All articles filed in television

Depending on how old you are, you will either be totally confused at that blog headline… Or, if you’re from my generation, you’ll immediately have an image of four anthromorphic costumed characters partying and dancing around an amusement park. Yep, I’m taking you all back in time for this. If you were a kid in…

Every so often, characters from your favorite TV shows will invariably end up on one game show or another. More often than not, the characters will find themselves with boatloads of money, only to either blow it on the final question, or get disqualified for some obscure rule violation. And in the end, they receive…

With the NHL finally returning to our collective sports pages, I thought it might be fun to bring back another icon from the ice hockey world. In this case, I’m bringing back Peter Puck, the lead character in a series of Hanna-Barbera produced cartoons that were designed to explain ice hockey to new viewers.  I…

I swear, when I hear this disclaimer that the Amish church disavows any knowledge of the Amish Mafia, I wonder if I play the disclaimer backwards, it will provide some secret message like “Try my cousin Ephraim Yoder’s shoo-fly pie, it will make thee very happy…” Well, I thought we were all done with this…

Once again, we start with the mystery Amish message, spoken in Pennsylvania Dutch, about how the Amish church does not acknowledge the existence of the Amish Mafia.  Of course, the way it’s staged, you would think that the show was being set in the Lancaster County, Pa. version of Twin Peaks. Be that as it…

Here we are, back in scenic rainy Lancaster County, Pa., for this week’s episode of the Discovery Channel’s new TV show “Amish Mafia.”  It’s rainy, it’s cold, and for the first time since I started regularly reviewing episodes of “American Dreams” a decade ago, I’m going to provide a television review on the Internet. For…

Revivals of classic television shows have been, for lack of a better description, hit or miss. For every successful resurrection of a classic TV staple (Hawaii Five-O), there have been some seriously smelly stinkers (did you ever see the remake of Fantasy Island? No? Count your blessings…). There’s one successful classic TV series from the…

In the history of broadcast television, there are several iconic names that are associated with some of the greatest children’s programming ever.  William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, for example.  Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass.  Peyo, the creator of the Smurfs.  Norm Prescott and Lou Scheimer, the brains behind Filmation Studios. And then there’s Gerry…

Oh you readers are going to hate me for this one. Too bad. Deal with it. Back in the late 1970’s, and up through the mid-1980’s, there was an amazing dance show / competition program. It featured the top disco dancers in the country, all competing for cash and prizes. And the host of the…