March 10, 2023

Around the dial




At Comfort TV, David leads off the week with an intriguing question: whatever happened to "America's Sweetheart"? It's a title that's been dispensed on many luminaries over the years: Annette Funicello, Karen Valentine, Sally Field, and Mary Tyler Moore, to name but a few. Can you think of anyone who'd fit the bill today?

Jack's Hitchcock Project continues at bare-bones e-zine with Oscar Millard's second and final teleplay for the show, "One of the Family," with Jeremy Slate and Kathryn Hays as a young couple worried that their baby's new nurse (Lila Skala) may be a child killer. 

I've said this before, but then there's a real knack to coming up with just the right title, and there's no way I'm not going to write about any show with an episode called "I Was Hitler's Bookie." The show is The Steam Video Company, a British comedy show with a bit of SCTV about it, and John has all the details at Cult TV Blog.

At Television's New Frontier: the 1960s, it's the 1962 episodes of Have Gun—Will Travel, starring Richard Boone as the man in black, Palladin. The episodes comprise the first half of the show's sixth and final season—find out how the stories stand up to the rest of the series.

In one of the more surprising developments, Robert at Television Obscurities reports that the 1957 sitcom Blondie, starring Arthur Lake and Pamela Britton, is coming to Blu-ray. I'm always delighted to see vintage shows being upgraded, but I'm also wishing they might get to some of the ones on my list! 

More Blu-ray news: Martin Grams says the Rankin-Bass classic Mad Monster Party is headed that way this May, with some special features and collectibles included. If you're interested in it, you can pre-order right now! 

At Vintage Leisure, Gary Wells takes a look at the book The Untouchables, written by Eliot Ness himself, with Oscar Fraley. It is, of course, the basis for the TV series of the same name, and you may remember a few years ago we looked at a TV Guide with a feature article by Ness's widow. Sounds like a fun book.

Cult TV Lounge features four early episodes of The Avengers featuring Honor Blackman's Cathy Gale. I always think it's important to point these out, because American viewers didn't get to see them when they were originally on, and Mrs. Gale is such a wonderful character. It is, as noted, a "startling" difference compared to the Emma Peel era. TV  

2 comments:

  1. Thanks, Mitchell! I watched all the Cathy Gale episodes years ago and they were very good.

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    1. There's a different current running through those episodes - I was reading something by Rodney Marshall recently - his father wrote some of the episodes, along with many other British programs - and he mentioned that Mrs. Gale never completely trusted Steed; he occasionally took advantage of her and wasn't always forthcoming with everything that he knew. Both interesting characters.

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