All articles filed in television

It’s 1974, and local station WRGB just added a syndicated game show to its evening lineup. The game show, filmed in Las Vegas and featuring casino-style games, was called Dealer’s Choice. First hosted by Bob Hastings, and then by Jack Clark, survived for three seasons, and offered contestants the chance for big money and prizes…

It’s the holiday season, and this means companies will put together some seriously potent, heart-pulling commercials. In England, those commercials usually come from department stores. Here in the United States, we get the commercials from automobile manufacturers. And leading the pack, once again, is Chevrolet. Because of course they are. I blogged about this phenomenon…

Maybe it’s because I have a high bar for televised situation comedies. The characters work best in a presumably believable relationship, and the situations for each episode must make some sort of logical sense. All In The Family worked for me, so did M*A*S*H* and Cheers and The Big Bang Theory. And I also have…

I’ve blogged about this before – there’s a YouTube community that takes various TV and movie properties and re-imagines them as 1950’s-era motion pictures – complete with two-minute AI-generated movie trailers and stentorial narration. Fun stuff. Now recently I’ve come across a YouTuber who went for some impressive projects. He’s taking classic Saturday morning cartoons…

Follow along with me. It’s Saturday morning, you’re grabbing a bowl of Frosted Flakes and plopping yourself in front of the television while your parents get a late sleep. And right off the bat, one of the shows you watch features an episodic, formulaic science-fiction show that takes VERY literally the Jules Verne fantasy story…

I am more and more amazed that the streaming service Tubi has a plethora of television shows available for casual FAST watching. FAST being free advert-supported television. Yesterday, just on a whim, I figured I’d try a show that I never really got into during its original 1980’s broadcast run. That show was the screwball…

I love game shows and quiz shows. When done right, they’re entertaining and a great view. When done poorly … well … you know. At one point, I thought one of the worst game shows ever created was the American version of the Japanese game show Hole In The Wall. Trust me, I blogged about…

If that headline doesn’t catch your attention, I have no hope for you. But on occasion, when I’m in a bit of a creative funk, or I need to understand that not every person on a dance show has the skills of someone who just finished a three-month run in a summer stock production of…

Sometimes a television show will sneak up on you … and as you watch it, you immediately get hooked into the program and all its intricacies. And that happened to me in 1978, when The Paper Chase debuted on CBS. The series was set on the 1973 motion picture of the same name, and John…

There once was a time when you could stay home from school and the three major television networks would bless your “sick day” or “hooky day” with a plethora of game shows and quiz shows. NBC gave your Hollywood Squares and Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, while CBS offered The Joker’s Wild and The Price…