episode "Once Upon a Time."  These have been stimulating, enthralling discussions, and I've certainly done poorly at describing how much I get out of them, at least in terms of leaving comments.  Boy, they're interesting!

I've taken shots from time to time at The Love Boat when I do my TV Guide writeups, but there's no denying it was a big show, and a lot of fun for a lot of people.  See what I mean when Joanna takes a look at the 1977 Christmas episode at Christmas TV History.

In the past, I've identified Pat Summerall as one of the "big game" voices of televised sports.  It seemed as if he could do it all - not only the NFL, but golf, tennis, the NBA - even baseball from time to time.  But until I read it at Classic TV Sports, I didn't know that he and his sidekick Tom Brookshier once called a boxing match.

You'll read a brief mention of it in Saturday's TV Guide piece, but this week The Last Drive-In tells us about the great Chuck Jones and his Raggedy Ann and Andy Halloween adventure "The Pumpkin Who Couldn't Smile."*

*I almost wrote "The Pumpkin Without a Smile."  Could it be because I'm currently listening to Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten, "The Woman Without a Face"?

Heh.  I was just reading a book that had a mention of prunes (I'll tell you about it sometime), and here Michael's TV Tray has something about October 17 having been "Four Prunes Day"!  Plus there's a dandy commercial for prunes featuring Ray Bradbury!

There's nothing particularly English about prunes, although I suppose they like them as much as anyone, but that doesn't stop me from linking to Embarrassing Treasures' latest Family Affair Friday, "Oh To Be in England."

Since I'm doing this on time this week (Wednesday night, to be exact), no update on the latest TV Guide recap at Television Obscurities, but be sure to go there and read the latest on Friday!

And speaking of TV Guides as we are, I don't link there often enough, but the TV Guide Historian gives us a daily fix of classic TVG.  Today - a Close-Up on PBS' Smithsonian World.  Does PBS even show many programs like this anymore?

Another site I don't tell you about often enough is the terrific site Television.AU, all about the history of television in Australia.  Here, Andrew talks about the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the long-running police drama Homicide. I really ought to become familiar with more things than Aussie Rules Football.

Finally, a word of sympathy to anyone who might be reading this in Canada.  Horrific images from Ottawa; thoughts and prayers to everyone in our neighbor to the north.

That's it for today - see you back here on Saturday, right? TV  

1 comment:

  1. Hi Mitchell, many thanks for the link and kind words. Hope there is something of interest to non-Aussies :)

    Cheers, Andrew.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for writing! Drive safely!