The New Top Ten, #7: Combat!

You have to understand something about the way I watch television to fully appreciate why Combat! makes it onto my Top Ten list, besides the fact that it's a consistently superior program.

Just because we spend our evenings watching television, it doesn't mean that's the only thing we're doing. For instance, I'm frequently working on this blog with the television on; for all you know, I may be writing these very words while Mannix is suffering yet another concussion. There are some shows that lend themselves to multitasking more than others; it's not a criticism, just a fact. 

On the other hand, some shows absolutely demand your attention—they engage all your senses, and don't let go until the episode is over. Combat! is one of those; I look forward to watching it each week, and it has my undivided attention for the full hour. That's a measure of how good it is: the dialogue, the cinematography, the framing of each shot, the music: it all becomes a sensory experience, an essential part of experiencing the show. Combat!, in its intensity, its storytelling, its performances, in the way it makes you think, is such a series; it engages, and it doesn't let go. That doesn't make it unique among the shows in our collection; it does make it good.

Combat!, properly understood, is not a war drama; rather, it's a drama about men during war. Without being strident or sanctimonious, as was often the case with a show like M*A*S*H, it manages to be both a forceful antiwar statement and a reminder of why war is sometimes necessary. It's also a tribute to the bravery of those men who put their lives on the line, often in situations that seem to make no sense, in defense of their country.

Oddly enough, I don't have any specific memories of having watched Combat! while I was growing up, unlike other shows that were set in World War II, Twelve O'clock High, The Rat Patrol, Hogan's Heroes, and McHale's Navy. And yet I must have been familiar with it; I recognized the ads for it in the old TV Guides, and when Vic Morrow was killed while filiming the Twilight Zone movie, I immediately associated him with Combat!. It wasn't until the show was featured on the late, lamented KXLI, which branded itself as "TV Heaven." Combat! was a part of the regular schedule, as well as the subject of occasional weekend marathons, and that's where I became reacquainted with it. Still, it took until I bought the box set for it to make the final impression that puts it on the list. 

Combat! tells the story of an American unit, beginning with its D-Day landing on the beaches of France and continuing as they make their way toward occupied Paris, and it has to be one of the grimmest, grittiest programs to air on television during the 1960s. It surrounds you with war: when the shells fall, you feel yourself flinching; when the soldiers are covered with muck and grime, you want to scrub it all off your face and hands and feet, if you can even remove the boots that you feel like you've lived in for half your life.* Most of all, it puts you in the middle of a line of American soldiers running toward German lines, running straight at guns that are shooting at you. It makes you wonder what you'd do. It makes you wonder how they did it, day after day, living in a kind of boring anxiety where you have to fight off hours of routine knowing that a bomb or a mine or a sniper could appear literally at any second. How do they relax, you wonder. How do they live their lives with such a heightened sense of danger constantly hanging over them? Why would you wish this on anyone?

*One of my favorite stories, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia: "During the battle of Hue during the Vietnam war US troops trying to retake the city, not having been trained in urban combat, resorted to using tactics for assaulting buildings and clearing rooms they learned from watching Combat!, reportedly to great effect."

At the same time that Combat! takes you into the horrors of war, it also takes you into the lives of these men, men who've learned how to do all the things I mentioned because, in James Burnham's words, "When there's no alternative, there's no problem." You learn to do what you have to do, and if you don't exactly become used to it, you do come to terms with it. These are the kind of characters that make it easy for viewers to root for them, to become vested in their welfare, perhaps even to identify with them. And that's before you even get to know them.

 

The alternate leads in Combat! are Rick Jason, who plays the leader of the platoon, Lieutenant Hanley; and Vic Morrow, who plays the veteran Sergeant Saunders. The episodes starring Morrow generally focus on the missions of him and his men, checking out seemingly deserted towns or doing reconnaissance work to sniff out German troop locations; Jason's episodes deal with the challenges of being in command or leading special missions. Each will occasionally appear in the other's episodes, although in a more incidental role, and many of the stories are built around guest stars and their own stories; it's a mark of the excellence of the writing and acting that the stories of rear echelon replacements, played by character actors, can be as engrossing as that of a tank commander, played by Jeffrey Hunter, who before the war was a failed priest.  

It's often the case with a superior show that one episode typifies its sustained excellence, and in the case of Combat!, that episode comes from the very first season, the Robert Altman-directed "I Swear by Apollo," which finds the squad holed up in a French convent with a gravely injured member of the Resistance. Their mission is to get him to French intelligence so he can give them vital information. Without a doctor of their own, they are forced to kidnap a Nazi doctor to perform life-saving surgery. Virtually the entire final act is conducted in silence—no music, no dialog, only the sound of the Frenchman’s labored breathing. Altman’s hand is evident in the way the story cuts between scenes of the surgery, the soldiers watching as burning candles drip wax, the contemplative nuns silently praying in their chapel, the sweat on the brow of the doctor (Sanders has threatened to kill him if he allows the Frenchman to die) and a large Crucifix mounted on the wall, with the crucified Christ looking down on the makeshift operating room; the blood He sheds may well be the blood of the gravely-injured Frenchman. 

The episode "I Swear by Apollo"

It’s gripping television; there is no guarantee that the patient will survive the operation, and the confidence that viewers have when watching a regular cast member in the same situation is nowhere present here. In the end, the Frenchman lives—and as the doctor prepares to leave (it would have been against the rules of engagement to take a non-combatant prisoner), he asks Saunders whether he would have cared about the Frenchman so much if he didn’t have military information; Saunders, in turn, asks him if he would have worked as hard to save the Frenchman's life without Saunders' threat of death. The war takes its toll on the living as well as the dead, a message that comes through in virtually every episode of the series.

Combat! runs for five seasons—longer, as more than one person has pointed out, than the actual campaign that took the troops from D-Day to Paris. For the final season, the show transitions from black-and-white to color, and I don't think the series is served well by that change—warfare, like pool halls, is more fitting when it's done in B&W, not to mention color makes it a bit easier to tell when they're shooting on a backlot. Regardless, there's a weight to the battle scenes and the drama that still comes through, that still makes Combat! television's definitive drama about men in war. And that's enough to earn a spot on anyone's Top Ten. TV  

The New Top Ten, #8: Mystery Science Theater 3000

Considering the number of times I've mentioned Mystery Science Theater 3000 here, it can't be a bombshell that it's now part of the Top Ten; in fact, the only thing surprising about it is that it wasn't there in the first place. (We'll get to that later.) And let me assure you that this isn't a case of hometown favoritism either, although it didn't hurt to be from Minneapolis at the same time that Mystery Science Theater made its local debut.

It all begins on Thanksgiving night, 1988. Now, if you've been reading this site for any length of time, you'll know that as far as television goes, Thanksgiving is synonymous with only two things, parades and football, and the parades were long gone. (As were the drumsticks.) Normally, I'd have been watching the late football game, but we were at my grandmother's apartment—and no, we didn't have to go over the river and through the woods to get there—and, as she didn't have cable TV, I had to make due with the over-the-air stations, one of which was KTMA, which was premiering a new series called Mystery Science Theater 3000, hosted by the local comedian Joel Hodgson. I'd heard of him, had seen ads in the local alternative papers for his stand-up act at various clubs. In fact, a friend of mine, attending one of his shows, had been invited to come up on stage and battle him in a game of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. He lost to Hodgson, several times, after which Hodgson revealed he'd nailed the head of his own robot down so it couldn't pop up.

The premise was pretty simple—science fiction movies with commentary provided by a guy and two robots, who appeared as silhouettes on the bottom of the screen. Riffing, they called it. For the premiere, they were doing a double-feature of Supermarionation movies, Invaders from the Deep and Revenge of the Mysterions from Mars (which you can see at the links). The comments were funny, sarcastic, smart-assed—qualities I'd well-developed by then, and laced with pop culture references. I got it, liked it—and then I don't think I ever watched another episode. Four months or so later I moved to Maine, where of course there was no KTMA, and pretty much forgot all about it.

A few months later, I read that Comedy Central was adding Mystery Science Theater 3000 to its lineup. It was nice to see a hometown show make good, and I started checking it out. This time, I kept watching. It was a funny show then, it's a funny show now; the more absurd, the better. There was, for instance, the time Joel tried to play Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" on electric bagpipes made out of a vacuum cleaner. There were running jokes about Peter Graves on Biography, Ted Kennedy's driving, Jack Ruby fantasy camps, and Rush Limbaugh. There were catchphrases: "A planet where apes evolved from men." "Bite me!" "By that time, my lungs were aching for air." Gorgo, Gamera, Godzilla, Torgo, Santo the Silver Maskman, Japanese sci-fi, biker movies. The Thanksgiving Turkey Day marathons. The dumber the humor, the more obscure the references, the better. Most of the episodes were on YouTube, and eventually, long after the original series had ended, it was incorporated into the regular Saturday night viewing schedule.   

So why wasn't it on my original list of Top Ten shows? Who knows? Not every program I enjoy made it; there's only room for ten, after all. But then a funny thing happened one day: a channel on the streaming service Pluto devoted to MST3K 24/7. And then there was a Shout! TV channel devoted to MST3K. And a YouTube channel! Suddenly, it wasn't just for Saturday nights or Thanksgiving marathons; it was for whenever you felt like it, good for when nothing else fit, when things weren't going well, or for just vegging out. It didn't matter that we'd already seen some of the movies two or three times; in fact, it seemed as if every time we watched Beginning of the End or Radar Men from the Moon or Lost Continent, there was something we'd missed the first five or six times. It was the epitome of what my friend David Hofstede refers to as "Comfort TV," good for whatever ails you. And it was obvious that it deserved not just a place on the Top Ten list, but a high one.

There are, of course, two basic questions for any MSTie: one, where do I stand on the great Joel vs. Mike question? If it's not quite to the level of "Which Darren is your favorite" on Bewitched, it's still important. Mike—Michael J. Nelson, the show's head writer—stepped into the lead role when Joel Hodgson left the show, and shepherded the series through its move to the Sci-Fi channel, the big-screen movie, and the eventual end of the series, and there is a school of thought that one has to be either Joel or Mike. I don't buy it, and while it may have taken awhile to get used to Mike as the host (he'd appeared many times as various characters during the Joel era), it was for the most part an easy transition for me. Besides, how could you not like someone who not only could tell a joke featuring Muir Mathieson, but could pronounced his name right?

The second question, perhaps more relevant to today: what do I think of the MST3K reboot, which Joel Hodgson launched a few years ago, following a monstrously successful crowdfunding campaign? Well, the short answer is that I'm glad there are three more seasons, but as is the case with so many remakes and reboots, you can't really go home again. Joel himself has only occasionally appeared on the show, while an entirely new cast of voices play the robots Tom Servo and Crow. Perhaps I'm just too old, but I'm also too attached to the old cast to warm to the new one; the voices themselves sound like they're just not quite right for the characters. Additionally, the riffs and cultural references don't quite fit my demographic, and the movies aren't the black-and-white sci-fi flicks that I enjoy the most. And the low-budget feel of the original was an important part of its charm. But then, that's just me, and I know there are lots of people out there who enjoy the new series just fine.

Be that as it may, it's the classic version of Mystery Science Theater 3000 that takes its rightful place in the new Top Ten, along with Judd for the Defense and Maigret. Those shows made the list because they make me think, but MST3K belongs there because I can watch it over and over and it makes me laugh out loud, and there are very few shows about which I can make that statement. As long as we have shows like this to watch, we're in good shape—to infinity and beyond, coining a phrase. There's more I could say, much more, but I have to go now: Samson vs. the Vampire Women is about to start. TV  

The New Top Ten, #2: Maigret

The first time I saw Maigret on television, I was young and impressionable and didn't know the ways of the world. It was 1993, and Maigret was running on Mystery!, the anthology series on PBS. Michael Gambon was playing Maigret, and I suppose I was attracted to the series because I'd seen and liked Gambon in The Singing Detective a few years before; I'd never heard of the character Jules Maigret, the famous French detective created by Georges Simenon. (I'd never heard of Simenon either, for that matter.) 

The first thing that puzzled me was that Maigret and all the actors were speaking British English, with no French accent, and I found this tremendously disorienting. As I say, I was a naif when it came to things like this; I was used to American television, and wasn't familiar with the British practice of having actors speak naturally, without trying to put on phony accents, French or not. I kept checking to make sure this was set in France, and that they hadn't moved the action to England or something like that, and frankly it distracted me from following the stories. I can't even remember if I saw all of the episodes. Did I mention that I was also stupid back then?

The years passed, and while I didn't pursue Maigret any further—either the series or the books on which it was based—I didn't forget about it, either. When Rowan Atkinson took his turn as Maigret in 2016, I was intrigued—The Black Adder, you know; it seems as if I was always coming to Maigret through some other series the lead actor had appeared in—and recorded it with the intention of watching it later. Well, you know what they say about intentions; by the time we could have gotten to it, we'd moved, and I lost all the episodes that were on the DVR because we changed cable companies. Oh well; c'est la vie, as Maigret would have said.

But for some reason unknown to me, either then or now, I started looking into Maigret more seriously. I even caught an adaptation of a Maigret story that was produced on Studio One back in the early 1950s; "Stan, the Killer," it was. The actor playing Maigret (Romney Brent) didn't leave that much of an impression on me, which was understandable, I suppose, since Eli Wallach was the star. But—and here's what remains a mystery to me—I started researching various versions of Maigret, trying to find which version critics considered the definitive one, if such a thing existed. 

And that's how I stumbled onto Rupert Davies. Maigret had been played by many actors both in the movies and on television; even Charles Laughton took his turn, as the first English-language Maigret. Bruno Cremer played him in the 1990s into the early 2000s and those were well-reviewed, but the versions online didn't have subtitles, and since they were all in French, they were useless to me. But the Davies version—almost everyone with an opinion thought his was the best, or one of the best. Georges Simenon himself said, "At last, I have found the perfect Maigret!" Well, that was good enough for me. Davies had played Maigret on the BBC for four seasons, from 1960 to 1963, and, remarkably for the Beeb, all 52 episodes still existed.  And eventually, as so often happens if you're willing to be patient and keep your eyes open, the series popped up on YouTube and the Internet Archives. (It's also on DVD, but it ain't cheap.)

By this time I'd gotten to know the character a little better. I still hadn't read any of Simenon's books—that would come later—but I was familiar enough with him to know that Maigret was no knuckle-dragging savage, of which no better example exists than Law & Order: SVU's Elliot Stabler; or a smart-ass know-it-all, as in every investigator who's ever appeared on NCIS. He's a shrewd judge of character, puffing on his ever-present pipe with a world-weariness offset by wry good humor, and a blunt, direct style of questioning; he's able to sense when things don't add up, skeptical when the pieces fall into place too easily, and not easily fooled. He's also experienced in the human condition, with an ability to look beyond the surface, and an unwillingness to condemn people based on imperfections in their past lives. 

Indeed, the impression that Davies-as-Maigret gives off is an overwhelming sense of humanity; he displays a particular ability to put himself in place of the victim and see where it leads him, which imbues in him an extraordinary sensitivity toward those he investigates. Even the satisfaction of solving a case comes with a particular cloud, for he knows that when he wins, someone loses his liberty, or his life. People complain that I'm too soft on criminals, he notes in one episode, but unlike the magistrates and prosecutors—bureaucrats, Maigret dismissively views them—he lives in the world of crime, and understands the human drama that plays out within. 

In her essay, "Maigret's Law," sociologist Susan S. Silbey notes that "Maigret is a believer in sociological justice [who] works to repair the torn fabric of social relations to recompose the troubled lives that end in murder." Oftentimes, "he arranges outcomes in which the guilty person feels the need to confess, or to execute their own punishment." While the bureaucrats are eager to categorize and name everything as soon as they come across it, Maigret "simply lets it register; the sorting, the understanding comes later." But then, to the bureaucrats, crime is a form waiting to be filled out, "'satisfied that [they] had done [their] duty' if they named the rules and issued notices, willing to let others do the work." For Maigret, the human element is never far from the surface; perhaps it remains there all the time, in plain sight for those like Maigret who understand it. Is this what is so often missing from American police stories? Perhaps. . .

If all this sounds terribly dense, as if one needs an advanced degree of some kind to enjoy it, forget it. The 52 episodes, all taken from the Simenon's fantastic oeuvre—he wrote 75 Maigret novels, and 28 short stories—do an impressive job of condensing the often-complex narratives into 50-minute timeslots. The cases are always interesting and the outcomes not always predictable, but the pleasure is in watching Maigret solve them—and it is a real pleasure.

What else? The location shots, all done in France, the music, and the use of colloquial French terms throughout—Maigret is always referred to by his subordinates as patron, or chief—establish the setting admirably; no concerns here that the actors don't speak with French accents! The supporting cast is led by Ewen Solon as Maigret's loyal number two, Lucas, a man with the unique ability to combine cynicism and good humor; Neville Jason as young Lapointe and Victor Lucas as muscular Torrence round out Maigret's closest associates. Helen Shingler plays Maigret's devoted wife Louise, who understands him all-too-well; as a couple, they compliment each other perfectly, and Maigret himself knows he would be an incomplete man without her.

In the end, it was very easy to come to the conclusion that Maigret should be part of the new Top Ten. I was sold on it from the first episode. There was a warmth I felt toward him—toward both the character and the actor, really; that warmth being a reciprocation of the warmth which emanates from Rupert Davies himself as he projects Maigret's inner humanity and desire for justice. Indeed, as I look through this, I find that I might have used the word "justice" many more times than I have, since justice is the unifying aspect that joins Maigret to so many of my favorite characters on television: the justice that Judd seeks for his clients, the justice that Dr. Baxter searches for in the diagnoses of his patients, the justice that is (seemingly) unattainable for Dr. Richard Kimble, the justice that is an overriding concern for the Doctor as he travels in his Tardis. And why not; the dictionary tells us that "justice" comes from the Old French justitia, which in its Latin root meant "righteousness and equity." It's a companion to the Latin justus, meaning "upright and just." The well-drawn character can demonstrate such justice, but it requires the actor to bring it out, to project it on the screen.

There had to be a reason, after all, why Simenon considered Rupert Davies the "perfect" Maigret. And while there are other Maigret stories to be told, other actors to play him and other series to watch, he'll always be Maigret to me. TV  

The New Top Ten, #3 Judd for the Defense

It seems to me to have been a few months ago when I made some kind of rash promise that I was going to update my Top Ten show list, which you see on the sidebar. As I say, it was a rash thing to do, because here we are months later, well into the new year, and if you were to check that list, you'd see that nothing had changed. It isn't that I bite off more than I can chew, or promise more than I can deliver, or at least I don't think it is. I've thought about it, which has to count for something. And I wasn't trying to deceive anyone—matter of fact, the reason I mentioned it when I did was to give me time to do something about it. 

Well, I'm finally doing just that. There are several series out there that have earned a place on the current Top Ten list, and I think it's about time to give them their due. Notice that I'm not doing them all at once; after that first paragraph, there should be no explanation necessary, and this way I get a little more mileage out of it, a few more pieces to help fill out those quiet weeks. There's also an ulterior motive, as always: the more I talk about this, the more I force myself to follow through, lest you hold me accountable and demonstrate to everyone out there that I really am the fraud you suspected me of being.

But if you choose to bring that charge against me, I can't think of anyone better to defend me than the protagonist of the first addition to the list, Clinton Judd, the high-priced, high-profile defense attorney of Judd for the Defense. I rediscovered this show a few years ago, and almost immediately realized that my memories from having seen it originally were doing a great disservice to the show. What I had remembered, back when I was eight years old, was a show with a liberal viewpoint, one sharply at odds with the law-and-order ideology I grew up with and cultivated over the next five decades. Call them do-gooders, bleeding hearts, whatever you want, but Judd was definitely not Perry Mason.

And you know what? It isn't Perry Mason, and that's a good thing. Whereas Mason's pleasure lies in its predictability through a formula that plays episode after episode with little variation, Judd gives us something that's in stark contrast: a lawyer dealing with sometimes shockingly contemporary issues, ones that aren't always cut-and-dried, black-and-white, right-and-wrong, and may not even be solvable within the 60 minutes allotted to the story—in fact, we don't always even see the verdict come in.

That's because Judd, for the Defense is not a show about whodunnit, or at least not always. It's a show about ideas, about what a variable thing the law can be when you take the time to study it, how defending the law isn't always popular, and why it's more important than ever nowadays. John Adams—the same Adams from The Adams Chronicles—wrote, in his defense of the British soldiers charged with the Boston Massacre, that "it's of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished." It was, Adams went on to argue, a distillation of Blackstone's Ratio, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. (Benjamin Franklin actually upped the ante; he made the ration 100 guilty and one innocent.) In other words, you don't apply the law only for the case today, but for the case tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

At a time when individual rights are being trampled upon with increasing frequency, when the application of the law itself is being politicized beyond what we might have thought possible, and when law enforcement agencies often view citizens not as human beings to be protected, but as threats to be disarmed and persecuted, one readily comes to appreciate the importance of having someone standing in your corner, defending your rights, making sure you're not being taken advantage of by a system that can seem to care more about obtaining convictions than imparting justice. Someone once said that if the guilty occasionally seem to use the system to go free, it's so that the system can protect the innocent, the law exists not to punish the guilty, but to free the innocent, and that put things in a completely different perspective for me. Perhaps I have become more liberal over the years, at least in some ways. I suppose it's part and parcel of becoming a reactionary.

As I mentioned above, Judd is often a show about ideas, and shows like that can get preachy if you're not careful. In truth, there are moments when Judd seems to be standing on a soapbox instead of inside a courtroom, but that doesn't happen all that often, and even when it does, you're not really irritated by it, primarily because of the power with which these polemics are being delivered by Judd's star, Carl Betz. Best-known as Alex Stone, the pediatrician-husband of Donna Reed on The Donna Reed Show, Betz plays Clinton Judd with an edgy toughness; a man of integrity, committed to justice, and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it for his client—even a client he doesn't particularly like, whose cause he doesn't especially approve of, because justice belongs to everyone, not just those who don't need it.

I also like Judd's able assistant, Ben Caldwell, played by Stephen Young; it's hard to pigeonhole him in the traditional mentor/student relationship we see so often on television (Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, etc.) You can tell he's already a good lawyer (he gets to try a couple of cases during the series, and Judd wouldn't have him at his side if he wasn't); he's learning from Judd how to be a great lawyer. 

As I've gotten older over the years, I've begun to appreciate that not everything is as cut-and-dried as one would like it to be. This is especially the case when it comes to legal dramas. (Get it? Legal drama? Case? Never mind.) In an episode of The Defenders, another series I'm starting to reassess, Robert Reed's character, young lawyer Kenneth Preston, complains to his father, experienced attorney Lawrence, (E.G. Marshall), that sometimes the law is too unbending, to which the elder Preston replies that, as an attorney, it's Kenneth's job to figure out how to bend it when that's what's needed. 

I find myself feeling the same way, understanding that there is a dynamic that exists between law enforcement—the entire justice system, really—and the average citizen that is, right now, not a particularly healthy one. Maybe that's the way it's always been—unequal access, unequal outcomes—or maybe it's just become more pronounced over the last couple of decades; it's certainly become more political. Whatever the case, it's true that political conservatives, who have always been the greatest champions of law and order, have come to understand that the law is not always your friend, and it doesn't always work for justice. I've voiced this complaint many times over the years, particularly in the series of posts I wrote a few years ago about how America is more and more resembling a police state (You can see this one, this one, and this one for starters), so I'm not going to plow that ground again. 

My point is that the oft-heard argument that "if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about" doesn't hold water any more. Perry Mason often tells his clients not to talk to police unless he's with them (and this was before Miranda), and I think this has only increased over the years. In such an atmosphere, lawyers like Clinton Judd, lawyers who realize what "justice" really means, become very appealing characters. There is a reason, after all, why more legal dramas tell the story of defense attorneys than they do prosecutors. It's difficult for us to envision ourselves as the murder, the rapist, the bank robber—but it's no longer impossible for us to suppose that we're innocent citizens who've found ourselves in some kind of Kafkaesque world where we're on trial for a crime we didn't commit, and nobody will listen to us. Judd, and shows like it, exist to remind us that there is one person who'll listen, and who'll fight on your behalf: your lawyer.

Provided you have the right lawyer, of course. That's something that Judd's very aware of; he's committed to taking pro bono cases on occasion for that precise purpose, but you get the idea that it does trouble him, the idea that not every defendant has the same access to receive the same benefits that his clients do, and it fuels his determination to fight on behalf of that amorphous, sometimes unbending concept of justice. It's not a matter of ideology or altruism; it always comes back to the idea that you preserve the rights of the guilty in order to protect the rights of the innocent. 

There are other things I like about Judd; the gravitas and literacy with which the issues are presented; the absence of stock characters such as Mason's Della Street, who—let's be honest here—can get a little annoying sometimes with her cutesy comments and presumptions; and the disinclination toward wrapping things up at the end with a nice little joke or feel-good moment—such scenes happen but rarely.

I've written about Judd a couple of times—here and here—and so I don't want to be guilty of repeating myself. And anyway, these Top Ten essays were never formal reviews of the shows themselves so much as they were descriptions of my personal relationships with the shows, the little things that elevate them from something I enjoy to something just a little bit more. Judd for the Defense is one of those series I get a great pleasure from; a serious show that makes one think, but also an exciting, enjoyable drama that one looks forward to each week. But it's also a noble depiction of what justice really means, and while there might be more than a dash of idealism in that presentation, well, I think that's all right, too. After all, a fella can dream, can't he? TV  

The live Top Ten

Time flies. It was ten years ago that I prepared my Top Ten list that's been residing over there on the sidebar. Most of those shows had been part of my informal top ten, the one I kept in my head, for years, and given my disinclination to watch contemporary television, there was no particular reason to think those choices would be changing any time soon. 

Recently, though, I've been thinking. (Granted, that's often cause for alarm among you readers, but it's a habit I've had trouble breaking.) Ten years is a long time, and while it’s true the classic era of television (which encompasses most of the shows on that list) is long since over, that doesn’t mean I’m done discovering classics that are new to me; indeed, thanks to the wonders of YouTube and the Internet Archive, I probably have more access to unseen shows from the 1950s through the 1970s than ever before. And so it sees to me that it’s about time for a reappraisal—or perhaps, using today's industry lingo, I should call it a "reboot."

This first list is one made up of shows that have been my favorites over the last year or so. Think of it as a "live" list—in other words, (spoiler alert!) while The Prisoner will always be one of my all-timers, it's been a few years since I've watched it. Therefore, it wouldn't make a list of current favorites. Conversely, there are shows that I really enjoy right now, but when they're stacked up against the rest, they might fall just outside the top ten. That's not a knock on them; it just shows how tough it is to crack that list. Later on in the year, I'll be introducing an all-new all-time Top Ten. I wouldn't expect too many changes if I were you, but it will definitely have some additions, not to mention revised comments on some of the shows that remain. 

Having already gone on altogether too long, I'll now get to the point with two legal dramas that rise to the top of the list: Judd, for the Defense and Sam Benedict. I reviewed Sam Benedict just a couple of weeks ago, while I shared my feelings for Judd last year. Each of them represent a welcome break from the formulaic Perry Mason; while Mason is still a favorite, the Perry/Della/Paul triangle gets old after a time, while Hamilton Burger's incompetence remains beyond comprehension. Both Judd and Benedict give us what is probably a more realistic look at the high-octane life of a big-time trial lawyer. It's also quite a different view of the legal system, though; for example, in one case Sam gets his client acquitted, but we never find out who actually did commit the crime. That's not Sam's job, though; he was hired to ensure justice for his client, and that's what he did. 

Both men share a passion for that concept, justice, which causes them to occasionally take cases against their better judgment, representing unpopular causes or defending people they don't like—but, as Clinton Judd reminds us, everyone is entitled to a fair trial, even those with whom you might not agree, and what's popular is not always what's right. (By the way, it's also nice to see clients who behave like real people, with well thought-out backstories, rather than the cartoonish caricatures that too often comprise the Mason universe.) Our heroes aren't assured of winning, either; a couple of Judd's cases go to the jury without us ever finding out the verdict, while one of Benedict's clients turns out to be guilty, and another is only saved from a long prison term by a plea deal that Sam arranges for him. We may not be used to seeing that, but it's a fact of life, and in these stories the casees were just background; there was something much more fundamental at stake, which is what the stories were actually about. These shows have hard edges and deal with hard issues, and they've both earned top places on this list.  

Also on the list, and this won't come as any surprise to longtime readers, is Mystery Science Theater 3000. As many times as I've seen some of these movies, there's invariably a riff or two that I hadn't caught before, or one that just hits me the right way; along with the original British version of Top Gear, it's one of the few shows that actually makes me laugh out loud. I've gained a real appreciation for the various casts that appeared on the show over the years, particularly the dry wit of Mike Nelson, the voice talents of Trace Beaulieu, and the offbeat riffs from J. Elvis Weinstein, who started on the show when MST3K was just a local program in the Twin Cities, and stayed for the first year of its national run. (I remember seeing the very first MST3K, a double-feature that aired on a Thanksgiving evening, and was a fan from the start.) I also learned how a bad serial like Radar Men from the Moon can be that entertaining.

There are a couple of war dramas on the list as well. I took on Garrison's Gorillas here, and followed it up with the show that succeeded it on our schedule, Combat! Garrison's Gorillas is action-adventure at its finest, with a very good ensemble cast (as opposed to, say, The Rat Patrol) and entertaining stories; at the same time, it never forgets (nor lets you forget) that war is no game, and it's fought for the highest possible stakes. That's a message that's driven home relentlessly in Combat!, which is not only perhaps the best war drama ever seen on television, but one of its best dramas period. Its well-drawn characters and literate plots give us a graphic look at the horrors of war; it makes those of us who never fought profoundly grateful for our good fortune, and even more appreciative of those who have. If you're not anti-war after watching Combat!, you haven't been paying attention.

The British police series Maigret, starring Rupert Davies, got my treatment here, and my enjoyment of it continues to increase each week. Davies's portrayal of the famous French detective is spot-on, capturing the world-weariness and hard edge of the character perfectly, while also portraying his warmth and good humor, seen both with his wife and his colleagues. Maigret is shrewd, intuitative, and, in contrast to most American police dramas, demonstrates both respect and empathy for many of the accused that he investigates, including some that he arrests; "Some people criticize me for being too sympathetic," he comments in one episode. American detectives would probably accuse him of being soft; they fail to understand what humanity is all about, primarily because they've already lost their own.

The Twilight Zone is already on the Top Ten list, but it's been many years since I've given the series a proper look, and my new BluRay set has been the perfect excuse to start watching it again from the very beginning, with spotless and uncut episodes. It's provided me with a reminder of how brilliant the show's first season is; I wonder what people thought back in 1959 when they were seeing these episodes for the first time? We can look it up, of course; there's been a plethoria of material written about the show. Still, it's interesting to see how well those first season episodes reflect the tenor of the times: several early stories depicting military themes (how many men back then would have found these settings familiar; after all, it was what they'd experienced), while others involve man's quest for space, or just a general unease with the modern world. Add to that a layer of the unexplainable, and it's hard to top.

My relationship with Twin Peaks remains an ambiguous one, in light of a brilliant premiere episode, a solid first season, and a disastrous second one. I'm in the midst of watching Twin Peaks: The Return right now (six episodes in), and I'll write it up when it's over. But right now I'm at a point where each week's episode is highly anticipated, if for no other reason than to see if things begin to make sense. Bit by bit some pieces of the story come together each week, but there's a long way to go. Still, when you're dealing with David Lynch, you either trust him or you don't, and The Return has still paid off in a way that season two never quite managed. Besides, remember how I said this was a live list? Well, I look forward to it each week, and if that doesn't earn a show a spot on the list, what does? We'll see if it's still there the next time we try this little experiment.

Hawaiian Eye is probably the third-best of the WB detective dramas, behind 77 Sunset Strip and the underrated Bourbon Street Beat, and the quality of episodes varies wildly, but in a TV diet that, at the moment, is a very intense one, it's the kind of show that you can relax and watch, knowing you don't have to listen carefully for the smallest verbal clue, react to the injustice you see on the screen, or wince once again at man's inhumanity to man. You just watch it and accept it for what it is, and believe me, there's a lot to be said for that. I first wrote about it here, and since then Grant Williams has joined the cast; he doesn't really add anything to the show, but he doesn't hurt it either. Otherwise, the only changes I'd make to what I said then are that I've come to enjoy Anthony Eisley much more—I might have mischaracterized him as being stiff back then, and he's grown on me since; I'll miss him when he leaves the show for the final season—and Connie Stevens is starting to get on my nerves. Her Cricket Blake character keeps complaining that she's not treated like a grown-up, but for my money she doesn't give us any reason to think otherwise. Hopefully, as it is with so many immature people, it's just a phase.

Finally, I wrote about Burke's Law just recently; there's a reason why we're watching the series again from the very start. It's as charming now as it was the first time, and with the passage of time there's still some mystery as to whodunnit; what more can you ask for in an encore showing? It's the perfect Saturday-night compliment to a movie from the Criterion Channel that's often intensity ramped up to eleven on the dial. (Have you ever watched Japanese noir? Try it sometime.)

As I mentioned, I'll have a complete revised Top Ten later in the year, but looking at it in real time has been an interesting exercise. Maybe we'll do it again sometime. TV  

Additions to the Top Ten: Man in a Suitcase

RICHARD BRADFORD IS McGILL IN MAN IN A SUITCASE

I'm not what you'd call an Anglophile; I don't scour newsstands looking for magazines with one of the Royals on the cover, I don't give a rat's you-know-what about what Meghan and Harry or William and Kate are up to (I'm not even on a first-name basis with them), and I root for the home team on the Fourth of July.

When it comes to television, however, I'm more than willing to look across the pond, especially the shows from the 1960s that migrated to American TV: Doctor Who, The Prisoner, The Avengers, The Saint, The Persuaders, and—Man in a Suitcase.   

Man in a Suitcase ran for only one season (1967-68 on ITV; 1968 on ABC), but it's more than worthy of being mentioned with those other series. It stars American actor Richard Bradford in a galvanizing performance as McGill ("Just McGill," he brusquely tells people), a former American spy who's been dismissed from the service, and prevented from returning to the United States, for having allowed a scientist (accidentally, or on purpose) to defect to the Soviets. As befits his role as series protagonist, all is not what it seems: McGill's the victim of a frame-up, and he's determined to clear his name, even though it's unlikely he'd ever want to return to the service after the way he's been treated. In the meantime, he's holed up in London, taking various assignments as an unlicensed private detective, accompanied always by the battered suitcase that holds the remnants of his life. He's hard and cynical, and in the first episode*, "Man from the Dead," we see why: the service knows he's innocent. It turns out the scientist is acting as a double agent, passing information back to the Americans, and McGill was targeted to take the rap in order to make the whole thing convincing to the Reds (as well as keeping him from figuring out the truth). In other words, while everyone else thinks he's a disgrace (and possibly a traitor!), the people who know better, who could with one word restore his reputation, are perfectly content to let him twist in the wind to provide cover for their larger deception. No wonder he's bitter.

*As you watch the series, don't follow the broadcast order of episodes, which lists "Man from the Dead" as Episode #6; it is, in fact, meant to be seen first. One could make an argument, however, that it could equally function as the final episode.

There's a lot to like about this series. It has that stylish Sixties feel, from the pitch-perfect theme by Ron Grainer (who also did The Prisoner and Doctor Who, among others) to the fashions, the style of cinematography, and the Cold War tension. The series has a dark, cynical feeling, right out of shows like Secret Agent and The Prisoner, and McGill is the perfect protagonist: a loner, sardonic, brittle, and suspicious; a mercenary who doesn't let his fee stop him from biting the hand that feeds him, whether it be a client, the authorities, or someone who might be an ally. And yet he also has the proverbial Heart of Gold, a strong sense of justice that causes him to put his own life on the line in order to help those he sees as true victims—people like him, although he never drifts into self-pity. (It also shows the value of casting an American actor as an American character, rather than a British actor with a bad accent.)


Certainly these are the elements that one sees in traditional noir stories, and in lesser hands it could fall into cliché. Bradford's performance ensures that it never happens, though. A classic method actor, he's thoroughly invested in his character, determined to play him as realistically as possible. When McGill's slugged, he bleeds; getting sapped in the head leaves him woosey and uncertain; and he makes it clear he doesn't always have all the answers. This kind of dedication made Bradford difficult to work with (and perhaps explains why Man in a Suitcase was his only starring role), but it results in a charismatic, convincing portrayal of a man who's honest, dedicated (often in spite of himself), as must have been one hell of an agent.

Even when the stories are relatively straightforward, there's a perpetually unsettling feeling about Man in a Suitcase: no guarantees that the good guys will win, that everyone will survive, that McGill won't be (once again) betrayed by someone he's reluctantly decided to trust. There's also a sense that not everything is as it seems, and indeed the story rarely unfolds all at once. McGill's background is only occasionally mentioned (usually by prospective clients who take the opportunity to remind him that beggars can't be choosers), but it's never far from the surface, and never far from McGill's thoughts. It's a subtle, unspoken element that hangs in the air throughout the series.

It's too bad that Man in a Suitcase only ran for one season, but perhaps that's really a good thing; like The Prisoner, it may have been impossible to sustain the premise and the quality of the series for more than the 30 episodes that were made. I watched Man in a Suitcase right after having finished Coronet Blue, a series from roughly the same era with a similar look; but Man in a Suitcase quickly underlines the missed potential of Coronet Blue: the atmosphere, the subtleties, the distrust, the sense that the ground could shift under your feet at any moment. A little mystery, done well, can go a long way, and while we never find out who Michael Alden was, just as we never know if McGill clears his name, it's clear which series offers the more satisfying journey. TV  

Additions to the Top Ten: Breaking Point

EDUARD FRANZ (LEFT) AND PAUL RICHARDS: THE DOCTORS OF BREAKING POINT

I've written a couple of times these last few months about Breaking Point, the Ben Casey spinoff that ran in the 1963-64 season on ABC. As was the case with so many series from that era, I first became acquainted with it through TV Guide, where I would see it in the listings each week, reading the description of an episode that sounded intriguing or provocative.

Like Casey, the show followed the tried-and-true formula: Paul Richards plays Dr. McKinley Thompson, the young chief resident in psychiatry; Eduard Franz, as psychiatric clinic director Dr. Edward Raymer, is the older mentor. Although each story tends to focus on one doctor*, both men appear in most episodes. And, as is the case in so many dramas of the era, plots revolve around the guest stars more than the doctors themselves.

*The emphasis, as was the case in most medical dramas, was on the younger of the two men; Franz, noting this and pointing out to the producers that his contract stipulated co-star status, calmly mentioned he'd be asking to be released from his contract unless the imbalance was corrected. Fortunately, it was.

In one particularly fine episode, "And If Thy Hand Offend Thee," James Daly (Medical Center) portrays Mitchell Farnum, a veteran of the Pacific theater in World War II, who appears to be dealing with what today we'd call PTSD, spending nights in an Asian bar, raving about his experiences with the Japanese. Just when it looks as if a fight might break out, though, he finds his right hand cramping and breaking out in a rash. Since his regular doctor can't find anything physically wrong, he sends Farnum to see Dr. Thompson.

Slowly, through Thompson's questions, Farnum's story begins to unfold in unexpected directions. First, we find that Farnum has had this problem with his hand for several years. We are told that Farnum has been separated from his wife for over a decade, and then discover that his wife is Japanese, that he met her during the occupation, that she lived in Hiroshima but was not caught in the blast. We learn that they spent several happy years in Japan, but that the problems began once they relocated to the United States. We see a flashback in which Farnum's unit has a hatred of Japanese drillled into them - that they lack emotions, that they will kill without scruples, that they are not even human. Fine, we think - this confirms our initial theory that Farnum has a bitter hatred of the Japanese based on what he saw in the Pacific.

James Daly (left) with Paul Richards

But then the story begins to shift, as Farnum tells Thompson that he was involved in testing of the atomic bomb. that he played the key role in testing the trigger mechanism. As he describes the horror that unfolded at Hiroshima (in a stunning, documentary-like look at the damage), Dr. Thompson begins to understand the situation. Farnum's hatred of the Japanese is merely a defense mechanism to mask his true problem - an intense hatred of himself, fueled by guilt over his role in the bombing. Having unlocked the key to understanding the situation, Thompson stresses, does not mean Farnum's illness will go away magically. It will take work, it will take desire on Farnum's part to get better, but Thompson will be there to help him get there.

And in truth, one of the best parts about Breaking Point is that it usually avoids the easy answer. It is clear that Farnum and his wife still love each other after all these years, but Farnum tells her it will take time for him to accept all this. When he checks out of the hospital, to continue his therapy as an outpatient, he tells Dr. Thompson that he's not ready to return to his wife yet. He wants to, but it isn't going to happen overnight. The episode ends, on a note of hope, but with no certainty that Farnum and his wife will live happily ever after.

This is far from an unusual episode of Breaking Point, however. Another standout, "My Hands Are Clean," involves Telly Savalas as Vincenzo Gracchi, a loan shark who may be experiencing the Stigmata, bleeding that mimics Christ's wounds on the Cross. His priest, played by Henry Silva, refuses to believe that this is a miracle - Gracchi is an unrepentant loan shark, after all* - and convinces Cracchi to see his old friend Dr. Thompson, who through patient but persistent questioning determines that Gracchi's problems have something to do with his father. Sounds Freudian, right? Gracchi says his father was the best man he's ever known, and that he'd wanted Gracchi to become a priest, but the young Gracchi was too consumed with succeeding, with rising above his station in life, the area where Gracchi feels his father was a failure.

*In doing so, the priest's comments echo those of G.K. Chesterton, who said that it was only because he believed in the existence of miracles that he could discount those that were not real.

What does this have to do with the Stigmata? Thompson confesses his frustration to Dr. Raymer, who shrewdly reminds the younger doctor that there was more than one man on the hill at Calvary. And with that, Thompson gets to the bottom of Gracchi's problem - his guilt is about the kind of lifestyle he has chosen, the way he has unscrupulously taken advantage of so many people, and in doing so he is identifying not with Christ, but with the Good Thief. It's more of a happy ending than most episodes, with Gracchi vowing to give up loan sharking and become an honest businessman, but both he and the viewers know that he'll need continued therapy to get over what has plagued him for so long.

In many respects, "My Hands Are Clean" illustrates why Breaking Point is so good. We see the patient struggling (and initially rejecting) the idea of psychiatric help. The doctors ask questions, probe, but are never intrusive. They stress the reasons the patient needs help, but don't force the issue. Eventually, we see the patients hit bottom, and in desperation return to the hospital - where Drs. McKinley or Raymer are there, waiting for them. They are never dismissive of the problems faced by their patients, nor do they scoff at things like religious belief, which they give great respect.

Most of all, a couple of things I mentioned earlier: first, that there are no easy answers. In an episode featuring Bradford Dillman as a doctor blinded in an accident, the episode ends with Dillman finally adjusting to a future without sight, and returning home with his new guide dog - only to find his wife, unable to provide him with the support he needs, has left him. Dillman starts the process of learning how to function as a sightless doctor, but we have no idea whether or not he and his wife will reconcile. A similar situation occurs in an episode I wrote about earlier, with Dr. Raymer treating Gena Rowlands, a woman with a drinking problem. At the conclusion of the episode her husband, fed up with her repeated promises to stop drinking, has left her. She's determined, with Dr. Raymer's help, to overcome her problems and win her husband back - and on that hopeful note, but with no guarantee that the couple will get back together, the episode ends. Some people might complain that the story isn't tied up in a nice bow, as would be the case with so many other shows of the era - I simply call it real life.

In writing about that episode, I also mention the other thing that I like so much about Breaking Point - there is no personal drama concerning the doctors. Are they married, do they have girlfriends, are their lives like those on, say, Gray's Anatomy? As Dr. Raymer says, "Does it matter?" Breaking Point is a medical drama, not a soap opera, with the story concentrating on the lives of the patients, people at the very breaking point. See that picture above of Daly with Paul Richards? It's a key point in the episode, played with Richards' back to the camera, and that's symbolic of how the show lets those lives take center stage. It never becomes melodramatic, and only rarely does it even try to pull strings or manipulate viewers. The cast is first-rate, the writing is quality, the episodes demonstrate the intense drama of the human condition, and remind us that this drama doesn't need to be tarted up to be compelling. Breaking Point is compelling, consistently, and it's unfortunate that the show lasted only the one season, competing with East Side/West Side on CBS and Sing Along With Mitch on NBC.

Breaking Point reminds us that television has always been capable of delivering quality drama, and that the human mind is perhaps the most fertile ground for such drama. My question is simple: where is this kind of drama today?

Additions to the Top Ten: Naked City

PAUL BURKE IN A SCENE FROM NAKED CITY

Most people of a certain age are familiar with the saying, "There are eight million stories in the Naked City," though I'm not sure that it means anything to people today.  But back in the early '60s, the Naked City was New York, and there were indeed eight million stories to be told - many of them on the television series of the same name.

The Naked City was one of the great noir films of the '40s, directed by Jules Dassan in 1948.  It was notable for its gritty, documentary-like style, aided by its extensive use of location shooting in New York City.  (It won an Academy Award for cinematography.)   It followed two police detectives, veteran Detective Lieutenant. Dan Muldoon (Going My Way's Barry Fitzgerald) and his young associate Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) as they investigate a murder.

In 1958, the story made the transition to television as a weekly half-hour drama on ABC, with John McIntyre taking on the role of Muldoon and James Franciscus portraying Halloran, joined by Harry Bellaver as Sergeant Frank Arcaro.  It didn't take long for things to change, though; halfway through the season, McIntyre left the show (his character was killed off in a spectacular car crash), replaced by Horace McMahon as Lieutenant Mike Parker.  The series won critical acclaim but didn't fare so well in the ratings, and was cancelled after that first season.

A year later, though, after lobbying by the show's sponsor and producer, the series returned to ABC with a new title (dropping the article The; it would now simply be called Naked City), a new running time (expanded to one hour), and a new star to join the returning McMahon and Bellaver - Paul Burke, as Detective Adam Flint, replacing Franciscus' Halloran.  This version of the series lasted an additional three seasons before going off the air for good in 1963.

Naked City the series was created by Sterling Silliphant and produced by Herbert B. Leonard, and it shared the movie's trademark location shooting, which means that, like Silliphant and Leonard's other series, Route 66, it serves today as an almost documentary look at the city of New York, much of which no longer exists.  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that New York City, it all its glory and grime, is as much a star of the show as any of the actors. It's a highly atmospheric show, and it wouldn't be possible with a studio-bound production.

Although I'd read about Naked City for years, it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I actually got to see an episode of it, courtesy of MeTV.  The first few episodes took a while to grow on me, but once I got hooked it became one of my favorites.  The chemistry between the three leads - with Burke as the young, intellectual, sensitive Flint, McMahon as the grizzled, gruffy veteran with the astute eye, and Bellaver as a solid, hard-working cop who also provides much of the show's humor - is perfect.  Like another of my favorite series, Burke's Law, the viewer can't help but be impressed by the competency of the cops.  They don't get a lot of screen time (more on that in a moment), but they so fully inhabit their characters that you can see the wheels turn every time they're confronted by another tough case.  Best of all (to my thinking) is that the series rarely strays into the characters' personal lives.  Oh, there's Flint's girlfriend Libby (Nancy Malone), but she's not in every episode, and often she's shown helping Flint think through a difficult part of the case, or dealing with the stress of police work.  No quirkbots here, no soap opera stories.

One reason why the series stays out of the personal lives of the leads is because most stories focus on the guest stars - the victims of crime, or the perpetrators.  It's their stories that make up the bulk of Naked City, and unlike procedurals of today, they're fully fleshed-out characters, with backstories and motivations that make the cases far more complex and less black-and-white than the normal police show.  I think, for example, of Jack Klugman as a henpecked husband talked by his domineering wife into a kidnapping.  He's a disappointment to his ambitious wife, he knows, and a disappointment to himself as well.  But he loves his wife so much that in order to keep her, he'll do anything to make himself a "big man" - and when she suggests kidnapping a young girl in order to bankroll a more luxurious life, he has no choice but to go along with the scheme.  Klugman, an actor with a limited range but a marvelous expressiveness within that range, wonderfully portrays a man who wants nothing more than to be a father (to the chagrin of his wife), and his genuine affection for and worry about their victim makes him a lousy kidnapper, but a good man.  It's that kind of depth that typifies the stories on Naked City.

Another thing that distinguishes the series is the absence of cynicism that clouds so much of television today.*  Not every case turns out the way Naked City's detectives would like - sometimes they don't get the breaks, sometimes it's just the way the system's made up.  But through this, the detectives always keep in mind that they're public servants, hired to protect the people of the city.  They don't view the public as their adversary, they don't assume that everyone they run into is either guilty or hiding a secret, and they don't greet every accused suspect with a sneer and a smirk.  Flint, the most sensitive of the three, is the most likely to shoot from the heart rather than the hip, but he's always able to back it up with solid police logic; his boss Parker, in turn, emphasizes that if he feels that strongly about his hunch, he has to be willing to do the hard legwork required to see it through to the end.  And although Flint sometimes feels the stress of not being able to change the whole world, he never falls victim to a cynical view of the job, never stops trying to make a difference in the cases that come his way.  It's a refreshing change from today's shows.

*Which I intend to write about at length one of these days.

One of the things I worried about when I started watching Naked City is Silliphant's penchant for writing preachy, achingly earnest scripts, filled with dialogue that's about as far from how real people talk as you can get.  But once Route 66 started, Silliphant devoted most of his time and energy to that series, and it's to Naked City's benefit.  The show never shies away from offering social criticism or taking on the issues of the day, but in so doing it remembers that it's first and foremost a police drama, and never fails to deliver an intricate investigation, highlighting the hard work and frustration that make up the unglamorous lives of detectives.

Naked City is terrific drama and terrific storytelling, backed up by a terrific cast.  It's gritty, grimy, and original.  (And would have been a disaster in color.)  It's free of the cliche and crassness of today's television, and its protagonists are actually likable.  Best of all, with its movie parent, it shares the closing narration: "There are eight million stories in the Naked City.  This has been one of them."  Truth in advertising, to be sure.  Maybe it didn't tell eight million stories, but the 138 it did tell were pretty damn good.

Mitchell's Top Ten, #1: Top Gear/The Grand Tour

To be honest, I’m not quite sure how I wound up watching Top Gear, let alone how it became my favorite show on television, the number one show on the Top Ten list.

My relationship with cars has always been a complicated one. On the one hand, the first sports magazine I ever subscribed to was Stock Car Racing, which my aunt bought for me for my sixth birthday.* My favorite sports stars were drivers like Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt and Fred Lorenzen, my ancient toybox was filled with smacked-up racing cars of one kind or another, and like many little boys of the era, I had a giant 1:32 scale Eldon slot car racing set in the basement.

*By contrast, I had no time for Hod Rod Magazine.

On the other hand, I had no real interest in cars themselves. Perhaps it was growing up in a family of women, but I never had the urge to get my hands greasy, to take engines apart and put them together, or to build a go-kart.* I didn’t even want to learn how to drive— something about it being too grown-up, perhaps, which might well be the same reason I never started drinking coffee. I was in school, so I didn’t want to grow up. (And this was before I’d even heard of Toys-R-Us.) I never had the urge to "run out of gas" as an excuse for a make-out session—there were other ways, after all.

*I take that back; somewhere in the inner recesses of my mind I’ve just remembered some kind of a kit that I got for Christmas one year, that was all about making your own go-kart. But it was only the tools and the instructions; no pieces, of course. You had to furnish that yourself, which is probably why I lost interest in it quickly and forgot about it for the next 45 years.

I progressed this way for the next few decades. At the same time I grumbled about having to go through driver ed and behind-the-wheel classes in high school (after I passed my test and got my license, it would be another ten years before I’d actually drive a car), I also tried to figure out how I could get out of going to a classmate’s birthday party in order to watch the Indianapolis 500. When a new job forced me to buy a car, I drove without enthusiasm, and whenever I found myself in a subsequent job search, I always looked first for one that would enable me to take the bus. Even in the last few years, when I’ve been driving more than ever before, I still look at it as more of a chore than anything else. Even though it was the car that enabled me to drive to the store where I bought my new die-cast Shelby Daytona Cobra coupe.

Against this backdrop, a television show about cars wouldn’t seem to be the most promising choice for prime-time viewing.

But then, Top Gear isn’t just about cars. In fact, some would say that it’s hardly about cars at all.

The Three Stooges, with The Stig

I stumbled on to it one Monday evening while channel surfing. At the time, the only program I watched with any regularity on BBC America was Doctor Who, so the network wasn’t exactly a destination stop. And to this day I have no idea why I lingered over Top Gear that night. I have no idea what was on, what misadventure they were engaged in. Perhaps it was the idea of a studio audience on a car show that intrigued me. Maybe it was the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. Or possibly it was that things always seemed to be catching fire and blowing up. It was probably a little bit of all that, combined with there being nothing else to watch.* I watched the last minutes of that show and then, upon finding out they were programming back-to-back episodes, I stuck around for the next one as well.

*An appalling number of my favorite shows have started out that way, as alternatives to not having the TV on at all.

I haven’t missed an episode since.

It’s very hard to describe Top Gear to someone who’s never seen it. It’s true that it’s an automotive show, in which three blokes sit around talking about cars they’ve test driven, demonstrating their turning radius, their naught-to-60 acceleration, how it handles the curves and whether or not the ride was smooth. In other words, not the kinds of things in which I have a particular interest.

There’s a lot more to it than that, though. The show’s hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, while making serious points, don’t take themselves all that seriously. They’re knowledgeable, but also funny, opinionated, and (especially Clarkson, the first among equals) decidedly politically incorrect. In fact, as I think of it, that might have been the show’s appeal to me at the outset, the idea that they weren’t afraid to say what they thought regardless of whom it might offend, without being rude, crude or boorish. Well, at least not too much—these are guys, after all.

There were the "challenges," such as a race to see who could cross Japan first: Hammond and May on the country’s famed bullet trains, or Clarkson in a supercar. The challenges, which came to dominate many episodes, did offer somewhat serious reviews of the cars, but never in so much detail that it would interfere with the essential absurdity of the moment—that is, unless you didn’t think it was absurd to watch a nun crushing cars while behind the wheel of a monster truck, or a race between different kinds of buses, or an experiment to see whether a harvester could be converted into a snow plow, or an attempt to build a reusable space shuttle using a car instead of a space vehicle.

Former U.K. PM Boris Johnson takes a tour in the
Reasonably Priced Car

And then there were the celebrities, the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car," who would first be interviewed by Clarkson, after which we’d see the star taking a lap around the circuit, often with hilarious results. Some of the celes, the British stars mostly, were new to me, but there were other Petrolheads (Gearheads to you and me), Tom Cruise and Simon Cowell and Jay Leno, who were not only excellent drivers, but were knowledgeable, funny guests as well. (Matt LeBlanc, who knows a thing or two about cars, held the record for fastest lap by a celebrity.)

I mentioned The Stig earlier; he’s the show’s silent partner, the "tame racing driver," always mute, wearing a white suit and white crash helmet, seemingly capable of nothing besides driving cars at high speeds around the show’s test track. (He also preps the celebrities for their race laps.) He’s invariably introduced by Clarkson using some bizarre description; “Some say that his voice can only be heard by cats, and that he has a life-size tattoo of his face on his face.”* We can’t know who or what The Stig is; whenever his identity is outed, he’s killed off the show and replaced by a new Stig (we’re on the third right now).

*Clearly, to my mind, the inspiration for Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World.

If you’ve never seen Top Gear, I don’t know that this description would have made much sense, or would do much to encourage you to watch it. But really, this is a show that defies explanation. It’s a car program and a comedy hour, a celebrity chat show and a reality competition. It’s been on the BBC, in one iteration or another, since 1977, with the same three madmen hosting it for the last ten years (Clarkson, has been on, with a break, since 1988) and it’s as popular today as it’s ever been.

And then there’s something else about Top Gear, perhaps the best explanation as to why the show appeals to me so much. Yes, I’ve gotten a finer appreciation of cars; I’ve even warmed to the idea that driving can be fun, although the best way to do it is on a track with a fast sports car. But beyond all that, Top Gear is about a state of mind, the romance of the road, the days when being behind the wheel of a car gave one freedom to go anywhere, to experience anything. It’s a show that fights the self-defeating prophesy of the environmentalists who worry about pollution, who worry about oil reserves, who worry about living itself. It’s a celebration of human ingenuity, of technical marvels, and of the desire to go faster as a way of measuring progress. And, as each season comes to an end, there’s invariably a moment when a more serious tone is struck, with the realization that this is a world, a culture, a way of thinking that’s slowly going away, never to return; that we have the ability to build a car—itself a noble thing, to build something using your hands and your mind and the machines you’ve designed, you can build that car that can go so fast, that can do so many things—but there’s no longer a need for it.

I may never own one of the cars they’ve profiled – I may never, in fact, get beyond tolerating my commute to work each day – but thanks to Top Gear my relationship with the auto has changed forever.

It is, quite simply, the best show on television, and it gives me absolute pleasure and enjoyment to watch it. TV