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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 19, 2021 22:50:06 GMT -5
Minder is an absolute classic. And as you say, it still holds up really well. That was never shown around here, on PBS; but, I have seen George Cole and Dennis Waterman reunited in an episode of New Tricks. We got more BBC stuff (some Thames and Granada) on PBS, so more the mystery/detective series (Holmes, Inspector Morse, Touch of Frost, Poirot, etc) and the dramas (Upstairs/Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited, I, Claudius, Edward the King, Fall of Eagles, etc). WILL in Champaign (at the Univ of Illinois) bought a lot of British programming, so we got comedies like The Good Life (Good Neighbors, here), Doctor in the House, Python, Fawlty Towers, . As time wore on, we got stuff like Are You Being Served?, Last of the Summer Wine, As Time Goes By, Red Dwarf, The Thin Blue Line, Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister, Black Adder, Vicar of Dibley, May to December, Rising Damp, Ever Decreasing Circles. When I was young, we got the saint, in syndication and our PBS station brought in The Avengers, later. I saw the Callan movie before I ever saw the series (when the last two series were released on dvd here). The movie had played on USA Network, when I was in college and I thought, at first, it was a Harry Palmer film, without Michael Caine. Same kind of vibe. We did get some of the programs that played in other areas than usual, like Danger UXB (Anthony Andrews was popular from Brideshead, as well as Ivanhoe and The Scarlet Pimpernel), Sharpe, and Masterpiece Theater played Jeeves & Wooster, with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie perfectly cast. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 20, 2021 11:05:58 GMT -5
Speaking of CHiPs, I only just discovered that Robert Pine, who played Sgt Getraer, their superior, was the father of Chris Pine, from Star Trek and Wonder Woman. I had never heard that Chris was a second generation actor. I was watching the wedding episode of the Office (Jim & Pam's), where Robert Pine plays Jim's father, and just thought of him as the sergeant, from CHiPs. Then, on the commentary track, someone mentioned he was Chris Pine's father.
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Post by Batflunkie on Mar 22, 2021 19:53:43 GMT -5
One show that I always had to catch reruns of, even in my teen years, was In The Heat Of The Night. If it's not my favorite show, it's definitely up there. Carrol O' Conner as Bill Gillespie is an amazing character, all of the cast is
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 22, 2021 21:16:14 GMT -5
One show that I always had to catch reruns of, even in my teen years, was In The Heat Of The Night. If it's not my favorite show, it's definitely up there. Carrol O' Conner as Bill Gillespie is an amazing character, all of the cast is I've seen the movie, but only sampled the tv show a few times. Busier time period for me, then. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 22, 2021 21:22:17 GMT -5
Speaking of Southern Sheriffs, not named Lobo, anyone else recall the comedy series Carter Country, with Victor French? Watched when it was on and enjoyed it well enough, especially Richard Paul, as Mayor Burnside. "Handle it, Roy; handle it, handle it!"
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Post by berkley on Mar 22, 2021 23:26:32 GMT -5
Don't remember hearing of Carter Country before, but speaking of Southern-US-based shows, one I really liked but that unfortunately didn't last long was the one from the later 80s starring the actor who played Venus Flytrap on WKRP: in this show, his character was a guy originally from New Orleans (I think it was) who had spent most of his adult life in the north as an executive or professional of some kind - you know, an educated, white-collar, suit-and-tie sort - and was now returning back home to take over a restaurant. It was really well done, with understated humour, interesting characters , good scripts ... but sadly perhaps a little too original for American tv at the time. I think if it had come out after the success of Twin Peaks had briefly made the networks more open to new ideas it might have been given a longer trial.
edit: the actor was Tim Reid and the name of the show was Frank's Place
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 23, 2021 4:34:52 GMT -5
I remember Carter Country - I remember that it was a show that existed, and that I watched a few episodes of it, but little more. That was something one of my older siblings watched and I just sat on the couch and kind of half watched it while flipping through a comic book or drawing pictures of superheroes in a notebook.
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Post by brutalis on Mar 28, 2021 16:29:58 GMT -5
Speaking of southern based shows, I enjoyed the short 2 seasons of Heart's Afire with John Ritter and Markie Post. Sad that season 2 had to be a total revamp from the original concept but the cast and humor was enjoyable in both.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 28, 2021 20:08:00 GMT -5
Speaking of southern based shows, I enjoyed the short 2 seasons of Heart's Afire with John Ritter and Markie Post. Sad that season 2 had to be a total revamp from the original concept but the cast and humor was enjoyable in both. Never saw that one. Looked it up and it was early 90s and I was probably watching something else. Wasn't Babylon 5, yet, nor the Monday Night Wars, in pro wrestling. Looking at the tv grids for the seasons it was on I can't spot anything I recall as musn't-miss tv. I do see that it was from Linda Bloodworth-Thomas' Mozark Productions, which did Designing Women and Evening Shade; both Southern comedies, which I did periodically (if not religiously) watch. TV schedule showed it on Mondays, when it debuted and I was watching some of that, as that was when Evening Shade and Murphy Brown were both on. Not sure why or how I missed it. EDIT; now that I think about it, I was taking a couple of night classes and I think one of them might have been on Monday night. I pretty much went straight from work to the school; so, no tv until I got home, later. |
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Post by brutalis on Apr 3, 2021 21:22:32 GMT -5
Come across a comic strip related television series I never knew existed. Woke early this morning flipping channels and on Decades TV every Saturday morning 4am-5am they run Steve Canyon. The 2 season 1947/48 1/2 hour show starring Dean Frederick. Became an instant record for me until i can get all 22 episodes. Rather typical slower paced show but made with the assistance of the USAF. So will be plenty of classic (then modern) airplane filming to enjoy. Has a certain charm of those early years of television with plenty of instantly recognizable movie and TV star faces, if not names.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 4, 2021 22:07:05 GMT -5
Come across a comic strip related television series I never knew existed. Woke early this morning flipping channels and on Decades TV every Saturday morning 4am-5am they run Steve Canyon. The 2 season 1947/48 1/2 hour show starring Dean Frederick. Became an instant record for me until i can get all 22 episodes. Rather typical slower paced show but made with the assistance of the USAF. So will be plenty of classic (then modern) airplane filming to enjoy. Has a certain charm of those early years of television with plenty of instantly recognizable movie and TV star faces, if not names. Never actually watched an episode; but, I have seen the DVDs for sale, on-line. I've been curious to at least watch an episode of it and the Fu Manchu tv series, that has been available from the usual public domain video houses. Also discovered there was a Tanguy et Laverdure tv series (The Aeronauts), in France, featuring the two French military pilot heroes in adventures. Caught an episode on Youtube that looked pretty entertaining, with stock footage of Mirages and such. There was a modern remake, a few years back, that was shown here as Sky Fighters. The only aviation adventure tv series I ever really watched regularly was Baa baa Black Sheep, with Robert Conrad, loosely inspired by the real VMF-214 and Gregory "Pappy" Boyington. They mostly took their few historical cues from Boyington's memoir, which has largely been challenged by the members of the squadron, as far as accuracy. The tv took that and Hollywooded it up; but, it was a great series and Conrad was perfect for it. Plus, you had a young cast that included James Whitmore Jr, Robert Ginty ("The Paper Chase Guy"), Dirk Blocker (son of Bonanza's Hoss) and John Larroquette (before Night Court). To me, it was the closest thing to Blackhawk on film or tv, including the Blackhawk serial. It was Stephen J Cannell, so lots of explosions and stock footage. Airwolf was the other I watched, for at least the first couple of seasons. I have Tales of the Gold Monkey; but have only ever watched about 3 or 4 episodes (same when it was on tv). Haven't tried going back to finish watching it, though I liked the episodes I saw. Just got interrupted and never got back to it; then Stephen Collins' admissions came to light and I haven't exactly been itching to watch anything with him in it . It did capture the pulp aviation adventure theme well. |
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Post by berkley on Apr 5, 2021 0:19:32 GMT -5
I never knew there was a Steve Canyon tv series until very recently - to be honest, I had only the haziest awareness of the Steve Canyon comic strip itself until a few years ago, when I was looking for some 40s-50s comcis to read. Never heard of the Fu Manchu series either, until now.
Most recent classic tv I've watched was the first 4 episodes of Edge of Darkness a mid-80s UK series: very good stuff, sort of crime drama with a strong dash of political intrigue. Id thought it was a 4-episode series, for some reason, but turns out it was 6, so I have 2 more to go - I'll finish it when I get back into reading some 80s comics and books later this month. Trivia note: guitar-based soundtrack by Eric Clapton!
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Post by brutalis on Apr 5, 2021 2:41:02 GMT -5
Black Sheep Squadron is fun. Iconic planes, classic misfit goof-ups led by someone who is always thinking he knows more than the command leadership. But all doing their patriotic duty stopping the bad guys. Ehile drinking, laughing and chasing the ladies of course.
Rat Patrol is another favorite with a small group of men traversing Africa in their pair of jeeps confounding and fighting the German tank Corp during WW II. Nice quick half hour action/adventure.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 5, 2021 21:35:22 GMT -5
Black Sheep Squadron is fun. Iconic planes, classic misfit goof-ups led by someone who is always thinking he knows more than the command leadership. But all doing their patriotic duty stopping the bad guys. Ehile drinking, laughing and chasing the ladies of course. Rat Patrol is another favorite with a small group of men traversing Africa in their pair of jeeps confounding and fighting the German tank Corp during WW II. Nice quick half hour action/adventure. Yeah, I have that on DVD, as I fell in love, when we had reruns of it, when I was in my teens (on a weird time slot). However, after watching a few episodes in succession, I discovered just how repetitious the plots could be. Definitely worked better as a weekly show. Black Sheep kind of falls into that, as it goes on. They were fairly inventive during the first season, especially early on. Wasn't as big a fan after Whitmore left; one of my favorite characters. I forget where I first saw something about the Steve Canyon tv series. One of those public domain video distributor sites, probably. We had the strip in our local paper, when I was young; but, it was more soap opera than adventure and intrigue, by the early 70s. Steve Roper & Mike Nomad was still pretty good for that at the same time (we had that one, too. Speaking of comic strip series, did anyone watch the Dagwood and Blondie tv show? We had some reruns when we first got cable, on a UHF station that was carried on the cable system. I had seen one or two of the movies, but this was the tv show, still with Arthur Lake and Penny Singleton. One of the things about cable, in that period, was a lot of stations were hungry for content; so, you got all kinds of syndicated rerun packages on things like WGN and WTBS, as well as local stations. Ours started out with CBN (Christian Broadcast Network, which eventually morphed into ABC Family, after changing hands several times). I skipped the PTL and the rest of the religious stuff; but, they had a block of 1950s/early 60s programming, including Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, Bachelor Father, My Little Margie, I Married Joan, You Bet Your Life and, I think, The Great Guildersleeve (though that might have been on another channel we received via cable). Loved Joan Davis on I Married Joan, which looks like an I Love Lucy copy, mainly because it is similar slapstick, though Davis was a pretty good comediene (and a friend of Lucy). Burns & Allen varied from really funny to pleasantly amusing. Jack Benny was always hilarious, especially if he had Jimmy Stewart on. |
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Post by berkley on Apr 11, 2021 15:54:16 GMT -5
I don't remember ever hearing of Black Sheep Squadron, must not have played on our channels at the time. Looking it up, I see it starred Robert Conrad - is this what made him well-known as an actor? I was aware of him as a celebrity a few years later on but had never seen him in anything that I recall, unleess perhaps in some old movie or something.
I do remember Rat Patrol from when I was a very small kid, though. It was a favourite show of us kids, though I was so young all I remember now is the jeep driving around in the desert.
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