Around the dial

That could have been me up there in that picture, the little kid watching television so intently. If I'd had a chair like that. And if I was blond. And if we'd had wallpaer like that in our living room. Yep, could have been me. But I digress.

At Cult TV Blog, it's another week of The Avengers; this time, it's all the way back to the first season, as John looks at the reconstruction of "Toy Trap," with Steed and Keel (Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry) investigating a prostitution ring.

That's not the only Brit show on the list; at Fire-Brething Dimetrodon Time, Grant reviews "An Author In Search Of Two Characters," an episode of Jason King, the 1971-72 action series about an novelist whose trips invariably wind up involving him in adventures to rival his own books. Plenty of Avengers alums in this series.

"Bob Gets Neighborly" in this 1957 episode of Love That Bob!, and if you don't know what kind of trouble that could cause, Hal's here to tell us about it at The Horn Section. How does Bob make out? As if we didn't know.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing last week's piece on Peter Falk and Columbo, so naturally I'm going to see what Rick has to say about Falk's performance in the Neil Simon comedy The Cheap Detective over at Classic Film & TV Café. Come for Falk, and stay for Madeline Kahn and Dom DeLuise. 

The Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland links to an article at CNBC that asks a serious question: how will local stations remain relevant in a world of streaming video? We've got a digital antenna to get our locals, but I've got to tell you, it's mostly the subchannels we watch.

At The Twilight Zone Vortex, it's theme week, as Jordan looks at the many TZ episodes in which a telephone plays a pivotal role. It's more than you might think, which reminds me of an article I wrote a few years ago on how cellphones would change the standard plots of many shows.

We all have our guilty pleasures, don't we? This week at Comfort TV, David looks at one of the "terrible shows I like": the 1988 series Eisenhower and Lutz. I have to admit that this show completely got past me; not only didn't I remember it when I first read David's article, I still didn't remember it the second time.

At Television Obscurities, Robert passes along the news about yet another classic TV diginet operating as a subchannel of one of your local stations. Rewind TV, from the people who brought us Antenna TV, will focus on sitcoms of the 1980s and 90s. Good for them, but I don't think I'll be tuning in.

I've written many times about my love of the space program since I was growing up, so I'll end this week with something completely unrelated to TV: Terence's tribute to the late, great Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, at A Shroud of Throughts. Collins went on to head the magnificent Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, one of the coolest places I've ever visited. R.I.P., spaceman. TV