What I've been watching: February 2020

Shows I’ve Watched:	Shows I’ve Bought:
The Wild Wild West	Doctor Who: The Moonbase
Star Trek: The Original Series	Doctor Who: The War Games
The Outer Limits

It’s often said that nostalgia is a way of reliving the past; detractors often accuse us of simply living in the past, as if we refuse to avoid or inhabit the present. I suppose I’d have to consult one of the doctors on The Eleventh Hour to find out the truth of that, not that I don’t on occasion get nostalgic for the days when I had more hair and carried fewer pounds. But then, you don’t want to hear me natter about a post-midlife crisis, or any such nonsense. You came here to read about old television shows, and by golly, I’m going to do my best to satisfy that desire.

Let’s take The Wild Wild West, for example. It’s the leadoff program on our Friday night viewing, having filled a role once occupied by The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and I link those two series deliberately, because they have a lot in common. Both series ran for four seasons, in each case the first season being black-and-white. Both owed a considerable debt to the success of the James Bond movie franchise; both featured a dynamic duo of suave agents dedicated to combating some kind of ridiculous, overly-complicated plot for world domination constructed by an absurdly colorful, egomaniacal villain living on the wrong side of sanity. In both shows the second banana served to soften the edges of the actor playing the hero, allowing the emergency of a humanity that might not otherwise be apparent to the viewer. And, most relevant to this discussion, neither The Wild Wild West nor The Man from U.N.C.L.E. are series that I watched regularly when they were originally on. It’s true that I might have been a bit young for them when they first started, but certainly by the time each series went off the air, I would have matured enough to enjoy the fast-paced action, the outrageous storylines, and the beautiful women that were hallmarks of the two.

So why didn’t I? I’m not entirely certain. It’s possible that the adults in the household wanted to watch something else, although I seem to have a vague memory of being told to watch U.N.C.L.E. once when I was bored and fussy, the idea being that this was the kind of show I ought to be enjoying. Certainly, at that age the most important thing on television for me was sports, but it’s impossible to think that there would have been a game on every single night that these programs aired. Barring some kind of regression therapy to take me back to the past, which might not answer these questions and certainly wouldn’t help me either grow hair or lose weight, I’m afraid we may never know.

I’m off on another tangent, aren’t I? All right, let’s get back to the point. If it’s true that I didn’t watch either of these shows back in the day, then it’s hard to accuse me of trying to relive the past by watching them now. Perhaps the best way to put it is that I’m trying to understand the past, particularly an era that for some reason continues to fascinate me. If this is what I’m doing, then I’m also discovering the added benefit that I enjoy both of these shows immensely.

The Wild Wild West stars Robert Conrad as James West and Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon, agents of the United States Secret Service working under the direction of President Ulysses S. Grant. We don’t often see Grant in the series, because their job isn’t to protect him bodily, but to foil plots that are usually aimed at toppling the United States government. West is the more prominent of the two, which you can tell right away because his name is part of the title (hence, the implicit pun, because West does indeed lead a wild, wild life), in the same way that Robert Vaughn was the titular Man from U.N.C.L.E. West is fast with his fists, with words, and with the ladies, which usually puts him in a fair degree of danger each week. And although he seems to specialize in extricating himself from these threats, it’s a good thing that he has Gordon, a master of disguise and dialect, backing him up.

Gordon, although he seems to spend a good amount of time unconscious as the result of the villain or his henchmen, is a good second to West for a couple of reasons. First, his disguises often allow him in to the villain’s lair, where he proves to be both clever and a tough customer to deal with, occasionally bailing West out at the last moment. Perhaps more important to us as viewers, though, Ross Martin performs that service I mentioned back at the outset: as David McCallum does with Robert Vaughn in U.N.C.L.E., Martin helps to soften and humanize Robert Conrad, who can often come across as abrasive and arrogant, without threatening his status as the show’s star. In West, Conrad’s ego is put to good use, as Conrad displays the confidence necessary for a hero, and his insistence on doing his own stunts is both effective and very impressive. The chemistry between Conrad and Martin, in fact, is one of the show’s best traits; although we’re not quite sure what the relationship is supposed to be at the outset, when the two agents refer to each other as “James” and “Artemus,” by the end of the first season they’ve become “Jim” and “Artie,” and their loyalty and devotion to each other is as great as that which they both show to their government.

I’d be way off base if I didn’t follow up on those colorful villains for a moment, the most famous and best-loved of them being the sinister Dr. Miguelito Loveless, played wonderfully by Oscar-nominee Michael Dunn. His appearances, from the very first, are one of the show’s highlights, but the over-the-top performances by various well-known actors each week ensure that West and Gordon face worthy rivals, to keep the show from descending into a complete cartoon.

I deliberately scheduled both The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild Wild West as Friday viewing not only because it’s historically accurate, but because they’re the perfect antidote to the workweek. After slaving over a desk for five days, who wouldn’t be happy to come home to such pleasant, reassuring company on the screen? It’s the perfect way to start a weekend.

My wife considers herself a purist when it comes to Star Trek: The Original Series, and so the enhanced special effects that come with the restored set didn't hold a lot of interest for her. We got the Blu Ray edition, though, because there was a sale going on at Amazon, and it seemed like the right thing to do. And boy, does it make a difference! It would be hyperbole to say that the new effects blew us away, because we're experienced television viewers who've seen a lot of special effects in the day, but it's difficult to describe how they bring Star Trek into, well, the present. It gives one the feeling of how it must have been to watch them during the original network run, even though they're much clearer now than they ever would have been then.

Original effects on the left, enhanced on the right

But for all that, the effects don't overpower what made the original Trek such compelling viewing. One of the things I always find interesting in these early episodes is how easy it could have been, as someone said, for the series to turn into The Mr. Spock Hour. He's an amazing character, even though he's not quite a finished product, with a superb portrayal by Leonard Nimoy. William Shatner, of course, is Captain Kirk, and these early episodes emphasize two things: the humanity of the man, and I don't mean that as charity, although that is present as well, but talking about the value of being fully human, something that neither machine nor Vulcan can replicate; and the importance to him of the Enterprise. As Harry Mudd tells one of his women, a Starfleet captain is married to his ship, and Kirk is a perfect example of this. DeForest Kelley's Dr. McCoy completes the trio that remains beloved for decades. All that, and special effects that are, dare we say it, out of this world? No, let's simply say that, like Baby Bear's porridge, they're just right.

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I've alluded to it in the past, but I might as well make it obvious here: the only Doctor Who I'm interested in is the classic series. I'll live with Ecclestone, Tennant, Smith and Capaldi (and John Hurt as the War Doctor), but that's as far as it goes. You can probably figure out who I've left off that list, but from what I've read, I haven't missed anything in the last couple of years.

That's a discussion for another day, though. After all, the name of this feature is "What I've Been Watching," not "What I Haven't Been Watching." Allow me to mention two new acquisitions I haven't had the chance to watch—yet. With an opening on the Saturday night viewing horizon, it's time to begin planning a start-to-finish viewing of Doctor Who—the first time since I originally saw them 30-some years ago. One of the reasons I haven't done that yet is that I haven't yet succeeded in replacing my old VHS versions with DVDs. And in case you haven't checked lately, the price of some Doctor Who discs is off the wall, bec ause they've gone out of print in the United States. They haven't in England, however, and because 1) I happen to have a region-free DVD player, and 2) the Region 2 discs are less expensive, I've been filling in the gaps, particularly in my Patrick Troughton collection.

The Troughton era suffered greatly from the BBC's policy of wiping video tapes in order to reuse them; until the last few years, less than a dozen of his stories had survived, and the balance existed only as telesnaps, a combination of the original soundtracks (they survived the purge) and still photos that had been taken, as I recall, during episode rehearsals. However, in the past few years copies of additional stories have turned up, found in the storerooms of former British colonies, and storiesthat only partially existed were completed by animating the missing episodes.

With the addition of The Moonbase and The War Games (the final Troughton story), I only have two more to buy; then I'll have the full Hartnell and Troughton collections. I figure that will take over a year to go through, by which time I'll be able to fill in some more gaps down the line. Providing coronavirus doesn't get me, I might get the complete series one of these days. And you'll read about it here. TV  

What's on TV? Wednesday, March 10, 1971

I don't know how it is that I wound up with such a stash of TV Guides from Philadelphia. It's logical to assume I got them all at the same time from the same vendor, sometime in the past year. I'm not sure how many more there are, but I feel as if I should be taking a course in the history of Philadelphia television. In the meantime, this will have to do.

This week in TV Guide: March 6, 1971

The late 1950s and early 1960s were the glory years for the literate political thriller, beginning with 1959’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Advise and Consent, a look at the seamy underbelly of American politics set against the backdrop of a confirmation battle over a nominee for Secretary of State. Advise and Consent was followed in quick succession by The Manchurian Candidate (1959) and Seven Days in May and Fail-Safe (both 1962). The books had several things in common: they were all successful, they all involved communism in one way or another, they all dealt with controversial topics (homosexuality in Advise and Consent, brainwashing in The Manchurian Candidate, a military coup in Seven Days in May, and an accidental nuclear attack in Fail-Safe), and they were all made into big-time movies with big-name stars (Henry Fonda in both Advise and Consent and Fail-Safe, Frank Sinatra  and Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate, and Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster in Seven Days in May).

In 1968, Fletcher Knebel, who co-authored Seven Days in May with Charles W. Bailey (the pair also wrote another political thriller, Convention), published the novel Vanished, about a presidential confidante who, as the title puts it, vanishes without a trace. Did he escape to avoid prosecution for a crime? Is he involved in a sordid affair? Or, most disturbingly, did he take his insider information and defect to an enemy nation? Unlike the books above, Vanished did not graduate to the big screen, but was instead transferred to television, as the first-ever two-part made-for-TV movie. Vanished makes its debut this week on NBC, airing Monday and Tuesday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET, with an impressive cast, including Richard Widmark (in his TV acting debut), James Farentino, William Shatner, Larry Hagman, Arthur Hill, E.G. Marshall, Eleanor Parker, Betty White, Russell Johnson, and Robert Young. For a touch of authenticity, the movie also includes three newsmen essentially playing themselves: Chet Huntley, Herb Kaplow, and Martin Agronsky.

I read Vanished, many years ago; it’s not up to the standards of the other books I mentioned (all of which I own), but it’s still an entertaining, if somewhat predictable, potboiler. The movie receives mixed reviews; Judith Crist calls it a "hey there" movie ("Hey there, it's Marcus Welby! Hey there, it's Dr. Craig!), and wonders if this will set a two-part pattern for future television movies. One of the most common criticisms is its length, which suggests that longer, meatier books might make for better multi-part stories. Today it gets lumped into the general category of “miniseries,” but in the days before the miniseries, at a time when only the biggest (and longest) big-screen movies got the two-part treatment, NBC’s billing of Vanished as a two-part movie is clearly meant to suggest prestige. We report; you can decide for yourself here.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

If you liked Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cleveland Amory says—"well, so did the producers" of ABC's new western, Alias Smith and Jones. But, as he reminds us, plagiarism is copying one book; research is copying two. And ABC "has researched this one real good. They've even got overtones of two previous shows, The Fugitive and Run for Your Life."

OK, we know that Cleve puts a premium on originality, but just because an idea isn't original doesn't mean the show isn't any good, right? Then again, "One thing you'll have to grant this show: It doesn't promise very much, and it certainly doesn't deliver a whole lot." He does like the premise, though, of two outlaws turned good guys, who are set to receive a pardon from the governor if they can stay out of trouble. Television being what it is, of course, trouble comes to look for them. (Otherwise, there's not much of a series here.) He also likes Smith and Jones's two stars, Pete Duel (Hannibal Heyes, alias Joshua Smith) and Ben Murphy (Kid Curry, alias Thaddeus Jones), "fine actors who deserve not only better treatment but also better finished scripts." And there are no complaints about the guest stars, who've included Burl Ives, Cesar Romero, Pernell Roberts and Slim Pickens. But—and you knew this was coming—"The basic trouble seems to be that the only suspense you have is whether or not you're going to believe anything—and, if so, for how long. We realize you're not meant to believe it, still, we want to believe, honest we do."

Amory's favorite episode so far involved a train robbery, with Smith and Jones posing as private agents "Grant" and "Gaines," hired to thwart the robbery. We also have guest star Beth Brickell, a supposed Southern belle who isn't what she appears to be, either. (Apparently, in this episode, nobody is.) In the climatic scene, Grant, as Heyes alias Smith alias Duel, and Gaines, as Curry alias Jones alias Murphy, succeed in convincing guest star William Windom that they are none of the above, but are secret agents who are in fact so secret that they're even a secret to the head of secret agents (guest star J.D. Cannon). "Alas and alack, it was one too many aliases for us. But just the same, we did try not to believe that we had to believe."

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It doesn't seem all that long ago that she was in our living rooms each week, Dinah Shore urging us to see the U.S.A. in our Chevrolets, and throwing us a big kiss at the end of her variety show. But it's been almost eight years since The Dinah Shore Show went off the air in 1963 (Chevy dropped its sponsorship in 1961), and with the exception of four ABC specials in 1964-65, her appearances since then have been limited to guesting on other people's shows. But that has changed.

She's now the host of Dinah's Place, a daily talk show airing mornings at 10:00 a.m. on NBC. And, as Arnold Hano points out, this isn't the Dinah Shore that we're all used to, the one who was "as easy to get along with as an old girdle": she sips wine with Frank Sinatra and Vincent Price, talks about "creative separation" with ex-priest James Kavanaugh, and discusses current topics such as drugs, politics, women's lib, and grape boycotts in support of Cesar Chavez and his farm workers. What's changed?

It starts with executive producer Henry Jaffe, a long-time Dinah friend, who urged her, "Aren't you tired of Vegas audiences? Don't you want to say something? You're more interesting now than you were 10 years ago. Speak out." And so she has. "Yes, I live in a glamorous way, she says. "I earned it. I worked for it. But my problems aren't different from other women's: children, work, ecology." And it's not just the subject matter: her personal playlist now includes Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Caned Heat; her backup combo has long hair and a mod sound, and she has quickly adapted to it. So much, in fact, that she'll win an Emmy for it in 1974.

And therein lies a story, one you've probably heard before, of NBC sending her a telegram congratulating her on the Emmy win and, oh, by the way, your show has been cancelled to make room for a game show. Unfazed, Dinah and the show move to syndication, and under the title Dinah! continues to run until 1980. Nothing could be finer.

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Dinah Shore may have stopped urging us to drive from coast to coast, and The Hollywood Palace left the airwaves last year, but there are still a surprising number of variety shows around, and plenty of stars to appear on them.

Saturday's a great night for variety, and we'll start with dueling shows: Andy Williams on NBC and Lawrence Welk on ABC (both at 7:30 p.m.). As always, Larry depends on his regulars in his salute to musical history makers (including Hoagy Carmichael, Fanny Brice, George Gershwin, and Mario Lanza), while Andy spotlights the former Welk regulars the Lennon Sisters, plus Desi Arnaz, Jo Anne Worley, and the Bee Gees. At 8:30, Pearl Bailey follows Welk on ABC with Tony Bennett, Jimmy Durante and the Supremes. (As opposed to, say, Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters.) And that's followed at 9:30 by Johnny Cash, who brings the circus to the Grand Ole Opry with his guests Emmett Kelly Jr., trapeze artist Senor Antonio, juggler Miss Nova, sword balancer Marco Popo, Bobby and his trained chimps, the high-wire Rodrequez Brothers, and Bob Williams and his dog Louie. Oh, and there's also the regulars: June Carter, Car Perkins, the Carter Family, the Statler Brothers, and the Tennessee Three. On a syndicated note, Barbara McNair's show (10:00 p.m., WTAF) features Lou Rawls, Tobi Lark, Peter Appleyard, and Hart and Lorne.

Sunday belongs to CBS; at 8:00 p.m., it's our old friend, Ed Sullivan (in his program's final months), with Roy Clark, Louis Nye, Jeannie C. Riley, and Teresa Graves; the highlight of the program is the appearance of armed forces performers who were selected last year when the cast toured military bases. I wonder if any of them wound up in Vietnam, and if they made it back. Ed is followed at 9:00 p.m. by Glen Campbell, who's goodtiming it with Vikki Carr, David Steinberg, Shecky Greene, Seals and Crofts, and Mel Tillis. At 10:00 p.m., CBS has been rerunning full-hour Honeymoon shows from Jackie Gleason's show; tonight, the mob finds out that Ralph  is a dead ringer for their underworld boss. Guest stars include Bruce Gordon (who, I'll bet, plays a mobster) and Barbara Nichols. And late night (11:30 p.m.) on WPHL, it's Hugh Hefner's show, with Tom Smothers, Johnny Mathis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, John Stewart, and mentalist Kenny Kingston. It had better be good, though, because opposite it on WFIL is—Fail-Safe.

Monday night features the final month of Red Skelton's sad NBC series (7:30 p.m.), with guest Tony Randall. Laugh-In is on at 8:00 p.m.; no guest stars, just the regulars tonight. For stars, we'll hang around for Carol Burnett (10:00 p.m.), with Mike Douglas and Bernadette Peters.*

*Bernadette Peters seems to have been on television forever (and I mean that in a good way); she's only 72 today, which means she was 23 when this show was aired. Ah, the fountain of eternal youth.

Tuesday (are we going to go through the whole week? Yes, we are!), Don Knotts and his short-lived variety show lead the way (8:00 p.m., NBC), with Michael Landon, John Davidson, Charles Nelson Reilly and Gloria Loring.* At 8:30 p.m., it's Hee Haw, still on CBS, with Ray Charles and Lynn Anderson joining the show's all-star lineup of regulars.

*Another performer with an endless list of credits; she's one year older than Bernadette Peters, although today her son Robin Thicke might be better-known.

Kraft Music Hall is the regular feature on Wednesday, but this week it's preempted for a Jack Benny special, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Jack Benny--But Were Afraid to Ask, with guests Lucille Ball, George Burns, Phil Harris, John Wayne, Dionne Warwick, and author Dr. David Reuben.

On Thursday, we've got a full evening starting with Flip Wilson (7:30 p.m., NBC) and guests Lena Horne, Ray Stevens, and George Carline. At 8:00 p.m., CBS counters with Jim Nabors, who's pried Johnny Cash and June Carter away from ABC for an hour. Dean Marin rounds out the evening (10:00 p.m., NBC) with his old friend Orson Welles, old lover Petula Clark, old uncle Leonard Barr, and Norm Crosby, who's not old but is a frequent guest.

There aren't any variety shows on Friday night; I don't know why, because there have been ones in the past (remember ABC's Operation: Entertainment?), but I hate to break up a good thing, so we'll settle for Mike Douglas, whose Friday guests (12:30 p.m., KYW) are Al Capp (co-host), Jerry Lewis and singer Janis Ian.

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There's more this week, of the non-variety kind. On Saturday, one of the performers on American Bandstand (12:30 p.m., ABC) is Henry Mancini. Makes for a bit of a change, doesn't it? Sunday and Monday nights at 9:00 p.m., ABC presents a two-part showing of the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard. Judith Crist calls the remake spectacular, with Howard "simply suburb" as Captain Bligh, while Brando's Fletcher Christian is "interesting if uneven." As she points out, though, you'll have to miss the first half of Vanished to see it.

PBS profiles movie director David Lean (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m.), and it's a wonder that the filmmakers can cram it all into 60 minutes, what with Lean's output, including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Bridge on the River Kwai, Brief Encounter, Ryan's Daughter, and Great Expectations, to name a few.

The Cat in the Hat makes his television debut Wednesday night (7:30 p.m., CBS), with Allan Sherman as the voice of the Cat. It's the third Dr. Seuss cartoon to make it to the network, after How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who.

The wheel show Four in One (Wednesday, 10:00 p.m., NBC) presents The Psychiatrist, with Roy Thinnes as Dr. James Whitman, and Luther Adler as his older mentor, Dr. Bernard Altman (because the rules of television specify that a young doctor/lawyer/detective has to be paired with an older mentor); this week, Steven Spielberg directs "A Study of Death," with Clu Gulager as a champion golfer who has it all: money, a wife and child, and incurable duodenal cancer.

One of David Frost's guests on Thursday (4:30 p.m., KYW) is the ageless baseball immortal, Satchel Paige, 64 years old and less than five years removed from his last pitching appearance, with the minor league Peninsula Grays. He's also the author of one of the great quotes of all time, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."

And then there's The Interns (Friday, 7:30 p.m., CBS), which tonight deals with the use and effects of drugs in professional sports. The Interns, based on the 1962 film The Interns and the 1964 sequel The New Interns is, as the title would suggest, about young doctors being mentored by an older, wiser doctor (imagine that!), none other than this week's cover star, Broderick Crawford. Crawford has led a colorful life, to say the least. Let Dwight Whitney set the scene: "We're sitting around shooting the early-morning breeze in Broderick Crawford's place. . .As usual, he is feeling no pain, and it is not even 9 o'clock in the morning." Whitney describes the interior of Crawford's home. "Several empty beer cans line the coffee table. Another half-full one is poised for take-off in a hamlike hand. In the kitchen, next to the empties and the vitamin-B complex, stands a tumbler smelling suspiciously like vodka." Did I mention it's 9 o'clock in the morning? "My mother [actress Helen Broderick] always said be ready, so I start the night before." Whitney finds him a "magnificently battered, enormously likable, lonely, beautiful bull of a man."

Crawford got his start on the stage, thanks to people like George S. Kaufman and Ethel Barrymore. He made the transition to movies, finding his role of a lifetime in the magnificent Gothic political drama All the King's Men, which won him an Academy Award for Best Actor. When the movies began to slack off, he moved to TV and Highway Patrol, which ran for four seasons and made Crawford a boatload of money. It also made life more interesting for the hard-drinking Crawford, who constantly found himself confronted in bars by loudmouths proclaiming, "So, you're Brod Crawford, the big movie tough guy!" Says Whitney, "Brod usually accommodated them, and as a result, tangled with some of the best cops and touched base at some of the best pokies in town." Legend has it that some of Highway Patrol's scenes were filmed in the desert so Crawford could get behind the wheel of his police car even though his driver's license had been suspended; other stories tell of doing his scenes in the morning, while he was still able to stand.

For all that, as Whitney says, the money and the fame and the friends and his two sons, to whom he is devoted (he's also been divorced twice), Broderick Crawford is still a lonely man. "Let me put it this way," he says in conclusion. "I fear the mystery. You are born to die. The end is the beginning. The days may be awful lonesome, but the years are getting short. I've made my peace with myself. When I go I intend to go like a gentleman." Not too sentimental, though: "Meanwhile, I'll be up at 5 A.M. waiting for any bleep of a bleep that wants to ring me."

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Finally, a series of ads by WFIL, Channel 6 in Philadelphia, suggesting it might have been done in-house rather than by a high-paid advertising agency.

Now, as far as truth in advertising is concerned, I have no doubt that these are real people living in Philadelphia and watching the Channel 6 news. But c'mon, have you ever seen anything that screamed "Action News" less than these ads? Still, there's something charming, in a way, about these, especially compared to the slickness of today's ads. Maybe they're just you and me, people who actually need Action News in their lives, and WFIL figures we'll see them and think, "Hey, this is the news for me, too!" Then again, maybe not. TV  

Around the dial

Now that's style!

We're a little thin on blog updates this week, so I thought we'd take a spin through some podcasts and YouTube videos and see what's up.

Over at TV Confidential, Ed Robinson has more than enough to keep you busy, including a pair of episodes on Groucho Marx, Joan Van Ark talking about her famous Val Ewing character, and a birthday nod to Howard Hesseman.

From last month, Closer Classic TV talks with MeTV's Neal Saban, who, as it says, takes us inside the world of classic TV.

The To Tell the Truth YouTube page has all you could ask for in the way of episodes, including this one with a woman who ran for president of the United States in 1964. Between LBJ and AuH2O, I'm afraid she didn't stand a chance.

One of the YouTube channels I've enjoyed has the charming name of Free the Kinescopes! I think you'll enjoy it as well, no matter what you choose to watch.

For sci-fi fans, here's the very first episode of the British cult hit Blake's 7, which was always a topic of conversation among the Whovians I hung around with back in the day.

Back at our more conventional fare, at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, Ivan returns to the world of Dark Shadows, with this look at the beginning of a 1967 story arc involving “a time-traveling excursion that finds series heroine Victoria Winters in the Collinsport of 1795 and interacting with ancestors of the family she knows from the present day.” I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure this is the only time that sentence has ever been typed in conjunction with a soap opera, at least of the retro era.

Cult TV Blog comes back with another British series with which I’m not familiar: Minder, a long-running comedy-drama about the London underworld. This week, John looks back at the 1978 episode “Gunfight at the OK Launderette,” and its roots in a real-life botched robbery in 1975.

It’s interview time at Classic Film & TV Café, and this week Rick interviews John Greco, author of the short story collection The Late Show, combining of classic cinema with mystery and murder (!) to create eight provocative stories. Sounds like a lot of fun, and of course that's what we're all about around here. TV  

The wonder of it all

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: I am a child of television. There's never been a time when television was not a reality in my life, never a moment when I wasn't able to turn it on and look in at the rest of the world. Television was always a marvel because of what it could do, but its existence was something I could take for granted because I didn't know any other way of life.

Because of that, I can't really imagine what the advent of television must have been like for people who'd lived maybe 20 or 30 years of their life without it. Was it something that never stopped being amazing to them, a phenomenon that, in some way, they appreciated more than those of use who grew up with it? That's how I feel sometimes when I look up at the moon, remembering the first nine years of my life, when nobody had ever set foot on its surface.

Or is it possible that they merely took it in stride, one more step in what must have seemed to be the inexorable march of progress: radio begat television, just as the movies preceded radio, gas led to electricity, balloons became the Wright Flyer, and so on. Sure, they were impressed, but they'd seen this kind of evolution before, and they were sure they'd see it again. I doubt that the millennials are much amazed by every next iteration of the iPhone or Android, and while the technology is a marvel, it couldn't be that surprising to someone who'd grown up watching Dick Tracy and his two-way wrist radio. On television, of course.

Paul Auster, the novelist and essayist, whose work I enjoy, is a bit older than I am but, like me, television was a constant presence in his life from his first conscious memories. In Report from the Interior, a memoir of his years growing up, he writes of an early childhood memory, conveying the sense of wonder that television could create in a five-year-old's mind, even from something as simple as watching a Felix the Cat cartoon:

They appear every afternoon on a television program called Junior Frolics, hosted by a man named Fred Sayles, who is known to you simply as Uncle Fred, the silver-haired gatekeeper to this land of marvels, and because you understand nothing about the production of animated films, cannot even begin to fathom the process by which drawings are made to move, you figure there must be some sort of alternate universe in which characters like Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat can exist—not as pen scratches dancing across a television screen, but as fully embodied, three-dimensional creatures as large as adults. Logic demands that they be large, since the people who appear on television are always larger than their images on-screen, and logic also demands that they belong to an alternate universe, since the universe you live in is not populated by cartoon characters, much as you might wish it was.

One day Auster's mother tells him that she will be taking him and his friend Billy to see Uncle Fred's show in person.

All this is exciting to you, inordinately exciting, but even more exciting is the thought that finally, after months of speculation, you will be able to set eyes on Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat. At long last you will discover what they really look like. In your mind, you see the action unfolding on an enormous stage, a stage the size of a football field, as the crotchety old farmer and the wily black cat chase each other back and forth in one of their epic skirmishes. On the appointed day, however, none of it happens as you thought it would. The studio is small, Uncle Fred has makeup on his face, and after you are given a bag of mints to keep you company during the show, you take your seat in the grandstand with Billy and the other children. You look down at what should be a stage, but which in fact is nothing more than the concrete floor of the studio, and what you see there is a television set. Not even a special television set, but one no bigger or smaller than the set you have at home. The farmer and the cat are nowhere in the vicinity. After Uncle Fred welcomes the audience to the show, he introduces the first cartoon. The television comes on, and there are Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat, bouncing around in the same way they always have, still trapped inside the box, still as small as they ever were. You are thoroughly confused. What error have you made? you ask yourself. Where has your thinking gone wrong? The real is so defiantly at odds with the imagined, you can't help feeling that a nasty trick has been played on you. Stunned with disappointment, you can barely bring yourself to look at the show. Afterward, walking back to the car with Billy and your mother, you toss away the mints in disgust.

Sure, the ending is something of a downer, but even so, Auster's tale speaks to the miracle of television, even to someone who has basically grown up with it. I was in the peanut gallery of one of those shows myself, once upon a time, although I don't recall having any expectations of seeing Felix the Cat in real life. (Maybe I was just a little older, or my imagination wasn't as fantastic.) I do remember how great it was to see backstage at a television studio. It's no big deal now, but it was back then.

How easy it's been for me to accept television, from rabbit ears to rooftop antennas to cable to satellite to streaming, from black-and-white to color to HD. How amazing it's been, and how easy it is to take it all in stride, as I do, as so many people do. I wonder; are we capable of wonder anymore? Kids start in on technology at such an early age, I don't know if it's even possible for them to be amazed by anything. Maybe we're past that, and if so, it's too bad. There's something exciting about the wonder of it all, the wonder and excitement that Paul Auster felt in that studio all those years ago. At least until he threw away the mints. TV