Around the dial

At bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues with "Mink," Irwin Gielgud and Gwen Bagni's first-season story, a complex story of deception and suspicion that also serves as a time capsule to the mid-1950s.

John turns his attention to documentaries at Cult TV with a look at 24 Hours, a BBC news program that ran from 1965 to 1972; the episode in question, regarding the 1966 assassination of South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, provides a disturbing look at the country's apartheid policy.

Art has been a subtle but significant part of many classic TV series, and at Comfort TV, David proposes a Museum of Classic TV Paintings, along with his suggestions for some of the more prominent exhibits; how many of them ring a bell with you?

Paul takes Drunk TV to one of the great anthologies of the Golden Age, Studio One, with a look at the DVD set Studio One Anthology (a copy of which I'm pleased to say I have), representing seventeen of the series' plays, good and bad; and what it tells us about the early days of television. 

Cult TV Lounge has written in the past about TV tie-in novels, and we have another one of them this week, with "The Cornish Pixie Affair," the fifth original novel based on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. How well does it mirror the tone of the series? Read on and find out.

In doing the Saturday TV Guide review, I've mentioned a time or two that it doesn't seem there was ever a variety show or special that Bob Hope didn't appear in, and Travalanche backs me up on this assertion with a simple but telling rundown of how many show he hosted, let alone guested in.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence honors a couple of the entertainment world's most recent passings: Darryl Hickman, brother of Dwayne, who did a great deal of movie and voiceover work; and Richard M. Sherman, composer (with his brother Robert) for so many great Disney movies over the years.

Finally, it's back to Land of the Lost at The View from the Junkyard where Mike reviews "Hot-Air Artist," another quixotic episode that displays the show's later tendency away from serious sci-fi to "silly fiction," and again raises the question of where these characters would wind up if they ever escape. TV