This week in TV Guide: March 13, 1965

I had something all planned for this week's lede—Edith Efron's co-cover story on sex in the soaps—but it turned out to be so engrossing, so complex, and so long that I've chosen to carry it over to Wednesday's essay. Good news for me, because it gives me material for another day, but bad news for you, because it deprives you of an essential part of this week's issue.

Or does it? Let's see if we can make up for it with Sullivan vs. the Palace, World War I, child stars, and some other stuff, beginning with a look at the producer of the number one television program in America.

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This week's other cover story is on David Dortort, producer of Bonanza, a man to whom, Dwight Whitney reports, "even network nabobs speak softly." The crucial November Nielsen ratings have come out—November being the time in which many a series meets an inglorious end, and many a producer's heart is broken—and Bonanza has, once again, topped the list, with a higher percentage spread over the second-place show than has ever been seen before. As a result, there are no meddling network executives roaming through the offices, no panic buttons being pressed. And everyone, from agents to out-of-work directors to studio execs, wants to be on the good side of David Dortort.

Dortort is in a unique position. As Whitney notes, Bonanza is his baby; it "represents the taste, judgment and creative ability of one man. It is not too much to say that Bonanza—with its romanticized feudal father, its earnest glorification of the all-male hearth and home, and its tendency to regenerate even its most despicable villains—is David Dortort, right down to the last psychological nuance." And yet you'd hardly know it from the man himself, described as "shy and gentle," who seldom ever raises his voice to anyone "below the level of a trouble some network vice president." After writing what Whitney describes as "an agonizingly subjective account of the horror of his youth," a novel that was praised by critics and ignored by readers, he resolved to "write for the world," and poured out scrips for shows such as Climax!, The Lineup, and Suspense, and movies from The Big Land to Reprisal. 

When the network tapped him for Bonanza, he displayed a vision at odds with that found in the typical Western. "Most Westerns are about lonely cowpokes in dusty cow towns. How about the glories of the West? The lakes, the mountains, the cool clear air?" He was also troubled by something we've read about consistently in television history, the portrayal of fathers. "I was concerned about the damage television was doing to the American father image. He was being portrayed as a weakling and an idiot. I wanted to reinstate him." And if that wasn't enough, he also was determined to cast relative unknowns in the lead roles, rather than more established names. "TV makes its own stars," he told the network.

Bonanza opened to lukewarm reviews and ratings, and the panicked network sent various show doctors in to repair what it saw as the damage. The series was saved by a "sudden upswing" in the ratings; Dortort says it took him nearly four years to cull the herd of its network influence. But despite the show's success, it hasn't all been fun. There is, for example, the notoriously difficult Pernell Roberts. Dortort acknowledges both Roberts's talent and the problems he causes, and doesn't mince words on either. "The problems, all his rudeness, his impossible conduct and lack of professionalism—I would forgive all that if he would come back. He is that good." (Talk about damning with praise.) Michael Landon has shown some reluctance to play a fight scene in his bare chest. ("Mike's funny that way," Dortort says.) On the other hand, Lorne Greene, who currently has a number one Billboard hit with his record "Ringo," is, Dortort says, "The perfect Bonanza image." 

It is only when Dortort talks of his own life that one begins to see the parallels, to understand why he believes so strongly in the story he tells through Bonanza. His father "was a marvelous man. I love him dearly. I would not hurt him. I tell people he was an insurance broker. This is not strictly so. He ran a little candy store and it failed. That is why we moved from Far Rockaway to the tenements when I was seven. Mother bore the burden. She was a saint." Looking back, he says, "Can you imagine how reckless it would be for such a boy to announce he was going to be a writer?" He shared with Little Joe an innate resistance to authority, a temper. He shares Pernell Roberts's impatience; "I tell myself, also as Pernell does, 'I'm bright, I’m sharp, intuitive and quick—what is wrong with people? Can't they see I’m the only man with integrity in town?'" His crew of directors and writers is comprised of many with hard-luck stories or up-and-comers with ambition. "I pick up strays. The Hoss in me, I guess." And that's not all he's shared with his characters; "My father's name is Ben," he says with a smile.

He closes with a candid assessment of Roberts that matches his own self-assessment. Roberts has announced his intention to leave the show for a more "serious" acting career. (How'd that go for you, Pernell?) "One day I may go back to serious writing, myself. But I am a slum boy who sometimes feels he’s trying to be something he shouldn't, and I have learned one thing: When fortune smiles, best not kick it in the teeth."

An interesting article about an interesting man. Good thing the soap opera essay ran so long.

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During the 60s, The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup.

Sullivan: Tonight's show is a salute to St. Patrick’s Day. Scheduled guests: actor Pat O’Brien, singer Abbe Lane, comics Allen and Rossi, the folk-singing Clancey Brothers and Tommy Makem, actor Pernell Roberts of Bonanza and harpist Dierdre O'Callaghan. (According to the episode guide, Petula Clark, Nancy Walker and Bert Lahr, singer Jimmy Roselli, pianist Dorothy Donegan, and the Olympiades bodybuilders were also on the show; Abbe Lane, Pernell Roberts, and Dierdre O'Callaghan were no-shows. At least they got a few of the names right.) 

Palace: The host is comic-pianist Victor Borge, who demonstrates how great composers stumbled on some of their famous compositions. Guests include songstress Rosemary Clooney; comic Shecky Greene, who offers a monologue on folk and night-club singers; the singing Kessler Twins; the Two Freddies, trampolinists; swordbalancer Marco; and ventriloquist Russ Lewis.

Sullivan's guest list is all over the place this week, and were it not for Pat O'Brien, Allen & Rossi, and the Clanceyh Brothers, I'd have been tempted to think I was looking at the wrong day. Nevertheless, with Victor Borge, Rosemary Clooney, and Shecky Greene, I'm tempted to go with the Palace. 

A note on the Kessler Twins, Alice and Ellen, who were German singers and were very popular on variety shows of the day, took their own lives via assisted suicide on November 17 of last year. That's a very dark ending to a very successful career. However, that doesn't diminish the strength of this week's lineup, and this week's nod goes to the Palace.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.

This week, Cleveland Amory reviews a series I've not only seen, but reviewed myself. It's the excellent CBS documentary series World War I, a 26-episode look at the "War to End War." Now, we know that documentaries get a bad rap on television: they're either deadly dull, poorly done, slanted in their outlook, formulaic, or a combination of the above. They also tend to have difficulty getting clearance when they're shown on network television. And, says Cleve, the idea of a 13-hour series on the First World War "sounds about as intriguing as watching your great-uncle’s old movies." But, "don't be misled. This show may now be called World War I but, make no mistake about it, it is great."

There's plenty of credit to go around, beginning with John Sharnik, who not only served as co-producer, but wrote more than half of the "truly memorable scripts." The other co-producer, Isaac Kleierman, started preparing the series with Sharnik two years in advance (the project was aired to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the start of the war), and obtained footage "from private sources and secret archives, never before seen on any public TV screen." Not only is it the straight story, but it also took pains to correct many inaccuracies in the historical record, ones that had been around for decades. The music, composed by Morton Gould, is "truly magnificent," the narration by Robert Ryan is "excellent," and the battle scenes, which were originally silent to begin with, are presented without dubbed sound (Ken Burns could take a lesson or two here), which "adds curiously to the show’s moving authenticity." 

Rather than attempting to tell the war's story in a chronological order, the producers chose to focus on themes, which were then brought together as the series progressed. One of the most intriguing episodes of all, one which Amory calls "remarkable," focused solely on the music of the war. It's called "Tipperary and All That Jazz," and I myself can't remember an episode like it in any documentary I've seen. It presents the story of the war from beginning to end, "with the songs played over the silent shots of the soldiers—and not just the happy songs like 'Mademoiselle from Armentieres' but also the sad ones like 'Keep the Home Fires Burning'" and winds up with "There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding" as we reach the front. World War I is, thankfully, available on DVD, and it gives the viewer a comprehensive look at a war that seems, even today, to defy understanding. It doesn't drown in detail, it never stoops to mawkish emotion, and it makes every attempt to provide answers to the questions that persist. Except, of course, for the questions that have no answers.

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We often have features on the latest starlets, but what about the male half of the equation? We'll make up for it this week, with a couple of youngsters who make good: the brothers Howard, 11-year-old Ronnie and 6-year-old Clint.

The Howards, back when they had hair.  

Marian Dern* admits being less than enthusiastic about the assignment, envisioning "doll-faced little monsters," and after hearing a press agent describe what a "cute relationship" they had, "big brother masterminding little brother's career," she grew even more apprehensive. Until, that is, she met the two boys, and their parents, Jean and Rance. Rance is an actor himself, and when Dern asked Ronny if he'd taken acting lessons, he replied, "No, my dad coaches me. He knows all about acting. Course, I can read my lines now to learn them, but Clint can’t read yet." When she asked him if it was true that he coached Clint to follow in his footsteps, he looked confused, then said, "Naw, my father coaches Clint, just like he coaches me." And when she inquired as to whether or not he watched a lot of TV ("being in the business and all"), he eagerly told her the best thing on TV: baseball! He plays a lot of it, and the two boys became animated talking about their favorite players, their batting averages, and how Clint hit one "over the fence" one time. Forget television, this was exciting.

*Marian Dern was also the writer of the comic strip Rick O'Shay and Hipshot, and the second wife of animator Chuck Jones. Small world, isn't it?

Rance explains how Ronny got in the business. "I was seeing a casting director in New York about a job. He happened to be looking for a child for a film called "The Journey." I told him I had a son. The next day I brought Ronny in, and that was that." Ronny has said in the past that he wants to continue acting as a career, although he'd also like to be a ball player. (Who does he think he is, Chuck Connors?) But the conversation quickly turned to movie monsters, and the boys showed off their monster-model collection, "at least 17 varieties." When asked whether or not their classmates made a fuss over the brothers, Jean replied, "Well, no, they treat them like everyone else, though once, at school, some sixth-graders came to Ronry’s room asking for autographs. But I spoke to the school and they put a stop to it." She also recalls the time a couple of teenage girls came to the door and asked Rance if he was Ronny's father. When he admitted he was, they said, "Aw, you don't look anything like Andy Griffith." 

Soon, the boys were off for another neighborhood ball game. Dern later talked to some of the kids at school, desperate to find some evidence of the "doll-faced little monsters." Doesn't he act impressed with himself, she asked one. "Naw, he never acts stuck-up. Sometimes the kids who cluster around him act awful dumb though." It seems, she concludes, that the only monsters in this story are the models the boys build.

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The Letters section contains this tidbit that I thought I'd share in full, as one of those examples of a hidden clue, a casual reference to something that turned out to be a big deal indeed.  The letter:

Many thanks to Marian Dern [that name again!] for the fine article “Man in Pursuit of Himself” [TV Guide, Feb. 27]; however, I would like to correct some quotes attributed to Donna Reed’s husband, producer Tony Owen. I was not dropped from The Donna Reed Show because of a demand for more money, but had already informed Tony Owen last August I would be leaving at the end of the current season. Donna did say they had always wanted a next-door neighbor during the first five years of the show and finally found one in me. I had already filmed two episodes before they hired Ann McCrea to play my wife. Finally, I am not “begging to be back” next year as my new CBS series, Hogan's Heroes, starts in the fall, Friday nights at 8:30, and will keep me quite busy. 

Bob Crane

Los Angeles

As indeed it did, for six seasons—only two less, come to think of it, than The Donna Reed Show. 

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I've mentioned before how one of the things we seem to have lost today is a sense of wonder, and one corrective to that—or at least a reminder of how we used to look at things—can be found in the David L. Wolper documentary The Bold Men (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. PT, ABC), the second in a series looking at "the extraordinary men of our time." Included is Don Wilson, a construction worker on the 32nd story of a building under construction; Red Adair, the famous firefighter putting out a blaze in the Sahara; John D. Craig, the adventurer riding a 40-foot whale shark; plus lion tamers, cliffdivers, stuntmen, surfers, and snake trappers. Humans have been replaced by machines in so many endeavors, it's easy to forget how remarkable—and courageous—we can be, and how thrilled we are when we see someone willing to take risks, which in our risk-averse world is increasingly rare.

Dutch Masters and Murial Cigars: I don't know about you, but when I hear that, I think of Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams. But there's another cigar-smoking star out there—Danny Thomas—and on Sunday, the two brands team up to present Danny's special, "The Wonderful World of Burlesque" (9:00 p.m., NBC), with guests Mickey Rooney, Jim Nabors, and Lee Remick, and appearances in the sketches by Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Edie Adams (see?), Carl Reiner, Sid Melton and Herbie Faye. They're hearking back to the days before burlesque "went over to the strippers." Ironically, the special pre-empts Bonanza, whose stars are on the cover this week.

There's an interesting program on Monday, Living Camera (10:00 p.m., Channel 10), focusing on "what may be the last five days of life for convicted murderer Paul Crump." Crump was convicted of killing a security guard in Chicago in 1953; while his four accomplices received prison sentences, Crump was sentenced to death. While in prison, Crump wrote an autobiographical novel, Burn, Killer, Burn!; this documentary, which was made in 1963, was made by Robert Drew and Associates, who came to fame with a superb series of cinema-verite films about John F. Kennedy. Phil Ochs went on to write a song about Crump; this publicity, combined with legal efforts from attorneys Louis Nizer and Donald Paige Moore, resulted in Crump's death sentence being commuted to 119 years; he was paroled in 1993, but later sent back to prison for "harassing a family member and violating an order of protection."

The guest on The Red Skelton Hour Tuesday night (8:30 p.m., CBS), is Paul Anka, who stars with Red in an outrageous spoof of Robin Hood-type adventure movies: Paul plays Ponnie Prince Gorgeous, while Red is his long-lost brother, Bonnie Prince Ugly, who has returned to claim the throne after having been raised in the forest by a gorilla. I ask you: how can you possibly pass that up? The late-night movie on Channel 11 is The Hell Fire Club (11:30 p.m.), which is exactly the kind of movie that Red Skelton's spoofing: "The rightful heir finds that his cousin has usurped the estate." Over on educational television, David Susskind's Open End program (9:00 p.m., KQED) spends the entire two hours with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Abba Eban. Wouldn't that be an interesting show today?

On Wednesday, Dinah Shore returns for her final variety special of the season (8:30 p.m., ABC), a gala at the brand-new Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, longtime home of the Academy Awards broadcast. Dinah's guests include Henry Mancini, classical guitarist Laurindo Almeida, ballet dancers Maria Tallchief and John Butler, bossa nova exponent Joao Gilberto, jazz organist Jimmy Smith, and the 100-voice UCLA chorus. And, last but not least, the ubiquitous Bob Hope, who's probably going to hang around until the next Oscarcast. For more variety, tune in to The Danny Kaye Show (10:00 p.m., CBS), as Danny celebrates St. Patrick's Day with Imogene Coca and singer Enzo Stuarti.

If you haven't had enough of documentaries this week, try Man Invades the Sea (Thursday, 10:00 p.m., ABC), an early Jacques Cousteau special investigating one of the earth's last frontiers, the "inner space" of the ocean. Included is astronaut Scott Carpenter, who's working on Project Sealab, a program by Captain George Bond. If you have had your fill of documentaries, head on over to Kraft Suspense Theatre (10:00 p.m., NBC), with the husband-and-wife team of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands joining Jack Klugman in this story of an army pilot, hoping to return to his simple law practice following the Berlin Airlift, who finds himself defending a murder suspect. (Watch it here.)

On Friday night, it's America's Junior Miss Pageant (10:00 p.m., NBC), from Mobile, Alabama. James Franciscus is the host, and there's a very interesting lineup of judges, including religious author Catherine Marshall (the widow of U.S. Senate chaplain Peter Marshall and author of the novel Christy) and Leonard Lé Sourd, executive editor of the religious magazine Guidepost. You can't get much more wholesome than that. Former winners included Mary Frann and Diane Sawyer, but the 1965 winner is Junior Miss Michigan, Patrice Gaunder. And the late-night entertainment on Channel 2 is the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet, starring Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. Not to be confused with a movie that isn't a classic...

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MST3K alert: Hercules Unchained (Italian-French; 1959) Hercules engages in the War of the Chariots. Steve Reeves, Sylva Koscina, Primo Carnera.(Sunday, 4:00 p.m., KXTV in Sacramento) The second Hercules movie to star the great Steve Reeves Hercules (but the first shown on MST3K) features dueling twin brothers in a battle for control of Thebes, and Hercules undone by the Waters of Forgetfulness. Which is a good way to regard this movie, come to think of it.  TV

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Around the dial

Let's begin the week at Comfort TV, where David lists ten occasions where characters returned to a series after having previously been written out. Some of these might have slipped your mind, while others will bring a smile (or laugh) to your face. 

At Cult TV Blog, it's the conclusion of the "Tony Wright Season," as John wraps up his review of the British actor's TV career with his appearance on the series Sykes, as well as his wrap-up on Wright's various television appearances.

Interested in having dinner with the Jetsons? Well, you're in luck, as Bob Sassone links to his 2011 article for the magazine Paleofuture on the food from The Jetsons. How close did their predictions of the future come?

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger looks at the latest A-Team episode, which could be a contender for the best in the series: "Showdown!", in which our heroes confront, of all things, a counterfeit A-Team! 

There's no question but what the DVD market for classic television has slowed down dramatically in the last few years, but it's not gone entirely, and at TV Obscurities, Robert is back with last month's news on classic TV home media.

And in Mitchell Hadley news, you can catch Dan and me discussing the final episode of Garrison's Gorillas at the latest Eventually Supertrain. Don't you dare miss it! Will I return? Stay tuned. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!

Arlene Dahl's Beauty Spot, circa 1966

When you've seen as many of TV Guide's listings from the 1960s as I have, you get used to certain things that probably haven't been on TV in at least 40 years. One of those things is the daytime five-minute newsbreak. All three networks aired these, primarily in the '60s and '70s, and the faces of these brief news updates were quite well-known: Edwin Newman and Floyd Kalber on NBC, Douglas Edwards on CBS, and Marlene Sanders on ABC, among others. In the mid-60s, however, ABC had a five-minute break of another kind.

It was called Arlene Dahl's Beauty Spot; in last Monday's listing, it aired at 3:25 p.m. CT. Arlene Dahl, the host, was a Hollywood actress who achieved quite a bit of success thanks to her talent and her, well, anatomic assets.* However, she was no dumb blonde—actually, she was a redhead, but you get what I mean—and in 1954, while her acting career was still going strong she branched out into Arlene Dahl Enterprises, marketing cosmetics and designer lingerie. She also had her own syndicated newspaper beauty column, and later she became vice president of an advertising agency. Somewhere in there, she also gave birth to Lorenzo Lamas; her husband at the time (the second of six) was Fernando Lamas who undoubtedly looked marvelous.

*She's also yet another celebrity who hales from Minneapolis, graduating from Washburn High School, which is where I might have gone had we remained here during my teen years, rather than being exiled to the World's Worst Town™. She was a few years ahead of me, of course.

On September 27, 1965 the five-minute Arlene Dahl's Beauty Spot began on ABC; it would run until June 24, 1966, following Never Too Young, and later, Dark Shadows. Here's an episode, to give you an idea of what to expect the next time you see Arlene Dahl in the daytime listings.


TV

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What's on TV? Friday, March 13, 1970

It's a night of documentaries on TV, and perhaps the most interesting is Charles Kuralt's look at the beginning of Expo '70, the World's Fair in Osaka, Japan. I suppose it was inevitable that these fairs would fade in importance given how small the world has become, and how "global" everything is these days. Still, I miss the sense of wonder that used to accompany things like world's fairs. Or anything, for that matter. Oh well; there's no reason to wonder about this week's programming; it comes to us courtesy of the Eastern New England edition.

This week in TV Guide: March 7, 1970

If you're a regular reader (and, as I always say, if you aren't, why not?), you know how much and how often I rag on the Hallmark Channel, and whatever remnant there is of the Hallmark Hall of Fame, once one of the most prestigious programs on television. I've done it so often that it ceased to become a challenge, and, in fact, got to be something of a bore. I mean, it was so easy. And so I resolved I'd try to avoid it, and thereby make my life just a little bit easier. 

However, as my wife can tell you, I don't always stick to my resolutions, and so it is that we take a look at this week's Hall of Fame presentation of "Neither Are We Enemies" (Friday, 8:30 p.m. ET, NBC), this year's Easter episode. The story takes place during the Roman occupation of Judea, and stars Van Heflin as Joseph of Arimathea, the man whom the Bible tells us helped take Jesus down from the Cross after the Crucifixion and lay Him in the tomb. Kristoffer Tabori co-stars as Joseph's son Jonathan, who hears Christ's words not as those of love and peace, but as a call to revolution. Also featured in the cast are J.D. Cannon as Pilate, Ed Begley as Annas, Kate Reid as Deborah, and Leonard Frey as Judas. 

There are many facets to this story, which scriptwriter Henry Denker wrote "to interpret the events surrounding the Crucifixion with a parallel to the conflicts of our time." And it's easy to see, even in this brief description: the clash of generations, the conflict between war and peace, the military occupation of one nation by another, and so on. It points out the timelessness of Denker's story—indeed, of the entire Bible—in that the parallels that existed in 1970 are just as present today, and likely will be in another fifty years, if we last that long. 

I have no idea if "Neither Are We Enemies" is any good or not; you can't really find out much about it online. For what it's worth, Jack Gould, the TV critic of The New York Times, called it "something out of the ordinary"; while Heflin "was unsteady at the beginning, perhaps because of the initial unevenness of the script," he was effective in portraying the anguish he felt over his estrangment from his son. Gould also singled out the performance of Tabori as "exceptionally good," while Begley was "persuasive as usual." The hope offered by the play lay in the idea that "when the family breaks up there is the consolation that a respect for different outlooks could remove the element of enmity." It's also worth noting that the cast includes three Oscar nominees: Begley, Heflin, and Frey, and that Begley and Heflin both won Oscars.

Having established the bona fides of the play itself, we'll now turn to the sorry state of entertainment at Hallmark, for there are many people, I am sure, who have never, in their lifetimes, seen even five minutes of programming from that network that begins to compare to the impact of this type of story. In a time when the nation is bitterly divided, with family members pitted against each other over matters both substantial and trivial and almost always connected in some way to politics, it would be nice to think that Hallmark might consider offering something relevant like this, rather than the umteenth rendtition of some soapy, soggy, sentimental drivel about reconcilation, finding the right partner, or discovering the perfect Christmas in a quaint small village square. Yes, reconciliation is important, but as this drama suggests, it is also messy, difficult, and painful, and it involves sacrifices on the part of all concerned. That's not all, of course; the story also deals with religion in a way that is totally foreign to today's modern productions, and as for the star quality of the cast, well, perhaps the less said, the better.

I'm no longer worried that I sound like an old man shouting at the clouds when I get off on rants like this; I'm old enough that I simply don't care anymore. What I do care about, however, is the quality of programming on television, another subject of many a piece here. Quality is not, in fact, that hard to achieve if one really wants to achieve it. Hallmark sent the message, many years ago, that it was something they no longer cared about, so we shouldn't be surprised any time we run across an example of what the Hallmark Hall of Fame used to be like, back in the day. The company's motto, "When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best," applied to television as well as greeting cards back then. Of course, if you even send cards these days, you know that much of Hallmark's output hovers somewhere between the crude and boorish on one hand and the saccharine and dewy-eyed on the other; there's a reason for the existence of terms like "sentimental fool." 

It's likely that Hallmark wouldn't be up to the task anyway; doubtless they'd fill the story with romance and woke politics, and water it down. But if they didn't: think of what could come from this simple message that families didn't have to be divided, that friendships didn't have to be torn asunder, over something like politics. That's not to discount the importance of some of these issues, but what ever happened to that innate human dignity to which Jack Gould mentioned, the idea that "respect for different outlooks could remove the element of enmity.

Yes, we shouldn't be disappointed by this fall from grace anymore. One could say that we don't have the right to be disappointed by it. But we do have the right to be offended by it. More than a right; an obligation.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.

This week Cleveland Amory checks in on one of television's rare genres, the half-hour variety show. It's one hosted by a comedian who was once quite well-known in pop culture, but has now joined the ranks of those one-hit wonders remembered only by those of a certain age or disposition. In case you haven't figured it out yet (to be honest, I'm not sure how you could have), we're about to look at Pat Paulsen's Half a Comedy Hour.

Pat Paulsen came to prominence as one of the regulars on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he launched a deadpan, and often very funny, campaign for president. And herein lies the problem, for there are comedians, such as Tim Conway, who were often the life of the party, provided that someone else was hosting it. Try as he might, though, he could never carry a show on his own. Pat Paulsen is one of those comedians. "Put him in Medical Center or The Bold Ones and you've got a large riot. Even put him in another comedy show and he's so individual he'll still give you at least a small riot. But give him his own whole show and you've got a problem." It's that there needs to be contrast, something (or someone) for him to play off of, and as the host of the show, that element is missing. 

As Amory puts it in one of his classically painful puns, Paulsen's comedy persona is one of Caspar Milquetoast. "Make him Mr. Milquehost and he'll still be funny. But one thing is certain—you're going to have to milque harder." Things started off well, with an extremely funny bit, filmed on location, that involved Paulsen's car breaking down in the middle of winter outside former Vice President Hubert Humphrey's home in Waverly, Minnesota. Humphrey, playing himself, still remembered some of the jokes Paulsen had made at his expense during the 1968 campaign, and adroitly avoided inviting Paulsen out of the knee-deep snow to phone for help. It's difficult to explain in a limited space, but it was very funny, and showcased both Paulsen's dry humor and Humphrey's graceful self-deprecation. There was another good sketch involving Paulsen demonstrating how to make a 25-inch color TV "using only materials at hand." However, the effect was undermined by a pair of lame bits, one including guest star Debbie Reynolds. The trend continues through subsequent shows: strong absurdities followed by weak sketches. The best consistent feature of each episode is the close, and these are "so funny that we guarantee, even if you don't like the rest of the show, Mr. Paulsen will leave you laughing." At thirteen episodes, the problem was that they didn't leave viewers wanting more.

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ABC has announced its new fall schedule, and, as is typical for the perennial last-place network, it features what Richard K. Doan, in The Doan Report, calls a "massive shake-up," with nine shows biting the dust, including the aforementioned Pat Paulsen show, It Takes a Thief, The Flying Nun, Here Come the Brides, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, variety shows hosted by the Lennon Sisters and Englebert Humperdinck, and the network's Monday night movie. And that leads to the centerpiece of the new schedule, Monday night pro football. (Although, at this point, nobody could possibly imagine how successful this would become.) Other than that, however, the new shows will leave something to be desired. The Odd Couple, starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, will be an unqualified success, unlike The Young Lawyers, The Immortal, The Young Rebels, the Burt Reynolds vehicle Dan August, The Silent Force, Matt Lincoln, and the Danny Thomas comeback Make Room for Granddaddy. 

Doan adds, however, that there is one positive note, with a series that is being renewed, albeit on another network: Sesame Street, which NET has announced will be back in the fall with a new season of episodes.

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Speaking of "Vince Baby" Edwards, as we were a couple of weeks ago when his career seemed to be in a kind of holding pattern, we now get a look at the TV series he did take on, after having turned down more than a few opportunities. As I mentioned above, his new series Matt Lincoln is on the fall schedule, although at this point it's not called Matt Lincoln. It's called Dial Hot Line, and the pilot can be seen on the ABC Sunday Night Movie this week (9:00 p.m.). Edwards stars as David Leopold, a "hip psychiatric social worker" who operates a telephone hot line which troubled young people can use when they need someone to talk to. In her review, Judith Crist sees it as an ideal vehicle for a weekly series: "The entertainment possibilities are limitless—suicide and rape are touched upon this time around—in case you haven't problems of your own." 

Now, you may be asking yourself how Dial Hot Line morphs into Matt Lincoln, presumably including a name change, given that the new series isn't called David Leopold, and therein we find ourselves with a story that's probably as entertaining as anything that appeared on the series. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, citing the reasonably authoritative Harlan Ellison, the name change came about as a result of jokes around the office regarding the Leopold and Loeb murder case, and worries that viewers might make the same association. (One has to wonder if the script was run by DeForest Research in advance; the company, which was frequently used for name clearance and other research projects, might well have pointed out the potential for mischief.)

Ellison also dryly noted that while Leopold was "described as an example of 'the new breed' of mental health professionals, serving 'the many, rather than the few' and involved in a wide array of volunteer activities," that didn't prevent him from obtaining an income that allowed him to "drive a Mustang, have a Marina apartment and a sailboat." By the time Matt Lincoln made it to the fall schedule, the lead character had morphed from a "psychiatric social worker" to a "community psychiatrist" who maintained a private practice that allowed him to take on volunteer activities, as well as maintain a lifestyle to which he had become accustomed.

In any event, Matt Lincoln, by any other name, was a disappointment, lasting only 16 episodes before being cancelled. Considering that one of the series Edwards had previously passed on had included a two-year guarantee from ABC, one wonders if Edwards might have sought professional help himself afterward. Either that, or perhaps a new agent.

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Having led off this issue with a look at one of the most distinguished programs on the air, we now turn to something a little different: Neil Hickey's article on Hee Haw, which some critics called the worst show ever when it premiered, but which now is having the last laugh—a laugh it's sharing with its substantial audience.

When Hee Haw debuted, a little less than a year ago, the more responsible critics (and by that, Hickey means those accepted by the entertainment elite) denounced the show as "a program of such stupefying banality, witlessness, irrelevancy, pointlessness, unregenracy and inepitude." Imagine their dismay when the show "immediately zoomed to the upper reaches of the ratings charts and stayed there all summer." And make no mistake about this, the blowback against the show was a prime example of that elitism in action, the sniffing from snobbish upper-crust Eastern Establishment critics "blaming it all on the Silent Majority and the Middle American, who are fed up with bad news, crime in the streets, protest and student unrest." They're especially irritated, Hickey continues, "because this show came to life over the dead bodies of the Smothers Brothers, who were always making those terrific jokes about racial tensions, the Vietnam War, Congressional ethics, air pollution and the military industrial complex." 

And yet, as Hickey points out, "the program was nothing more, really, than a grab bag of purloined bucolic knee-slappers going back to Aristophanes, melded with bathetic rural ballads of a sort never imagined by Sir Walter Scott nor Robert Burns nor Francis James Child." Plenty of people were happy to see the Smothers Brothers go, replaced by down-home humor that struck a chord with ordinary Americans. "We get a lot of letters saying, 'It's great to see a real American show,' " according to Frank Pepplatt, one of the show's creators (he and his partner, John Aylesworth, are, ironically, a couple of Canadians). "We also get angry mail from old Smothers Brothers fans who say, 'How dare you put on material like that? It has no content, no message.' Well, that's the whole point! It's not supposed to have a message."

Says Grandpa Jones, a legendary country comedian who's now gaining mainstream recognition, "these fellows dared to give us a chance. TV people have always been afraid to put on common country stuff. They always figured it had to be polished and slicked up. It took somebody from Canada to show 'em it could be done." (Perhaps there's something to be learned in that SCTV, one of the greatest bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you series of all time, was also brought to life by Canadians.) Co-host Buck Owens adds that "You don't have to be up on current events, nor have watched the Huntley-Brinkley show that day to enjoy it. Anybody can grasp this material."

A couple of confessions: I rarely watched Hee Haw growing up, either during its network run or on first-run syndication. I'm just not with it on that kind of humor, nor the country music stars (some of the top names in the business, mind you) who frequented the show. It's not my style. Number two, I freely admit to being a TV elitist, in case you hadn't figured that out from my lede screed. Nevertheless, I would be the last person to say that there's no room on television for programs like Hee Haw, programs that appeal to the dreaded flyover country. When CBS ushered in the rural purge, Hee Haw was one of the victims, cancelled in 1971; it then went on to thrive in first-run syndication from 1971 to 1993. And let's not forget that Lawrence Welk, another show that supposedly appealed to the "wrong" audience, was also a hit in syndication, with reruns continuing on PBS to this day. 

The point is that television doesn't have to be a homogeneous blob. Just as I'll frequently rail against the romantic slop of the Hallmarks, the crude boorishness of so much network television, and the leftist bias of the late-night shows, I'd be just as dismayed with a television world that had no room for Hogan's Heroes, Top Gear, Mystery Science Theater 3000, or, yes, Hee Haw. We complain that television has become so niche that there's no place for programming appealing to a broad audience, and for good reason. After all, a television diet of nothing but Shakespeare would get pretty boring after a while. Besides, as Hickey notes in his conclusion, "one is nagged by the suspicion that Shakespeare—that most shameless purveyor of bad gags—would have loved it." I wouldn't doubt it for a moment.

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So what, in fact, is on this week? Well, in the days before March Madness became a bloated excuse for everyone in the world to take a chance on their own bracket, the NCAA Basketball Tournament tips off on Saturday afternoon (2:00 p.m., NBC), with the major contenders including St. Bonaventure (led by Bob Lanier), Notre Dame (Austin Carr), Jacksonville (Artis Gilmore), Western Kentucky (Jim McDaniels), and eventual champion UCLA (Sidney Wicks). Attention on the tournament might be eclipsed, however, by the real thing: a total solar eclipse, with all three networks planning live coverage, beginning at 1:00 p.m. (You can see CBS's coverage here, with an excerpt from ABC's coverage here.) If you miss it, though, don't worry; you can see it again, following a similar path, in 2024. Remember that?

Fred Astaire guest-stars on It Takes a Thief (Monday, 7:30 p.m., ABC), in a cleverly-titled episode called "An Evening with Alister Mundy," a play on the series of successful television specials that Astaire did in the 1950s and 1960s. Astaire, you may remember, appeared on It Takes a Thief several times as Robert Wagner's father, a fellow master thief. Tuesday's highlight is the delightful Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (7:30 p.m., NBC), the whimsical 1965 adaptation of A.A. Milne's stories, narrated by Sebastian Cabot, and with Sterling Holloway unforgettable as the voice of Pooh. And on Thursday, the Young Americans music group host their first network TV special, with special guest stars Lorne Greene, Tiny Tim, and the Committee improv group. 

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Finally, the starlet of the week is Karen Wyman, a 17-year-old "slinky adolescent with a lod of schoolbooks in one arm," as Judith Jobin styles her. More than that, she's a singer with a voice that is equal parts "controlled, earthy, hypnotic, and sexy"; one critic calls it "the voice of a woman who's done a lot of living," quite an accomplishment for someone who's not yet out of high school and, she says, "emphatically hasn't done a lot of living." Her voice teacher, Marty Lawrence, says she has "one of the greatest sounds I'd heard in my 21 years of teaching," and sent a demo to Greg Garrison, producer of The Dean Martin Show. Garrison told him, "If she can perform the way she sings, she's on the show." She could, and she was; she appeared on the show a year ago, did a five-song medley with Martin, who kissed her afterward and said, "You are wonderful, and you are beautiful, and you are some kind of singer," and the rest is history.

Since then, she's done four shows with Ed Sullivan (you can see one of them here), made a couple of visits to Johnny Carson, and her first album is due out this month. And despite her youthful enthusiasms, she displays "a solid core of drive, ambition and perfectionism (which a few people are calling temperament), and has a clear vision of what she wants; while her voice has been compared to Garland and Streisand, "I want to be unique. I want to be the original Karen Wyman." And she wants to be a star: "A star is...you're the hottest thing in show business. The public is nuts about you. It's not so much the money—it's class, people running to the box office to see you. You know when you're right on top, when you get the largest sum ever to appear somewhere."

That kind of stardom is not in the cards for Karen Wyman; she would later say that "I needed to grow up. I felt that I didn't deserve to be a star." She endured two failed marriages, raised a son and daughter (born sixteen years apart), quit singing altogether, and made a "comeback" in 2014. And to this day, she says that her most memorable moment was meeting Dean Martin; "it was really like a fairy tale."

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MST3K alert: Agent for H.A.R.M. (English; 1966) Tale of a creeping blob from outer space that transforms human flesh into fungus. Mark Richman, Wendell Corey, Carl Esmond. (Thursday, 11:25 p.m., WTIC in Hartford) Peter Mark Richman and Wendell Corey: what are you doing here? H.A.R.M. was, apparently, initially supposed to serve as a pilot for a new series, but wound up in theatrical release instead. My favorite review comes from The New York Times, which called it an "anemic James Bond imitation." I don't believe this is currently part of the MST3K episodes that run on TV; all in all, probably a good thing. TV

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Around the dial

t Cult TV Blog, John continues his "Tony Wright Season " by looking at two episodes of the 1954 Sherlock Holmes series, starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion-Crawford as Watson. It's a fun series, and the two episodes in which Wright appears are no exception.

David is up to Wednesdays in 1977 in his review of 1970s primetime television at Comfort TV. It's another dominant night for ABC, with a new hit in Eight is Enough and a returning one in Charlie's Angels; let's see what the other networks have to offer in competition.

Television presenter Robert Symes was a well-known personality on the BBC when he hosted The Model World of Robert Symes, a series dealing with his love of various types of models, which he would build and operate. Read all about it this week at Silver Scenes. 

If you watched any kind of variety show in the Sixties and Seventies, you probably saw Neil Sedaka performing at some point. Sedaka died last week at the age of 86, and Terence looks back on his legendary career at A Shroud of Thoughts. 

"The Island" is the latest episode of The A-Team to come Roger's way at The View from the Junkyard, and Face is the face of this episode, in which our heroes battle the bad guys, a drug gang trying to control a, you guessed it, island.

I've written before about Clellan Card, who played Axel, the beloved kids' show host of Twin Cities television, and Minnesota KidVid continues its look at his work, concentrating on the period 1953 to 1960. They don't make 'em like Axel anymore!

At Cult TV Lounge, it's a look at the 1999-2002 series The Lost World, based on the sci-fi adventure novel of the same name by the man responsible for the stories in the series that kicked off this trip around the dial: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A great way to wrap up the week! TV

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What I've been watching: February, 2026

Shows I've Watched:

The Rebel

Blue Light

Nixon in China

Aou may recall my occasional series "If I Ran the Network," in which I propose ideas for various series that might run on a fictional television network. (Then again, you might have a better chance of remembering it if I did a better job of running it more than just occasionally.) Anyway, one idea that has come true, more or less, is that of the Saturday Night Opera, which we've taken to watching the past couple of months. Most of these have been 20th-century operas, including one I reviewed last month, Doctor Atomic by John Adams.

This month features another Adams work, Nixon in China, based on President Richard Nixon's historic 1972 trip to Communist China. Now, if that seems like an unlikely subject for an opera, you're right; even Adams was somewhat skeptical when he received the commission. However, the result was one of the greatest operas of the late 20th century, a work that manages to be both historic and creative, and unlike anything that anyone might have expected. In this Metropolitan Opera performance from 2011, James Maddalena reprises his role as Nixon (which he created in 1987 for the opera's world premiere in Houston), with Janis Kelly as Pat Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, and Russell Braun as Chou En-lai, and Adams himself conducting.

Adams's music could best be described as a pleasing minimalism, with elements of atonality that nevertheless avoid many of the less pleasant aspects of dissonance. The story is built around four major events: the arrival of the Nixons and the president's meeting with Mao; a tour by Mrs. Nixon of various sites in China; a visit to the Peking Opera where a Chinese political ballet is performed; and the final night of the trip, in which the principals reflect on the events that brought them to this time and place.

In interviews, director Peter Sellars has talked about how the production of the opera has evolved over the years, particularly since more and more of the atrocities committed by Mao have come to light, while Maddalena has mentioned the depth and complexity of Nixon's character, which he describes as peeling away various layers of an onion. This, along with the historical nature of the opera's events, should enable it to remain in the repertoire without undergoing some of the more bizarre reinterpretations that have become commonplace in modern opera productions; it would be difficult, for instance, to stage it as science fiction or to place it in the American antebellum South, as I've seen in some operas I won't mention right now.

Two things that stand out every time I see this opera: first, the second act political ballet, "The Red Detachment of Women," in which the villain of the piece, an unscrupulous landlord taking advantage of the peasants, is played by the same singer who portrays Henry Kissinger, in this case Richard Paul Fink (who played Dr. Edward Teller in Doctor Atomic). Fink's portrayal, which includes a fair amount of interaction with the ballet dancers, is both harrowing and hilarious, given that everyone recognizes that the character so closely resembles Kissinger.

But the real power of the opera comes to light in the final act, in which Dick and Pat reminisce about his time in the Pacific during World War II; Mao and Chiang Ch'ing dance together; and Chou, dying of cancer, looks back with the faint air of disillusionment carried by a man who, with glistening eyes looks into the distance, asks rhetorically "How much of what we did was good?" It is a profoundly moving moment in an act that transcends everything we've seen to this point, a surrealistic look at the ways in which these characters have been scarred in one way or another by how their lives have played out. It is as good a meditation as one will ever see of the immense price that history demands from those who dare to shape it. Whatever one might have been expecting in this opera, this would not have been it; it provides a powerful conclusion to an opera of unique depth and emotion, and well worth the investment in time.

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As we seem to be on the subject of historical events, let's go back now to that post-antebellum time following the American Civil War, and the philosophical Western, The Rebel, co-created by and starring Nick Adams. I wrote about this series at some length a few years ago, so I'm not going to go into great detail about the existential meaning of the war, or of this series. Instead, let's look at it for what it is: a very effective half-hour drama that provides both action and an opportunity for reflection.

Adams plays Johnny Yuma, a former Confederate soldier looking for both adventure and a meaning to his life following the war. In that sense, it's reminiscent of another Western, Rod Serling's The Loner, which sought to break away from the conventions of the genre. The Rebel doesn't quite go that far; its situations are more traditional, and Adams's character is a more conventional Western hero. He does, however, have one trait that stands out: a journal that he keeps as he tries to come to terms with the horrors of war and the things he sees and experiences during his journeys.

Although Adams would be nominated for an Academy Award for Supporting Actor in 1963's Twilight of Honor, I'd never really paid that much attention to him in the roles I'd seen him play. He famously self-funded his Oscar campaign, and I'd frequently seen his name used as a punch line for such campaigns. Well, he's really good in The Rebel, and I mean really good. Perhaps it's just me, but he seems to infuse his character with a certain depth, a dignity and gravitas that one doesn't often see in shows like this. I recall a particular moment where he encounters a man who had deserted his unit during a critical battle; notwithstanding the "fog of war" that can cause men to do strange things under stress, Yuma reacts with a subtle but visible disgust that this man would have actually run from his duty—and, perhaps more important, his brothers-in-arms. 

Yuma does the things you'd expect him to do: fights for the underdog, fights against injustice, sees both sides of the conflict with the Indians, etc. He stops to help those who need help, and helps fight their battles even though they're not his battles. But Adams displays a toughness in the role that I hadn't expected. He's more than willing to beat the crap out of the bad guys or hold their heads under water until they cry uncle, and quite honestly, I'm much more partial to that than I am to seeing a hero who tries to get everyone together to talk it out like reasonable adults. Screw that; I say, if you've got a gun, use it! (Of course, with an attitude like that, you can see how television shows got in so much trouble over excessive violence.)

The Rebel may not be a great show, although it ran for two seasons. It is, however, a good one, and frequently a very good one. As I say, I've come to have a greater respect for Adams as an actor, and I like his character. The Rebel is a rare example of a Goodson-Todman production that isn't a game show, and for the most part it's a successful one. There is one sour note though, and that's the theme song, played at the beginning and end, and sung by Johnny Cash. There's nothing wrong with the song per se, and Cash is, of course, a legend, but the song's line doesn't do Cash's voice any favors, calling for a certain smoothness in the high notes that doesn't really suit his style. It's a small quibble, though, and I suspect that Cash fans are fine with it. I'm not his biggest fan myself, but who am I to complain?

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Our trio of "based on historical events" ends with a World War II drama, Blue Light, that stars Robert Goulet as David March, an American journalist who has supposedly renounced his American citizenship and joined the Nazis in their campaign to conquer the world. It's a ruse, however, as we're shown in the premiere episode; Goulet is actually a deep-cover sleeper agent; having successfully been planted in Germany prior to the war, he ingratiated himself with the Nazi hierarchy, even taking orders from Hitler, while secretly reporting back to the Americans under the code name "Blue Light," and occasionally being called on to sabotage Nazi war efforts. We're frequently reminded of the importance of March's mission: he is the lone survivor of a 18-man infiltration unit, thus he must be protected. He receives his orders from French underground member Suzanne Duchard (played by Christine Carère), who herself poses as a Gestapo officer.

This is another of the half-hour dramas that used to be common on television in the 1950s and 1960s before the networks were forced to give up a half-hour of prime time to local affiliates. The format works both for and against the show; stories are forced to cut extraneous events in favor of spare, lean storytelling that can work under the right circumstances. It can also be a detriment if the stories are forced to wrap up too quickly and too conveniently. Blue Light is not immune to to the latter, but what helps mitigate this tendency is that the series functions much like a serial, with each episode leading into the next, so much so that the first four episodes were edited into a feature-length movie after the show's cancellation.

Now, this is by no means a perfect series. It's been said that Goulet, who was a star on Broadway and in television for such hits as Camelot, Brigadoon, and Carousel, to branch out into truly dramatic acting, and in Blue Light there's nary a hint of Goulet the recording star; it's very much to the series' credit that they made David March a journalist rather than an entertainer, which would have given the excuse to have Goulet sing a couple of songs in each episode. On the other hand, perhaps the series would have lasted more than 17 episodes if they had done that; one of the drawbacks, one would suppose, of the half-hour format.

Goulet does, however, acquit himself very well as a dramatic actor. He's credible as a tough, smarmy turncoat who secretly carries the burden of playing the heel (his girlfriend was so distressed at his apparent act of treason that she committed suicide; he had been unable to tell even her of his true mission), and at times he shows a true ambivalance about his work, such as an early episode in which March is ordered to kill a fellow double-agent to assuage the Nazis of their suspicions about him; the fellow agent is not only an American but a friend with whom he's worked in the past. The fact that this agent was suffering from an incurable disease and had volunteered for the mission to give his death some meaning was no real solace to March, who worked to find a way in which he could throw the ever-suspicious Nazis off his trail while not having to kill his friend. ("There might yet be a cure!") All right, that was perhaps a little too neat of an ending, but the premise was really good, and posed an interesting moral dilemma.

Something difficult to accept, however, is the many scenes in which March and Duchard discuss his secret plans in settings where they're literally surrounded by German officers and Gestapo agents. Yes, I know they're supposed to be talking sotto voce, and the only reason they seem to be talking so openly is so they're audible to the viewers. Still, it works against the show's credibility, which is important when you're dealing with a premise such as this. Blue Light is not particularly a good show (in fact, the most recent episode we watched was average at best, managing to pack more than a half-hour's worth of cliches into its story), but it's not a bad show either, which is something, and it's an enjoyable show to watch, which is something more. The Rebel may be the better show of our hour-long bloc, but Blue Light mostly holds up its end of the bargain. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!