Around the dial

It's been awhile, but at Cult TV Blog, John returns to the world of The Prisoner with his continuing series in which he looks at various interpretations of the series. This week, it's a very interesting look at The Prisoner as an allegory of the Soviet Union.

Captain Video continues his own series, in which we look at various comic adaptations of the pilot for Space: 1999. Compare and contrast with last week's edition, which did a much more complete job with the same episode.

Speaking of comic book adaptations, at bare•bones e-zine, Jack and Peter continue their survey of DC's 1960s Batman comics. You can certainly see the resemblance between the TV series and the comics from the late 60s, and don't worry: Batgirl is there too!

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence pays tribute to Dame Patricia Routledge, who died last week at 96; best-known for the British classic Keeping Up Appearances, she had a long and varied career in both television and movies, including To Sir, With Love and If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium.

At Classic Film & TV Corner, Maddie revisits one of Kurosawa's great films, Stray Dogs, starring the incomparable Toshiro Minfue and Takashi Shimura; I mention this as a happy reminder of when we subscribed to the Criterion Channel, and got to discover the gems in Japanese noir.

The View from the Junkyard takes on politics in The A-Team episode "The White Ballot," and as Roger points out, the episode gives us some insight into political corruption; I particularly like the idea of returning to the days of tar and feathers, myself.

At The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew has some thoughts on recent interviews with Rob Reiner, as it relates to early television. In particular, he talked about how his family bought their first set so they could see father Carl on Saturday night's Your Show of Shows. What a radical change TV was.

Finally at Television Obscurities, Robert has a brief clip from CBS from an undetermined date, at a time when they were promoting themselves as "America’s No. 1 Network for 17 Years In A Row." I wonder where today's top shows, whatever they are, would fit in those rankings; probably right at the top. TV

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