June 18, 2021

Around the dial




It's time for a new focus for the Hitchcock Project at bare•bones e-zine and this one is top-notch: William Link and Richard Levinson. This week, Jack looks at their first Hitchcock script: the season seven episode "Services Rendered," adapted from their own short story.

Fire-Breathing Dimetroden Time reviews two episodes from the sixth series of the fanciful British show Worzel Gummidge, with Jon Pertwee as the titular scarecrow. Follow the links at the end of the story to check out other (perhaps better?) episodes from the series.

At The Twilight Zone Vortex, Brian continues the consideration of the show's final season with the episode "Steel," written by Richard Matheson and starring Lee Marvin in an memorable performance—a testament to the indefatigable spirit of man.

When I was growing up, daytime television meant three things: a matinee movie, game shows, and soap operas. I never watched the soaps myself except insofar as my mother had them on, but I knew all about them, and David has a fond remembrance of them at this week's Comfort TV. Daytime comfort indeed.

Last time we visited Bob Crane: Life & Legacy, we were previewing Linda's appearance on Autopsy: The Last Hours of Bob Crane. This week, in the latest episode of their podcast Flipside: The True Story of Bob Crane, Carol and Linda look at where Autopsy scored, and where it missed the mark.

At Cult TV Blog, John looks at "A Man for Emily," the episode of The Tomorrow People that, as John says, marks the point at which the show "went off the wall." On the other hand, it has Peter Davison, and how many times do we have two mentions of former Doctor Whos in one article?

The Broadcasting Archives links to an interesting article at Current on "how public broadcasting overcame early setbacks to become a national institution." Having gone through so many TV Guides from the early 1960s, it's remarkable to see how the programming evolved over the years.

Television Obscurities has been tracking the status of episodes from Kraft Television Theatre, the venerable anthology that ran from 1947 to 1958 and was the oldest surviving television program when it left the air. The output of that show is remarkable compared to modern shows; since it never took a summer break, there were 585 episodes over those 11 seasons.

I remember how much of a landmark The Flip Wilson Show was when it debuted back in 1970. It was an interesting show, not only because of Wilson's stable of colorful characters and his big-name guests, but also because of it's theater-in-the-round type of set, its logo—everything just screamed modern. Read about it this week at A Shroud of ThoughtsTV  

1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Mitchell. That article about Kraft is interesting. I wish there were a central database to see which episodes of shows still exist and where they can be found.

    ReplyDelete

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