June 10, 2016

Around the dial

The Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland links to this article about the man who saved Monty Python from being erased. Whenever I see stories like this, I'm aware of just how fragile so much of our classic TV heritage is, and why it's important to preserve what we do have.

As bare-bones e-zine continues with the Hitchcock Project, I had to struggle for a moment to recall the episode entitled "The Crocodile Case," but as soon as I started reading, it came back to me. A clever, entertaining episode, with a great twist at the end.

A new addition to the Classic TV Blog Association is Reelweegiemidget, with a question that's fun whether you're talking about television or movies: recasting roles made famous by other actors. In this case, who would you cast as Indiana Jones?

Another week, another British detective series unfamiliar to me until now. However, thanks to British TV Detectives, we can read about Death in Paradise, the comedy-drama that has aired on BBC One since 2011.

Cult TV returns to his analysis of the first season of The Avengers with a review of "Crescent Moon." I was trying to remember whether or not this was one of the handful of episodes available on the DVD set of The Avengers, but fortunately I quickly found out hardly any of it still exists - and what does exist isn't particularly satisfying.

I will be honest here and tell you that B.J. and the Bear was not a series I watched when it was on, and I've seldom given it much thought. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate Some Polish American Guy's look at the second season episode "Pogo Lil." It's certainly the week for great episode recaps, isn't it?

Joanna at Christmas TV History is calling for submissions for her annual Christmas in July roundup. This year, it's a questionnaire that anyone can answer, so there's no excuse for you not to join in the fun. I dropped the ball on this last year, but not this time!

At Television Obscurities it's a look at one of those comic book TV-tie ins - this one for the short-lived relevant lawyer series The Young Lawyers, which aired on ABC in 1970. It wasn't one of Lee J. Cobb's more distinguished moments in showbiz.

Finally, from The Ringer, another article that doesn't deal specifically with classic TV programs, but which I find quite relevant.  It's Chuck Klosterman's essay on "The Future of Television," and one of the questions he asks is this: Which American TV programs — if watched by a curious person in a distant future — would latently represent how day-to-day American society actually was? Klosterman says it's "the kind of question even people who think about television for a living don’t think about very often," but in fact it's the question that's driven me since the start of this blog. And I still don't have an answer. TV  

1 comment:

Thanks for writing! Drive safely!