Around the dial

Did you see any of the Twilight Zone marathon over New Year's? It's keeping in that spirit that FredFlix offers 40 favorite Twilight Zone episodes. How many of yours made the list? Amazing how many memorable ones there are.

Speaking of the new year, Comfort TV looks at the classic TV year in review. It's fascinating how, as one gets older, time goes more quickly, and yet it becomes harder to remember everything that happened. Thanks, David!

At bare•bones e-zine, Jack gets 2020 off to a good start with the latest Stirling Silliphant entry in the Hitchcock Project. It's the second-season episode "A Bottle of Wine," and aside from the story itself, it's interesting to see how a writer changes the original story to make it a better fit for TV.

I very nearly wrote "Len Dawson" when I linked to this piece at Cult TV Blog that John wrote about British comedian Les Dawson and his 1979-80 series The Dawson Watch. I hadn't heard of Les before, but then I'm sure John hasn't heard of Len, so we're even. Read about this very funny show.

One of my favorite blogs (and Twitter feeds) is by Rick at Classic Film and TV Café; in case you're new to his site, here's a great place to start: his top 10 posts of 2019. Take some time to go through them, and I promise you'll make him a regular read.

We weren't able to get through the last week of 2019 without a couple more legends passing on: Lee Mendelson and Sue Lyon. Mendelson was best known for his work with Charles Schulz in bringing the Peanuts characters to TV; fittingly, considering A Charlie Brown Christmas, he died on Christmas Day. Sue Lyon, who died the following day, is best known for Lolita, although she did many movies and television shows. At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence has fine appreciations of them both.

At The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew has a fine review of Stars in My Eyes, a memoir from choreographer and director Tony Charmoli, who has quite a lot to say about his days in early television. It sounds quite interesting, and I do trust Andrew's recommendations!

So much for the first few days of 2020, and so much more when you tune in tomorrow for another look at a TV Guide from the past. TV