Around the dial

What shows do you watch on a rainy (or snowy) day? For me, it's a mix between,  YouTube videos and Mystery Science Theater 3000, but everyone has their go-to shows to brighten up a gloomy day, and at Comfort TV, David has his own list, and it's hard to see how these shows wouldn't make your day better.

Speaking of lists, at Classic Film and TV Corner, Maddy has her list of six essential series from the 1960s. Again, you may have your own ideas, but I defy anyone out there to find fault with any of these six shows, which have to rank among the most literate, most provocative, and/or most enjoyable series of all time.

One of those shows, The Avengers, is the subject of the latest at Cult TV Lounge, with the episode, "Stay Tuned," which is a very good title for an episode of a TV show. It's also a very good story, in which Steed is suffering from a three-week memory gap, and it's up to Tara King to get to the bottom of things. 

At Cult TV Blog, John draws some conclusions from his series on The Prisoner, in which he looks at the possibility that Number 6, contrary to being a prisoner himself, is actually investigating the Village. It's a mark of the show's brilliance and ambiguity that even its very premise is subject to discussion; how many other shows can say that?

Back in the day, it wasn't unusual to find a album in the music aisle that featured covers of popular TV themes, often performed by orchestras like the 101 Strings Orchestra. That's just what the Metzingers have come across at Silver Scenes, however, and while I prefer the original versions, something like this is still great fun, don't you think?

We're all familiar, or should be, with CBS's infamous "Rural Purge," in which the network jettisoned some of its most popular shows, simply because their audiences were too old, too rural, or both. But there was an outlier to theses shows: The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence looks at how Glen kept his head (and that hair!) off the chopping block.

If you're a fan of classic shows (and if you're not, what are you doing here?), you'll recognize the name John Doucette, or at least his face. If he wasn't on every television show of the time, he was on most of them, and Those Were the Days runs through some of the credits of this hard-working character actor.

Can you imagine Tammy Grimes as Samantha Stevens on Bewitched? Apparently, it could have been, had Grimes accepted the role. That's just one of the many facts I learned at Travalanche, where we get to see the vast range that Grimes displayed during her career on stage, screen, television, albums, and voice work. 

Was Star Trek's Dr. McCoy actually a good doctor? I'll wait until the shouting dies down to point out that this is not my question; it comes from Mike at The View from the Junkyard, and while he's just kidding, there are some things, after watching the animated episode "Albatross," that do make you wonder. . .

And by the way, happy Groundhog Day, but don't think you'll see this same column up tomorrow. TV