Around the dial

It's another two-fer Friday this week, which means we should have twice as many things to look at, right? 

Let's begin with this article from Smithsonian Magazine that takes a fond look back at the precursor to today's distance learning: the venerable CBS early-morning series Sunrise Semester. I wonder: if there wasn't any such thing as online education, would television have stepped in with something similar in response to the virus?

At The Twilight Zone Vortex, Jordan takes a closer look at the excellent fifth-season episode In Praise of Pip, which features a wonderfully nuanced performance by Jack Klugman, and includes what is very likely the first mention of American casualties in Vietnam—a script change suggested by deForest Research, after Rod Serling had originally used Laos. Recommended reading, but then you already knew that.

On the latest edition of Flipside: The True Story of Bob Crane (available also at Bob Crane: Life and Legacy, Carol and Linda discuss why, as part of "Becoming Colonel Hogan," Bob had such a lousy German accent. The answer, as they say, may surprise you.

I suppose I'm more "Yesterday" than "Tomorrow," but that doesn't stop me from appreciating the latest at Cult TV Blog: John's write-up of the Brit series The Tomorrow People; "In various places it is definitely stonking good television, but in others represents the worst of 1970s TV." Find out what he thinks of the 1975 series "Secret Weapon."

Hey, how about another British show? This time, it's the return of British TV Detectives, and Rick's review of the ongoing detective show The Bay, starring Morven Christie) as a family liaison officer struggling to balance turmoil both on the job and at home. Glad to see this blog back!

Let's stay with the British theme for a moment more, as RealWeegieMidget Reviews looks at 2003's "The Wife of Bath," which Gill describes as "A Sexed-up Modern Day Adaptation of one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales" with Julie Walters, Paul Nicholls and Bill Nighy. Seeing as how Chaucer was already fairly bawdy, you can imagine what happens here.

Two from Comfort TV: first, David takes the measure of IMDb's "top rated classic TV episodes," and asks if we agree. (No, although there are a couple of perceptive choices.) To cleanse the palate, so to speak, there's also the twelve most memorable commercials featuring classic TV stars, and that's a much easier sell.

The latest edition of the Hitchcock Project at bare-bones e-zine has Jack looking at the 1959 episode "No Pain," a nasty little piece written by William Fay and starring Brian Keith and Joanna Moore as an unhappily married couple, one of whom has a surprise in store for the other. . .

"Oh, what the heck: here's another British show to end on. At Drunk TV, it's a look at the BBC's 1966 "nightmarish" version of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Jonathan Miller, and featuring an all-star cast including Peter Sellers, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Michael Redgrave, Wilfrid Brambell, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, John Bird, Leo McKern, and newcomer Anne-Marie Mallik as Alice.

There—I think we proved the adage "double your pleasure, double your fun," don't you? TV