Maverick, Serling, and Doctor Who in Legos! Must be Around the Dial!

Aquiet week on the classic TV blog front; perhaps everyone's busy getting ready for Thanksgiving.  I know that's what I'm doing, which is why I'm actually typing this a couple of days in advance.  Who knows; maybe if I'd waited until Thursday, there would have been even more out there.  At any rate, we've always been about quality here, so let's get started.

Maverick is one of those shows that I knew I would like, based on the description, years before I ever got to actually see an episode.  The Horn Section continues Maverick Mondays with this review of the third season episode "The People's Friend," in which Bart (Jack Kelly) runs for public office.  I'm not sure he still wouldn't be a better choice!

At Grantland, James Hughes has a fascinating story on Rod Serling's fascination with boxing, among other things, and how Serling used the sport not only in episodes of The Twilight Zone, but as the basis of his classic Playhouse 90 episode "Requiem for a Heavyweight."  It neatly segues into other areas which Serling continued to explore; as David (The Sopranos) Chase says of TZ, “It wasn’t a comforting show.  It upset your usual mode of thinking. It was the only show at the time that was literate, the only show that had any relation to literature or poetry.”

Being a sucker for Doctor Who (both classic and reboot), I naturally have to link to The A/V Club's link to Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith's regeneration - in Legos.  A remarkable toy, the Lego - as Homer Simpson says of television, "Is there anything it can't do?"

I really do need to do the program listings more often; not only do people seem to like it, but I find them interesting myself - not only the ones I do, which I think give me a much better feel for the time even than just reviewing a TV Guide, but ones from other cities.  The TV Guide Historian proves the point this week with a look at WGN's schedule for Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1954.  Just think; that was only 13 years after Pearl Harbor itself.  That's as recent as 9/11 is to us.

Television Obscurities looked at TV Guide for the week of November 14, 1964, and among the programming highlights for that week was the event that never was: the heavyweight championship rematch between new champ Cassius Clay and former champ Sonny Liston.  It was scheduled for November 16th in Boston, but due to an injury to Clay in training camp, it wound up being held in Lewiston, Maine the next year.  I lived in Maine for four years; I've been to Lewiston, driven past the arena in which the fight was held, in fact, and I can tell you that there may never have been a stranger location for a heavyweight title fight than that.

I'm going to call it a wrap for today; come on back on Saturday and we'll celebrate Thanksgiving all over again, this time in 1971! TV