Around the dial

At Cult TV Blog, John takes a very interesting look at the early '70s British series Doomwatch and the episode "The Human Time Bomb"—a sociological look, one might say, focusing on high rise living, which was, as he says, "the sort of development which was in it's hay day while Our Sort of Television was being broadcast." A wonderful way to entrench an episode in a given period of time.

The Hitchcock Project continues at bare-bones e-zine, and this week Jack looks at "One More Mile to Go," the second season episode that provides the latest in the work of James P. Cavanagh. A great episode, with a wonderful performance by David Wayne as the murderer you might find yourself rooting for.

At Comfort TV, David provides a very nice coda in remembrance of the late Peter Tork via "The Monkees on Tour," the final episode of season one, a documentary which allows the audience backstage in a sense, giving us a look at the four leads not as characters, but actual flesh-and-blood people living out an incredible ride.

Remember when you'd tune in to Today and see Barbara Walters hawking a subscription to The National Observer or watch Ed McMahon peddling Alpo on The Tonight Show? Call me weird, but I kind of miss those days, but Jodie brings them back at The Garroway Project with a look at Dave Garroway (one of the all-time great pitchmen) doing a commercial for Watkins Products.

Hal returns to "F Troop Fridays" with the season one episode "Iron Horse Go Home" at The Horn Section. What happens when Our Heroes try to set themselves up as latter-day Peter Minuets? As F Troop hits its stride, we get an episode that provides, as Hal says, some wild moments as well as some guilty pleasures.

Episode #64 of Eventually Supertrain is here, and among the features in this episode, Dan and yours truly look at another fun episode of Bourbon Street Beat, a program that we've both gotten a big charge out of. If you've never seen an episode listen in to one of our podcasts—you may want to check it out. (Psst - it's available on the grey market.)

At The Ringer, Alison Herman asks a question that follows up nicely to one that David asked at Comfort TV last week: is a TV show good if no one talks about it? I admit I don't know how you answer that; after all, a major part of TV is entertainment, and if a show doesn't entertain because people don't see it, does it matter how good it is? A case of Schrödinger's TV, I'd say. TV