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I was saddened by the recent news that Joanna Pettet had died. In the Comfort TV era she was a frequent guest star on several quality shows and was always memorable regardless of her role. To me she was television’s equivalent to the cool patrician blondes favored by Alfred Hitchcock in films like Vertigo and Marnie , and I’d argue she was a better actress than either Kim Novak or Tippi Hedren. In…
CBS and NBC tried their best with new and returning offerings, but neither had a chance against the juggernaut that was ABC’s Tuesday night hit factory. Four of the season’s top ten shows aired back-to-back this evening, and while one must applaud the network for tapping into what America liked to watch, it’s also unfortunate that their dominance claimed one series on a rival network that deserved…
The 1970s returned to the news recently as older Americans wondered why the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding did not generate the same national pride as the Bicentennial in 1976. A YouTube video entitled “The 12 Things That Made Americans Happier in the 1970s (That We Destroyed)” provides some insightful answers into how the country has changed in the last 50 years. The first six of…
Over the 14-year history of this blog I’ve tried to give equal attention to shows throughout the Comfort TV era. But looking back it’s perhaps obvious that more pieces have been devoted to 1970s television than any other decade. I have many favorites from the 1950s and ‘60s, but they were discovered after their first runs, so I didn’t have a connection with them when they were new. And while the…
During this journey we’ve seen how some prime-time schedules in the 1970s were just more interesting than others. Monday nights in 1978…is not one of those times. Still, ABC finishing third is surprising given its previous ratings dominance. For the second straight evening viewers mostly stayed with a CBS lineup of returning favorites and one new series that definitively proved that turkeys can’t…
Last year I mentioned a company in Australia called Imprint that has been putting out some impressive Blu-rays of classic television shows. One of their more recent releases was The New Avengers , which I was eager to revisit as I hadn’t watched an episode in decades. I’ve had the Emma Peel episodes of The Avengers in my DVD collection since they were first released, and I vaguely recall enjoying…
Last week's review of 1978 programs on Sunday nights included Mary Tyler Moore’s return to television in a variety show that was canceled after just three episodes. A sign, surely, that audiences had grown tired of the comedy-variety format after a decade of oversaturation. That was sad news for the specialty act performers who made their living doing guest spots on these series. The best of them…
As we start a new year in our journey through the prime-time schedules of the 1970s, we find that Sundays in 1978 delivered an intriguing selection of new shows that didn’t last, but in some cases had an impact far beyond what their brief runs would suggest. ABC The Hardy Boys Battlestar: Galactica ABC Sunday Night Movie I can’t say I remember much from 1978 with perfect clarity, but I do recall…
I saw a post on Facebook recently about Lee Meriwether, who turned 91 a few days ago, and it reminded me of how she always seemed to be on television in the Comfort TV era, either as a series regular, a guest star, or as herself, helping contestants win cash and prizes on different game shows. Her IMDB page lists more than 125 credits from every conceivable television genre. Casting directors…
You may have heard that a reboot of The Rockford Files has been picked up by NBC and will debut in January, with David Boreanaz playing ex-con turned private investigator Jim Rockford. Boreanaz has an impressive TV track record, and as a fan of both Buffy and Angel I think that casting is about the best we could hope for – given the current state of entertainment media we should just be glad it’s…
The Saturday night supremacy of CBS in the seventies has finally ceased (how’s that for alliteration?). This would be the final year for both The Bob Newhart Show and The Carol Burnett Show , classics that once dominated in the ratings but had now dropped out of the top 30. Only one series ranked that high on this night, and it belonged to the network that would reign supreme throughout the second…
I was perusing YouTube recently (a more enjoyable exercise than perusing network television these days), and I came across a video with 1.6 million views called “The Psychology of People Who Rewatch the Same Shows and Movies.” It was posted by “SketchPsyche,” which purports to be a channel that provides “deep dives into the psychology behind everyday behavior.” “We live in a world obsessed with…
It has taken me a while to get back to season reviews of The Twilight Zone , mostly because I was reluctant to start season four knowing that this is when the series switched from 30-minute to 60-minute shows. It is not a coincidence that this is its least heralded season, so even with just 18 episodes I anticipated a difficult slog. Thankfully, the journey was not as arduous as I expected. Yes,…
It's hard to believe that, being this far along in our review of the 1970s prime time schedules, we’d still be uncovering new milestones. But Friday in 1977 was the first night in which not a single program from any network ranked among the top 30 shows for the year. That means they all had to be losers, right? Not quite, as you’ll see from the titles. CBS The New Adventures of Wonder Woman…
How many television shows are still fondly remembered after 50 years? Quite a few around here, I know – but among the non-tv obsessed? That thins the herd to a much smaller number. But I think Charlie’s Angels belongs in that company – and apparently so do the folks at The Paley Center for Media, who recently hosted a 50th anniversary celebration of this iconic series at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.…
You've probably seen or read promos for a new documentary that is gleefully airing all the dirty laundry of The Price is Right from back when it was one of television’s most popular and beloved game shows. With Bob Barker as host, Johnny Olson as announcer, and a trio of models – Janice Pennington, Dian Parkinson and Holly Hallstrom – viewers came to know and love, that show remains a fond memory…
At last, CBS strikes back. After an impressive run of ratings dominance by ABC, CBS bested its rivals with a trio of returning favorites. ABC still managed to place two series in the top 30, and even NBC debuted a new hit, followed by a show that became one of the decade’s favorite punch lines. Otherwise, to be honest this isn’t the most interesting of nights to reflect upon within my journey…
If you paid more attention to the recent Winter Olympics than I did, you probably read several stories about Eileen Gu, an Asian American freestyle skier who was born and raised in the United States but opted to compete for China in exchange for cash and prizes. Several newspaper columnists described what happened when reporters asked her about the Uyghurs in China’s concentration camps and the…
It's always an event when a recurring character on a classic TV show returns after its portrayer quits or is written off. Such things happen all the time on soap operas – right now two characters believed long deceased on General Hospital are back, alive and well. But it’s less common with prime time shows, and thus usually more exciting when it occurs. I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but here’s a…
Lather, rinse, repeat. Once again as we peruse another late ‘70s prime time schedule, we find ABC serving up a medley of hits, and two other networks struggling to keep up. Having failed with The Practice and The Quest , NBC scrapped last year’s Wednesday night line-up and introduced three new shows. Only one caught on with the public, and it wasn’t even the best one. Let’s start there. NBC The…
I watched an episode of Angie the other day on DVD, and it struck me again how this 1970s situation comedy had most of the elements that would appeal to an audience long enough to keep it on the air for at least 3-4 seasons, if not more. Instead, it was canceled after two years and just 36 episodes. What happened? I suspect network hubris contributed to its early departure. After ranking fifth in…
In a recent conversation about the new Star Trek series ( Starfleet Academy ) I remarked that one of the many reasons I disliked it was how it couldn’t tell the difference between depicting diversity and fetishizing it, something the original series had figured out back in 1966. One of my friends, whose politics lean left, responded that I wouldn’t have a problem if it were fetishizing something…
C lassic TV fans still rhapsodize about the CBS prime time schedules of the early 1970s featuring Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and Carol Burnett. Fifty years later many contend these were lineups never surpassed in quality. But what ABC achieved on Tuesdays in 1977 is arguably more impressive. For the first time, and I would guess the only time in television history, one network aired the year’s…
During my ongoing review of the 1970s prime time schedules, I've kept a list of the shows I’ve never seen. It’s always fun when I get to cross a series off that list, and I can now do so with Tenafly , thanks to a kind soul who uploaded the first episode to YouTube a few months ago. From 1973, Tenafly was introduced as a new entry in the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie wheel. It debuted on Oct. 10 and…
In 2019 I reviewed A Very Brady Renovation , the four-part HGTV series in which the Brady Bunch house shown in nearly every series episode was purchased and renovated into a replica of the home that is as familiar to series fans as their own. Back then I wrote: “The entire project was a completely impractical thing to do, requiring thousands of hours and millions of dollars. But seeing the…