Around the dial

We begin once again this week with the Hitchcock Project at bare•bones e-zine, where Jack's focus is on the fourth-season episode "A Personal Matter," Joel Murcott's sixth script for Hitchcock, and an example of how the changes a short story goes through in making the leap to television aren't always for the best. One of many reasons I like Jack's writeups; the transition from page to screen is always fascinating to read about.

Perhaps John has changed the name of Cult TV Blog to That TV Blog Where the Bloke Who Never Wears a Shirt Rambles on About Whatever Takes His Fancy, but we're still on the trail of the white Jaguar, and this week we're at "The Queen's Ransom" from The Saint—the first time, if you can believe it, that he's written about the series.

At Classic Film & TV Café, Rick writes about the five best versions of Agatha Christie's classic whodunnit Ten Little Indians, or And Then There Were None, depending on which version you see. It's a cracking story no matter what it's called, and one of them is a made-for-TV version, so it's OK to talk about it here.

There were three shows I remember watching on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid, and all three of them captured my adventurous imagination: Sea Hunt, Whirlybirds, and the topic of this week's Television's New Frontier: the 1960s: Ripcord. Parachutes are pretty exciting when you're a kid; they had space capsules and other fun things dangling from the cords. Find out what the show was like in 1962, and whether or not it was as exciting as you remember it.

Last week, I mentioned the passing of JoAnna Cameron, and it doesn't surprise me a bit to find out that Terence has a nice retrospective on her at A Shroud of Thoughts. She may have been television's first superhero, but there was more to her career than just that.

Want to help finance the construction of a statue of Rod Serling? Check out the Kickstarter campaign that Paul writes about at Shadow & Substance. I have to admit—I would have thought that his hometown of Binghamton, NY might already have one, but there's no time like the present. TV