Around the dial

The picture above shows a woman celebrating Christmas in the Soviet Union, 1966. It almost looks as if it could be a decade earlier, doesn't it? I mention this because the lead story in tomorrow's TV Guide deals with American television behind the Iron Curtain, and while imported programming has become very popular in the Soviet bloc, Russia itself still refuses to show American programs. That will change, of course; Brezhnev himself was a big fan of The Rifleman, and became a great friend of lifelong conservative Chuck Connors. But that's another story, and in the meantime, we've got some stories of our own to look at.

We begin this week at RealWeegieMidget, where Gill reviews Alina Adams's book Super Soap Scenes: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama’s Greatest Moments. It's particularly interesting to read her reactions, given that Gill lives in Finland, and was familiar with but hadn't seen most of these shows, 

I wish American television still offered regular dramatic anthology series, something that still survives on British TV, although at Cult TV Blog, John goes back to the 1960s and The Wednesday Play, in this case "The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel," and strange just begins to describe it.

The A-Team continues to satisfy at The View from the Junkyard, and this week Roger looks at the episode "Curtain Call," a clips show that finds Murdock fighting for his life, having taken a bullet intended for Hannibal, while the others reminisce about various past stories involving him.

And it's a triple feature of anniversaries at A Shroud of Thoughts, as Terence commemorates the 60th anniversary of Batman and Daktari (both premiered in January, 1966), and the 90th anniversary of the radio classic Gang Busters, which had a brief but successful run on TV as well. TV

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