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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 14, 2021 19:54:09 GMT -5
Add to MI, The Wild Wild West. Loved that show, from the private train, to the gadgets, to the proto-steampunk advances, to Conrad and Martin and their characters. Loved any episode with Dr Loveless; best tv villain ever!   Michael Dunn's talent was far greater than his physical size! |
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Post by brutalis on Mar 14, 2021 20:18:58 GMT -5
James West and Artemis Gordon, doing the best buddy teaming against villainy and saving young America and the world while doing it all in the west! And doing it with style (worlds tightest man pants ever) and science (good ol' Artie creating stuff long before it was ever invented) and romance.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 14, 2021 20:55:02 GMT -5
James West and Artemis Gordon, doing the best buddy teaming against villainy and saving young America and the world while doing it all in the west! And doing it with style (worlds tightest man pants ever) and science (good ol' Artie creating stuff long before it was ever invented) and romance. Also, best opening titles, ever! |
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Post by Confessor on Mar 18, 2021 7:48:50 GMT -5
ForcesTV here in the UK have been repeating late 70s/early 80s episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard and CHiPs lately.   I loved both of these shows back in the day; they were both shown on Saturday afternoon at about 5:30pm, just after World of Sport with Dickie Davis.   I have really fond memories of watching both shows at my Nan and Gramp's house every week, while my Gramp used to "tut" disparagingly and mumble "who writes this rubbish?" under his breath. Viewed through 21st century adult eyes, both shows are ridiculous...especially The Dukes of Hazzard, but they're harmless enough and still manage to be quite entertaining. CHiPs is actually quite a slow paced show at times...I remember it being much more action-packed than it is. The Dukes of Hazzard on the other hand is much more madcap and cartoony, and the larger than life characters like Uncle Jesse, Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane certainly suit the mood of the show really well and are still a lot of fun. However, the two best things about the show are still the orange "General Lee" Dodge Charger, with its doors welded shut, and Daisy Duke's hot pants.  Overall, The Dukes of Hazzard is the better of the two shows, I think, but neither are exactly what you'd call high quality drama. Still, I'm rather enjoying getting reacquainted with them. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 18, 2021 8:06:55 GMT -5
Together with all of the other little boys when I was in about the 5th/6th grade, I absolutely loved the Dukes for a while during its original network run - living in a pretty rural area probably had something to do with that. CHiPs was pretty popular with the other kids, but I only recall watching one or two episodes and finding it kind of bland and uninteresting. As for the Dukes, only a few years later when I was a teen and caught an episode in syndication, I found it pretty bad and wondered what - besides Daisy, obviously - I had seen in that show earlier.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 18, 2021 11:20:55 GMT -5
I watched CHiPs off and on; but, yeah, it was often quite boring and repetitive. Didn't really watch Dukes much, as we couldn't tune in CBS very well; but, watched it a few times when visiting relatives. It was harmless fun. They poked fun a little bit at it, on Smallville, when Tom Wopat made a guest appearance as a state senator friend of Jonathan Kent. He went to do the slide across the hood and Schneider just looks at him and says, "What are you doing?". They played a few bars of the theme song, at one point. In another episode, you hear a few bars of it on Jonathan Kent's truck radio.
There is a whole Daisy Duke cult out there, if you google her name, and not just "fans."
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Post by Confessor on Mar 18, 2021 12:05:46 GMT -5
They played a few bars of the theme song, at one point. In another episode, you hear a few bars of it on Jonathan Kent's truck radio. That is one catchy theme tune. One of Waylon Jennings' finest compositions, if you ask me. There is a whole Daisy Duke cult out there, if you google her name, and not just "fans." Or so you've heard, right? |
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Post by Calidore on Mar 18, 2021 19:39:55 GMT -5
CHIPS was mostly bland, true, but kid me thought it was cool anyway. Especially when you got the odd gem like early post-Partridge Danny Bonaduce getting to show off his martial arts skills as a street punk. (Warning: high volume)
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Post by brutalis on Mar 18, 2021 20:05:43 GMT -5
CHIPS was a lighter variation in tone from Emergency and Dragnet. Meant to show people the positive aspects and friendly faces of officers mingled with humanistic stories. A kind of show we could use more of today. I can put it on for an hour and either pay a lot of attention or as background noise.
Them good ol' Duke boys causing trouble and having their idea of fun with the law was pure sit back, turn off the frontal lobe and escape into fun times. We all wished we could have a fast muscle car, hot babes to impress and dumb witted officers to irritate and torment. Nothing more to worry about other can coming up with the money for gasoline! Yeehaaaaaawww.
Another guilty pleasure airing around the same time was the A-Team. A bunch of fun altruistic ex-military turned mercenaries doing good for the common folk while seeking to prove their innocence of trumped up charges. It was great seeing George Peppard having another series to highlight his skills. I love it when a plan comes together! I pity the fool that didn't watch and like this show!
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 18, 2021 21:48:41 GMT -5
They played a few bars of the theme song, at one point. In another episode, you hear a few bars of it on Jonathan Kent's truck radio. That is one catchy theme tune. One of Waylon Jennings' finest compositions, if you ask me. There is a whole Daisy Duke cult out there, if you google her name, and not just "fans." Or so you've heard, right? Hrm...uh, ahem.....yeah.....heard about.........yeah. They are on the tame end of the internet fetish spectrum as a bad google search can reveal. You can end up with some really weird results if you google Dick Van Dyke, and I don't mean his Mary Poppins accent. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 18, 2021 21:58:15 GMT -5
Speaking of Dick Van Dyke, the Dick Van Dyke Show is one of my all-time favorite comedies. Just so perfectly written and performed and Carl Reiner was smart enough to pull the plug while they were on top, so it never had a chance to decline. The insults from Buddy to Mel, by themselves, were worth watching.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 18, 2021 22:49:31 GMT -5
Hard to believe that their biggest controversy was Mary Tyler Moore's capri pants.
Even this episode handled things wonderfully, using race to make a joke but respectfully, as the joke is on Rob's paranoia, not on Greg Morris...
The capper is on the end, back in the present, when Rob says that the Peters' son is in Richie's class at school and is top of the class, while Richie is in the middle. It's a subtle thing, but, for the 1960s, suggesting that and African-American child was outdoing all the white kids in class was a pretty daring thing.
Mary Tyler Moore was gorgeous and could sing and dance right along with DVD; but, she also turned into a pretty darn good comediene, as demonstrated in the episode, "The Curious Thing About Women." At the start of the episode, Laura hands Rob some mail addressed to him, which she has already opened and read. Rob gets upset and complains. Later, he uses the idea in a sketch for the show, which upsets Laura when she sees the show air, especially since they exaggerated things to include roughing up their son to spill the beans about a package and friends think that was really her. She erads Rob the riot act, but, then a package arrives for Rob (the package he was expecting that popped into his head for the climax to the sketch) and Laura can't resist snooping...
The performance episodes were always great, mixig music and comedy as a real variety show would. This is from the Sam Pomerantz Scandals, where Rob helps out his old buddy Sam (previously Saul) Pomerantz (played here by Henry Calvin), as do the rest, and Sam and Rob break out their old Laurel & Hardy routine, from the Army...
Van Dyke was a massive Laurel & Hardy fan and eventually got to meet and become good friends with Stan Laurel.
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Post by berkley on Mar 18, 2021 23:52:34 GMT -5
The 80s were a bit of a dead zone for me as far as tv is concerned. I missed a lot of stuff and unlike in the 70s or 60s, I wasn't attracted to many of the more popular 80s US shows mentioned in the thread, like Chips or The A-Team. I did enjoy watching Cheers for a long time but it started to feel tired to me after a while - though that might have been more a case of feeling burnt out on sitcoms in general.
Hill Street Blues is one big American series that I did like and intend to watch again one of these days, at least the first few seasons. Off the top of my head, I thnk that would be my #1 US series of the 80s.
My favourite Canadian show was Seeing Things: created by and starring transplanted American Louis del Grande, whom some non-Canadians might remember seeing in David Cronenberg's Scanners. Funny, quirky show that I would recommend to anyone curious about Canadian tv. The gimmick is that it's about a guy who has visions connected with crimes which he then investigates, but it isn't really important: what makes it good is the writing, del Grande's character acting, and the humour.
But probably my number one 80s show and one of my favourites of all time, was Minder: I loved the characters, the setting, the mixture of gritty, pretty realistic at times, crime stories with comedy, the latter mostly derived from the Arthur Daley character and his shady money-making schemes. The title character is Terry McCann, a one-time pro-boxer and ex-con who makes a living getting various bodyguard-type jobs set up by sleazy used-car dealer Daley. I watched the first season again a few years ago and found it stood up nicely, so that's another show I definitely intend to re-watch from start to finish some day.
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Post by Confessor on Mar 19, 2021 7:50:08 GMT -5
Minder is an absolute classic. And as you say, it still holds up really well.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 19, 2021 22:37:16 GMT -5
I watched some 80s network tv; but cable gave me a lot of alternatives, especially movies. Watched of lot of stuff on WTBS, as they would show stuff like the Planet of the Apes films, the Matt Helm films, 60s romantic comedies and similar things, plus war films and some similar things.
For tv, I watched Cheers until the Sam-and Diane thing was played out, before Long left the show. never got into it with Kirstie Alley. Watched the earlier seasons of Cosby, but that got old after a bit. Family Ties never wowed me that much, though I watched it occasionally. Same with Hill Street Blues and St Elsewhere. Both good, but I was kind of in and out on it. Burnt out on Mimi Vice in the second or third season. Once I was in college, about the only tv I was watching regularly was MASH reruns after the news and episodes of Dr Who, on our local PBS station (at the Univ of Illinois). I did follow Night Court for quite a while, as that had a lot of writers who had worked on Barney Miller and had similarly great character comedy.
I tried Star Trek Next Gen, when it came on; but, it left me cold and bored. I liked Trek when it was less politically correct and and dependent on technobabble for plot resolution. Patrick Stewart was outstanding; but, I never thought the rest of the cast rose to his level, though Brent Spiner had moments (preferred him in Night Court, though).
I watched way more tv in the 70s, before cable, as you had to chose between the 3 networks (or PBS or a UHF station, if you had one). Cable diluted that in the 80s and more so in the 90s.
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