It arrived in the mail the other day. And boy was I happy. Max Headroom returned to my life. Max Headroom was a science fiction hour long drama that created a futuristic society based on television and information. The show mixed action, drama and satire into an amazing melange. I taped the episodes on my…
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Bird Box and the influences from The Twilight Zone and Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Okay. I waited two weeks to finally watch the Netflix movie Bird Box, the horror film where a spreading virus / madness / airborne invasion attacks people into suicide – and to spread to others to convince them to commit suicide. If you’ve seen the film, you probably have an opinion as to what the…
Read More“Pure” – wait, they made an Amish Mafia drama series? In Canada?
Long time readers of my blog will remember when I used to hate-watch the Discovery Channel faux-docuseries Amish Mafia, a program about the clandestine machinations among the Pennsylvania Dutch Amish and Mennonite communities. The show was silly, it was offensive, it was hilarious, it was blasphemous. It was one of Discovery’s hottest shows, and then,…
Read MoreIf The Littlest Angel were recast today…
This … without argument … was my favorite Christmas special back in the day. It was a Hallmark Hall of Fame special from approximately 1968, and it starred a who’s who of television actors and personalities in a musical retelling of the story about a mischievous angel whose gifts on Earth become an integral part…
Read MoreOne more episode of NBC’s Timeless … tonight
The show wasn’t supposed to survive its first season. It was one of four different “time travel” shows to premier for the 2016-17 prime time TV season. Two other dramas, Time After Time and Frequency, were based on successful theatrical releases; neither of those shows lasted past a few weeks. Another time travel show, a…
Read MoreI barely remember Muggsy
There are TV shows from my youth that, for better or for worse, I will always have a cultural memory associated with same. That feeling of getting up at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning to fill my brain with animated mush and Froot Loops for hours. Fun stuff. One of those Saturday morning programs only…
Read MoreSome Star Trek stories to hold you over until the new Discovery season…
Last year, I got hooked on the new CBS All Access iteration of the classic Star Trek series, a show called Star Trek: Discovery. The program had its quirks – the storty seemed more episodic rather than self-contained, some plotlines required an intense knowledge of Trekkie history, and the show’s characters – while themselves the…
Read MoreThat surprise cameo in last night’s Murphy Brown return
Way back in ancient times – when my cable company was called Capital Cablevision and I had this device called a video cassette recorder to watch shows at a later time – I loved a TV show called Murphy Brown. It starred Candice Bergen as a hard-driven but kind-hearted investigative reporter, who worked with a…
Read MoreYou Can’t See ‘Round Corners: The Vietnam War as a rare TV miniseries
There are very few examples of the Vietnam War used as a backdrop for prime time episodic television. I know of two instances from American prime time TV shows in the late 1980’s / early 1990’s – the action drama Tour of Duty, and the emotional war drama China Beach. Recently, I came across an…
Read MoreSo time travel really DOES work, doesn’t it NBC?
Follow me on this. You may need a WABAC machine or a TARDIS or an air-guitar-powered phone booth. In 2016, the prime time networks aired four different time travel programs. ABC’s Time After Time, based on the 1979 sci-fi drama that saw H.G. Wells chase Jack the Ripper through modern-day America … failed after five…
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