Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
Tonight let’s talk about movies and TV shows that have not aged well – but that you still enjoy! For example, Cliosfanboy, who had the idea for this part of the post, still loves the TV mystery Banacek.
The casual sexism of the series is vintage early 1970s, but I still think the mysteries are really clever and I enjoy watching the main character solve them.
Suave is definitely the name of the game for Banacek, at least that’s how I remember it.
Let’s also talk about older shows that have aged well. I haven’t watched The Rockford Files in a million years, but I like to think that one has aged well, if only because of the basic decency of both the actor and the character he played. I’ll bet that some of you have watched it more recently (paging Steeplejack?) Am I wrong about that?
There was some detective show with a female character named Honey, she may have been a private eye? I bet that at least one of you guys will know what show that was, and how well it aged.
Let’s go!
Frightened Turtle
The Eiger Sanction. Climbing/Eiger scenes are still amazing. The rest of the movie hasn’t aged so well…
Anotherlurker
I am currently re-watching Barney Miller. It is a wonderful, well acted, well written show. Creator Danny Arnold and his writers took on all the issues of the day, most of which are still relevant today. For example, the gay characters developed depth and complexity as the series progressed. Respect was shown to diversity.
I highly recommend it.
cain
I think the Incredible Hulk has aged pretty good.
But man, Wonder Woman was awful going back. I think after going through all the marvel and dc cinematic universe movies and being used to strong women – the WW series was just too.. meh.
ETA oh! I think Firefly continues to age well :D
Trivia Man
How i met your mother is in the same group for me as The Office, Friends, and Seinfeld. It doesn’t age well if you consider plots, story lines, tropes, and general insensitivity.
But
Individual scenes are timeless. Delivery, writing, facial expressions… each of those has 100 scenes that can make me laugh in isolation.
Hungry Joe
You’re thinking of “Honey West.” It wasn’t much good to begin with, so aging well should be a snap.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@cain:
From what I’ve read, Wonder Woman has kind of always gotten short shrift honestly, even by DC Comics themselves.
She never got her own animated series in the DCAU, but Batman and Superman did. A lot of WW fans aren’t fond of how she was written in JL/JLU
Hungry Joe
@Anotherlurker: “Barney Miller” is one of the great TV comedies; it’s in my Top Ten. Saw a couple of episodes recently, and they held up, like, 100%.
Trivia Man
At the time I considered Roseanne thoughtful and powerful. Teal family, real problems, addressing big picture societal ills. Then it got weird. I suspect fame and money going to her head, it became a parody of itself then just physical bed it n with (spoiler!) Dan really DID die resolution.
FDRLincoln
The best episodes of original Star Trek hold up very well. The worst don’t beyond camp value. But the Series as a whole remains eminently watchable 50 years later, as long as you remember that the sexism was actually not as bad as most 60s tv.
Scout211
One old movie that my sisters and I use to love was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It was a fun musical with some romance . . . or so we thought at the time. But looking back, no just no. Kidnapping 7 women, taking them from their families and boyfriends, taking them to their rural hideout and forcing them into marriages?! Oh my God! That does not age well.
FDRLincoln
Casablanca still holds up and remains a bracing morale booster against fascism.
JMG
Honey West starred Anne Francis as a private detective of that name. It was terrible, but Ms. Francis was very attractive. Saturdays at 4 p.m. MeTV shows “Have Gun, Will Travel,” with Richard Boone as the lead, the gunslinger Paladin. Most of them are very much of the late ’50s, psychoanalytic problems brought to the Old West. One episode I watched was written by Gene Roddenbery himself. Another was by New Wave sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison! And of course, I have been a devoted fan of Raymond Burr as Perry Mason since childhood.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Rockford Files still holds up. Very clever and likeable.
Scrubs is 23 years old and it still holds up.
apocalipstick
Rockford still rules.
WaterGirl
@Hungry Joe: That’s it! Your comment about aging well made me laugh.
Scout211
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Seconded. Love that show.
Craig
@Anotherlurker: Barney Miller remains excellent. I wish cops were like that.
FastEdD
Rockford Files has aged well. I found the DVD boxed set of all of them for less than $50 and I’ve seen about half of them. Yes, “Rockfish” does the damsel in distress thing a few times but treats women with respect-his lawyer was played by a female. I think it was Rita Moreno who played a prostitute chased by the mob, and Garner’s character stood up for her and got her out of trouble. My favorite episode was one where the prosecutor and the judge were crooked and threw Rockford in jail for refusing to testify, which was his right, and made up fake charges. It all worked out in the end, of course and our hero got his revenge. They made the point during the credits that this happens in real life and it pays to fight back. I used to watch it in the 70’s when I moved to LA and the scenery was like a travelogue. And I was driving an old Firebird.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I actually watched Rockford Files all the way through on Freeve a few years ago and I liked it a lot. I always enjoyed Rockford and his father’s interactions
Spanky
OH noes! She was canceled by Jim Nabors!
And Mrs. Peel. Can’t argue with that.
Chris
Ah yes, Banacek, George Peppard’s other show… From what I’ve heard of his behavior on the set of The A-Team, I have no trouble believing there’d be sexism problems.
Honestly, going back, the interesting thing about a lot of old TV shows is that I absolutely picked up on racism when I was a kid – not all the time, but a lot – but sexism tended to go right over my head. That’s what makes me cringe more often than not when looking back at TV shows from earlier times. It goes nicely with the argument I’ve seen people make here, that sexism is more ingrained and accepted in society than even racism is.
Scout211
Twilight Zone is really old but it still is very watchable.
FDRLincoln
Twilight Zone holds up. Night Gallery, not so much.
Craig
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Rockford is great. I always loved his little business card printing press. His relationships with his friends and associates really makes it. His blind loyalty to fuck up jail buddy Angel really speaks to the high qualities of Jim’s character. He’s a good person.
Geoduck
I’ve heard that many cops consider Barney Miller to be the most realistic police show ever produced.
The original Trek had its sexism, but it also had a black woman, serving in uniform on the bridge of a starship. And intentionally or otherwise, Uhura was positioned on the bridge right over Kirk’s shoulder where the haters were forced to see her all the time. (And yes, Nichelle Nichols and Roddenberry were having an affair…)
And as noted, the British TV series The Avengers (no relation to the comic-book juggernaut) is still fun to watch, particularly the episodes with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel.
WKRP in Cincinnati is another sitcom that still plays well. The two main female characters never interact much, but that’s better than jealousy and cat-fights.
NeenerNeener
I personally think Cheers and Frasier held up pretty well, but that’s just me.
matt
I watched Barnaby Jones for the first time a while back and it’s super campy but has good writing and production and incredible guest stars (many of whom later became big stars). Bonus plus: supposedly it was Richard Nixon’s favorite show.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I did watch a Rockford Files show recently as a matter of fact. It was an episode featuring Tom Selleck, pre-Magnum, PI. Selleck is a kind of well-meaning visiting investigator who has no street smarts, who does everything all wrong according to Rockford, and is going to get himself in trouble. But somehow people love him and he keeps succeeding.
It was enjoyable and aged just fine.
We got into that because we saw Selleck interviewed, and probably he mentioned the episode. (By the way, I highly recommend the 92nd Street Y and Symphony Space, both New York venues who stream their productions, as sources of some fascinating conversations)
Two shows that didn’t age: Get Smart and Man from U.N.C.L.E. I absolutely adored Get Smart as a kid, watched it constantly. When I tried to watch an old episode recently, I couldn’t finish it, though I don’t remember why. Casual sexism or racism probably. As for U.N.C.L.E, that was part of my wife’s childhood. I never watched it. So I tried it not too many years ago and also couldn’t finish an episode. The issue there was pretty awful misogyny as I recall.
Another show I watched religiously as a kid, Carol Burnett, has aged just fine. They’re all still as funny as ever and it’s still as funny as it ever was to watch Tim Conway break up his scene partners in live performance.
FDRLincoln
A lot of the Warner Brothers animation holds up very well. You do have the racist installments…but the majority of Looney Toons and Merrie Melodies remain a joy.
prostratedragon
Must check out Barney Miller some day. It’s original run was in my mostly non-tv-watching days, I think. If nothing else, Abe Vigoda would make it worth a try.
rosalind
my covid confinement insomnia go to became the “Mannix” “Cannon” “Barnaby Jones” block. loved all the huge cars and tiny trucks, and early 1970s L.A. and the guest stars that went on to become huge, but then i realized every show – every freakin’ one – ended with them pulling out a gun and shooting the suspect to death. There is literally no other plot resolution on each of these shows. Just “blam blam blam”, the cops arrive, and Mannix et al just get in their car and drive away.
Mike in NC
We watched “Some Like It Hot” (1959) last night. B&W but it’s still funny.
Eolirin
Totally off topic, but WaterGirl, if you’re still going to front page that comment of mine, can you pop me an email when you do?
My chronic fatigue is kicking my ass atm so I’m not paying as much attention.
Scout211
We used to love to watch Stripes when the kids were teens. We all thought it was funny and just loved the silliness of it. We tried to watch it a few years ago when we were all together after the kids were grown. We were all shocked and appalled at the sexism and utter stupidity and meanness of all the characters. We couldn’t even get through 25% of it. So that one doesn’t hold up. And come to think of it, are there any Bill Murray movies that have held up?
FDRLincoln
Alien and Aliens hold up.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Don’t know that one, but you remind me of a cop show my wife and I used to watch a lot, Cagney and Lacey (Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless playing two female detectives). We’ve watched a couple of those recently and I think they hold up very well.
A non-cop show that was appointment TV for us at approximately the same time: Thirtysomething, at a time when we were in fact thirty-something. Those hold up well.
All the discussion about Barney Miller makes me think I should check it out. That was one of those shows that people were always talking about that I never got around to watching. Night Court was another, and I’ve learned recently that Brent Spiner was a recurring character on that one.
Hey, has anybody watched any old Rowan & Martin Laugh-In? I’ll bet that didn’t age. Except maybe somebody timeless like Lily Tomlin.
matt
I also watched NYPD Blue for the first time a while back and while the main character is one of these bigoted antihero type guys which are hard to watch now, it is incredibly written and acted and has the most astonishingly great soundtrack music done by Mike Post. I honestly have never seen a TV show with as much variety and quality in the incidental music that goes into the episodes.
Ken
As a kid I liked the Charlie Chan, Mr. Wong, and Mr. Moto movies. Now, not so much, for obvious reasons. Though I did come across a Mr. Wong clip recently and was surprised that all the supporting roles were played by Asian actors.
zhena gogolia
Someone recently mentioned that the original MASH movie didn’t age well. I agree.
I hate to say it, but I started to watch Mary Tyler Moore from the beginning recently, and I was disappointed. It wasn’t as hilarious as I remembered. But I guess maybe it got warmed up after the first episode. For some reason, I’m kind of allergic to sitcoms now, although I loved them when I was young. I can’t watch the new ones either. I tried Black-ish when Daveed Diggs was on it, and although I could see it was well written, I just lost interest pretty quickly.
Chris
Echoing FDRLincoln, I also want to say Casablanca is the first that came to mind as an example of an old movie that aged very well.
The antifascism goes without saying: we’ve all talked about it in that context repeatedly.
But speaking of sexism, while the movie is far from perfect on that score, the gender roles have a lot to like about them. The movie is about a guy who’s heartbroken because of rejection, and we all sympathize because we’ve all been there, but at the end of the day the movie is about how he needs to get the fuck over himself. For one thing, because the world has kept on ticking, and your being heartbroken isn’t an excuse to ignore it or make it worse. And for another, because the woman who broke your heart may very well have her own shit going on and good reasons for what she did, and her rejection of you isn’t a malignant act: it’s nobody’s fault. In the age of the incel, that last one especially feels like a valuable thing to say.
There’s another way it’s aged very well. When it comes to ironic and quippy detachment, twenty-first century entertainment likes to think that it knows it all, but Casablanca pisses on it from a very great height. Rick Blaine is the absolute king of trolling, and a variety of other characters in the movie get plenty of their own barbs in the same vein (even the Marseillaise scene, while it’s an inspiring moment of patriotic fervor, is also just a gigantic troll towards the movie’s authority figures). And yet the whole point of Casablanca is that this kind of too-cool-for-school detachment isn’t actually a good thing, or at least, it’s no substitute for an ethos. Rick Blaine, the original Han Solo, is a guy who has to learn to drop the cynical armor and join a cause greater than himself. In the same way that the movie’s gender politics are a breath of fresh air in a time of incels, the movie’s political politics are a breath of fresh air in the nihilistic, Savvy, “that makes me smart” spirit of this day and age.
Casablanca. Great in 1942, great in 2024. Go see it. (As an impressionable sixteen year old in the 2000s, it was the film that taught me that just because a movie’s old doesn’t mean it sucks).
comrade scotts agenda of rage
We bought the entire Rockford Files series on DVD.
We’re into Season 3 at the moment.
The one really jarring “it hasn’t aged well” moment is in the pilot where they use the word “fagot”. Yeah, really.
The plots aren’t deep and somewhat repetitive in terms of tropes, mainly generic “mobsters”.
But the execution of the show remains brilliant. And if you like cars, it’s a real treat.
If you like to see TV actors before they had bigger roles, it’s great. One episode in Season 2 had both Gordon Jump and Veronica Hamel in it.
CaseyL
I rarely if ever re-watch old TV shows, but during the first year of lockdown I did re-watch Columbo, and enjoyed the hell out of it.
I’d like to rewatch “Have Gun Will Travel,” as I remember liking it very much as a kid.
Ditto “Wild, Wild West” – the TV, let me emphasize, not the disastrous Will Smith-Kenneth Branagh movie! I catch bits of it now and then on YouTube (I loved Artemis Gordon with all my heart) and it seems to hold up pretty well.
zhena gogolia
@Chris: “Are my eyes really brown?”
Great analysis of one of my favorite movies. May be time to watch it again.
When I was a senior in college, it was playing at a revival house for a week and I went to see it every night. I could recite all the dialogue.
zhena gogolia
@CaseyL: Columbo definitely holds up.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@rosalind:
Yeah, that’s a pretty common plot resolution for a lot of those episodic shows. Usually, the leading man kills the main villain/antagonist in a gunfight.
Looking back, television shows used to be a lot more black and white, not just literally, but from a moral sense. I wonder why and when television moved away from this style of storytelling (episodic, usually simple morality)
ETA: I suppose the broad answer would be the culture changed
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Something else that has aged remarkably well, the original Perry Mason.
I’ve talked about ‘Newhart’ before. It remains a brilliant show…starting late in Season 2. Prior to that, it’s incredibly “meh”. In fact, there’s a great piece written about how the show was given a ton of time to find itself and that Newhart was well aware of the shortcomings during the first two seasons:
https://www.avclub.com/how-the-second-season-of-newhart-proves-sitcoms-need-ti-1798266087
apocalipstick
@FastEdD: Rockford had so many plots that are 40 years ahead of the times, like The House on Willis Avenue, which was about surveillance and data mining. I would also say that, IMO,Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man’s Job is the equal of The Sting.
Mike E
Poker Face gets compared to Columbo and rightfully so but visually it is reminiscent of The Rockford Files imo. My daughter and I watched PF and I had to show her TRF for her to get the aesthetic so I put on an episode playing on Pluto TV or some such and immediately they were in a private casino room lit and blocked almost exactly the same! She said, “Oh yeah! Cool throwback!”
lowtechcyclist
Gilligan’s Island is at least as stupid as you remember it being. But even dumber was a question that lasted for decades: “Ginger or Mary Ann?” The only reason why Ginger came on to anyone in the show was if she wanted something from them. Who’d want someone like that?
Eolirin
@Chris: Citizen Kane is similarly timeless.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@lowtechcyclist:
Someone with very little self-esteem or very shallow
Craig
@Geoduck: WKRP! Bailey and Jennifer don’t interact too much, but when they do it’s all mutual respect. Mrs. Carlson is one smart tough lady as well.
Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGA)
Barney Miller reminds me of my 1970s New York childhood. One of my favorite sitcoms.
IMHO, House is annoying now. Hugh Laurie’s performance made it watchable, but how Cuddy was treated irked me even then — I’m not sure they could get away with it at all now. At least, I hope not.
(Turning him into a full blown domestic abuser is where I stopped watching. Even Hugh Laurie couldn’t redeem that.)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@lowtechcyclist: I watch behind the scenes stuff about Gilligan from time to time, and learned some interesting stuff. Including that the actors all thought it was crap and didn’t have a chance. But auditioning for the pilot got them a trip to Hawaii, so why not?
Also the actress who played Mrs. Howell was much older than Mr. Howell, but was a real trouper and kept up with everybody on the physical comedy.
Also that everybody hated and still hates Tina Louise (Ginger).
As stupid as it was, I loved that show.
CliosFanBoy
@Ken:
My wife and I enjoyed watching the early Charlie Chan movies. He was always the most intelligent person in the room, and the white characters treated him respectfully. If they didn’t, then they were soon shown to be fools. They were very popular in China because the hero was a Chinese man who was treated not just as an equal but as an expert who was respected by the white characters.
The Black comic relief characters, OTOH. OMG! They make “Song of the South” look like “Malcolm X.” the only redeeming value is watching Mantan Moreland and Ben Carter do their “indefinite talk” routine, in which they would speak to one another, start a sentence only to be interrupted by the other, yet they understand each other perfectly. You can see the routine in two Chan films, The Scarlet Clue and Dark Alibi. It’s marred by their “Negro Dialect” (ugh) but still clever and funny.
Splitting Image
@rosalind:
This is one of the reasons The Rockford Files maintains its audience. Jim doesn’t like guns and won’t carry one if he can avoid it. This makes him very different from most of the cop/detective shows before and since.
Speaking of which, Sledge Hammer! holds up really well. This is probably because the formula it was making fun of is still so popular.
Police Squad! (in color) is also still hilarious. Columbo holds up pretty well too.
delphinium
@Scout211: Groundhog Day is one of the better ones.
Steeplejack
The Rockford Files does hold up pretty well, especially in comparison to many of its contemporaries, e.g., Mannix, Cannon, Barnaby Jones. Ugh. The plots are better, and there was more effort put into fleshing out the supporting characters. Another one that holds up—and I found this a bit surprising—is Kojak. I think parts of it were shot on location in New York, or at least there was enough B-roll to give it a gritty urban feel. Telly Savalas turns in a somewhat subtle performance, and for some reason the show got A-list guest stars.
One that I’d love to see again, but I don’t think it’s available anywhere, is Harry O (1974-76), with David Janssen. I remember that one as being very nuanced for the time and genre.
CliosFanBoy
@lowtechcyclist:
Easily Mary Ann.
She was nicer than Ginger, probably prettier (IMHO), could bake like a champ, AND was smart.
lowtechcyclist
@Chris:
Yep, it’s still a great flick. Ditto The Maltese Falcon.
I’d learned that when a high school history teacher of mine snuck Duck Soup into the curriculum. Speaking of movies that hold up well.
Mike E
@Craig: WKRP was a masterclass in the genre. When it comes to online fans extolling the virtues of Bailey over Jennifer, these men (who else would it be) fantasize about her being “real” and “natural” and “down to earth” I have to laugh because it’s a fictional character that Jan Smithers played well (and Loni Anderson was such a genius on that show!) among a great cast.
Splitting Image
@Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGA):
House is probably the fourth-best TV series Laurie has worked on in his career. His work on Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster is magnificent, as is A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
CaseyL
“Firefly” does not hold up well for me, but that’s not its fault. I judge it, quite unfairly, on the mediocre big-screen movie that came out (and flopped), and on the fact that most of the guys I know who loved the show turned out to be gun-loving Glibertarians.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mike E: Tim Reid (Venus Flytrap) is a guy I always enjoyed watching, who popped up a few times in different places in my TV watching career, but never made it as big as I thought he deserved. Last time I saw him on TV was a short-lived show called Frank’s Place.
@Splitting Image: I’ve seen a couple of those Jeeves & Woosters. I thought it was interesting that they decided Laurie was the idiot Wooster but it works well. Still, I kind of idly thought it would be interesting to watch them swap roles and I’ll bet with two comic actors of their stature, it would work just as well.
Geoduck
@Scout211: Murray made one called Quick Change, mostly forgotten now, but I think it’s still pretty good. And the original Ghostbusters.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@lowtechcyclist:
I wonder if Ginger ever got off the island
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@delphinium:
I don’t like Groundhog Day, it’s too repetitive.
Steeplejack
@rosalind:
My covid confinement insomnia go-to became the “Mannix,” “Cannon,” “Barnaby Jones” block.
I came to think of that as my nightly Quinn Martin Theater experience. (He was the producer on at least two of them, I think. Announcer: “A Quinn Martin production.”) The best thing about them were the theme songs.
Craig
@FDRLincoln: both of those changed cinema in different ways. Alien, the idea that spacers were just truckers, not the best and the brightest of our society. Aliens, the concept of Space Marines sent in to kick ass on problems. Now every space movie is the children of those two.
lowtechcyclist
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
The TV series ends with the seven castaways still stranded on the island. (They probably didn’t know yet whether there would be another season.) I have no idea whether they ever did a special later on where they get rescued.
thruppence
I think I haven’t aged well. Even the good shows like Columbo I can’t rewatch because the themes and plot beats have been repeated so many times as to be unbearable. (Though Peter Falk in Wings of Desire is a delight) And that 66 Batmobile! I know it’s camp, cool prop, but does it never rain in Gotham City?
Craig
@Mike E: I remember realizing that Jennifer was actually the smartest person at the Studio and thinking that was cool. Kind of a revelation for a girl obsessed 10 year old.
lowtechcyclist
@Craig:
And all this science, I don’t understand
It’s just my job, five days a week, a rocket man
Not cinema, of course, but Elton John beat Alien by several years.
Steeplejack
@Scout211:
Lost in Translation holds up very well, but it’s not really a “Bill Murray movie.” Ditto for The Royal Tenenbaums. As for “Bill Murray movies,” I think (the original) Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day hold up well.
schrodingers_cat
If anyone wants to see a great work of fiction covering the Partition of British India. The miniseries Tamas (Darkness) based on the novel by the same name written by Bhisham Sahani is relevant as much as it was in the late 80s if not even more so. As BJP is playing with the same matches that ended in the partition of India.
It has a great ensemble cast and directed by Govind Nihalani, himself a child of refugees from what is now Pakistan.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
Mash the movie was very well done for the time it portrayed, the series was better because a lot of it gave more input/screen time of the nurses and at least some perspective from their side. Also, having been in the military (navy, not army) over 50 yrs ago, and when Mash the movie came out, I can say that a lot of the concept of the movie personalities was actually pretty accurate from a military perspective. That does not make it right from a human perspective, just realistic. IOW I am agreeing with your take.
I watched the movie in the theater of the navy base I was then assigned to when it came out and the lifers seemed to dislike it a fair amount. The young folks, such as myself liked it a lot. But then many lifers were complete and utter assholes. I think a lot of them stayed in the military because it is possible that a lot of them realized that in real life, even back that long ago, that what they wanted life to be like was really not living, it was domineering. It didn’t seem to work out well for a lot of them.
Comrade Scrutinizer
No love for Emergency?
wrog
I would say this is the one problem, actually. Rockford FIles did rather a lot of filling in missing plot with car-chase sequences. That Firebird should have gotten co-star billing.
Get in the car and drive. Oh no, someone is following me. So now, I will do this incredibly dangerous stunt that in real life would get me a felony reckless driving conviction if I were ever caught at it.
I guess we were used to seeing this in the 70s, but now it really seems to kill suspension of disbelief.
West of the Rockies
Sixteen Candles is super creepy and racist.
Karen S.
@Chris: I saw Casablanca in college several years ago. I liked it okay. Since I’m Black, though, I found the disappearance of Dooley Wilson about a third of the way through to be disappointing. He acquits himself well, but like a lot of Black performers back then, he’s just the entertainment. I think it was in college that I really started to become tired of rarely seeing anyone who looked like me or my family members, relatives and friends on the big or small screen as anything other than bit players. Or if they more to do, they tended to be terrible stereotypes or archetypes and lack depth. Things are a bit better now, but its wearying.
piratedan
I feel like Outer Limits and Twilight Zone for the most part have stood the test of time because the questions asked were moral and ethical issues (although Outer Limits suffered from a bit of the Monster of The Week issues).
X-Files still has its moments as well upon rewatch.
Craig
@Comrade Scrutinizer: oh Hell Yes! My friends and I played at repelling down bluffs near my folks house to ‘rescue’ people. I knew Roadhouse would be ‘good’ when I recognized Kevin Tighe.
Ken
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Or the “Ringer’s lactate, stat!” show, as it is sometimes known
billcinsd
I’m going with The Ellery Queen Mystery Series, The Snoop Sisters and Remember WENN as series that I think have aged well
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Craig: That show was the main reason my brother became a paramedic, then an ER nurse. When the inevitable burnout happened, he got his MSN and is now a nurse anesthetist.
West of the Rockies
@Steeplejack:
Okay, I’m going to get momentarily worked up about a 15 year old movie…
What does she whisper to him at the end of the movie? It seems like very, very lazy and precious writing to make the audience decide the film’s final words.
Ken
@wrog: Mission: Impossible was my pandemic watch, and it also often suffered from car-chase padding – or sometimes, watching one of Barney’s gadgets slowly crawl through a ventilation duct.
The annoying thing is, MeTV cuts the shows for time, and they never pick the obvious padding.
Juju
@Scout211: I have never seen that movie. I didn’t realize that was the plot. Holy cow that does not age well. Another example with a similar quality, though I guess most people would say it holds up well, is”Oklahoma”. Judd Frye is a stalker.
West of the Rockies
@Karen S.:
Doesn’t Rick (Bogart) leave him the bar?
matt
If you want to watch a classic movie whose values hold up today, In the Heat of the Night starring Sidney Poitier is pretty good.
FDRLincoln
The color Dragnet from the 60s is a real trip due to Jack Webb’s unique combination of blatant copaganda lies about LAPD, hippie-punching, detailed accurate police procedures, zero tolerance for drugs, zero tolerance for police corruption, sparse directing style, and a small cast of rotating guest actors. Some episodes actually have a progressive bent, others are fascist. Which is basically Jack Webb’s personality.
wrog
I remember liking Ironside as a kid (what Raymond Burr did after Perry Mason), but holy crap try watching those episodes now — even though I’m pretty sure RB was not a right-wing nutjob the way Jack Webb was —
and still, like, it seems like every other Criminal of the Week was, (OMG), AN ABORTIONIST!
(yes, this show was pre-Roe, and yes, it actually was places like California, NY, and Massachusetts, that had the most ridiculous laws with the fiercest opposition to overturning them, … and not The South, like you might have thought…)
Kristine
@CaseyL:
I recall we watched it every week when I was a kid. One thing I noticed decades ago while watching reruns…
…how the opening animation changed over the years. For the first year at least, West grabs the woman who iirc attempts to shoot him and kisses her. Some time later, that changed to him punching her and knocking her to the ground.
There was also the usual 60s casual sexism. But I did like Artemis Gordon.
apocalipstick
@wrog: I cut Rockford a little slack because Garner did a lot of his own driving.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@FDRLincoln: I felt like a lot of the criminals on Dragnet were running a lottery (a “numbers racket”) which was portrayed as A Terrible Thing. Just before a lot of states got into running numbers rackets, which was therefore no longer A Terrible Thing.
Gloria DryGarden
I don’t have a tv, and don’t like it much. I don’t have a streaming service like prime, or apple, or Netflix, either. It’s weird how addicted I’ve gotten now to movies and movie clips on YouTube, and Facebook, and kanopy, the free library streaming service.
I’ve caught bits of tv shows that come up in Facebook videos, or on YouTube. For awhile they were showing Younger, I think it was called, w Sutton xxx playing a 40 year old divorcee passing for 25. That was cool. we could say that Younger was aging well.
Lately clips from “the rookie” have been showing up. Fun. And Downton Abby, the series, was great; I got that from the library on dvd, ages ago, but I think it holds up well. Besides these, I’m really not up to date. I’d like to catch Benedict C in Sherlock.
There are some recent movies, heavily advertised by their trailers, clips, and actor interviews, that have caught my attention. And some actors I’m starting to watch bits of. One thing leads to another, and I try to widen my bandwidth. I’ve been obsessed for a bit, but I’m using it as an emotional excavation tool, to attend to some unfinished grief. It started with the Idea of You, starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas galitzine. I had never heard of Nicholas before, but he was astonishing in this movie, which is deeper than a rom com. Struck by his character in that movie, at first only from clips, I looked at some of his other recent movies. Holy cow! I think he’ll become as big a star as the beautiful brad Pitt, or Robert Redford, or Leonardo. He just goes deep into character, and portrays so much sensitivity, vulnerability, kindness, and presence. I do love character actors.
It’s not my normal, to go into this much admiration, so I’m just trying to use it, take the ride, since it’s opening more creativity in me, making me reach, and consider some risk- taking. I’m pretty happy to be getting poems, and attending to a story I parked 25+ years ago.
so then, to not go on and on too much, here are some movies with Nicholas, that show his range, or intrigue me: “red white and royal blue” movie, (clips only) and the book, both good. The idea of you, the book, deeper than the movie. Purple Hearts, not as great, but produced by singer songwriter Sophia Carson who I guess has sung at the Oscars. This guy has gone from one lead per year, to 3 per year, and he’s ramping up. There are several more movies, from earlier on, including a very sweet first movie, with Luke perry, in which Nicholas sings, and plays guitar, called the beat beneath my feet. Just an indie movie, but I can see Nicholas has some intriguing spark…even at 18.
so, I also came upon some great stuff Andrew Scott does. Clips from “fleabag”, where he’s the “hot priest” – interesting, funny, and quirky. And Shakespeare soliloquies. And “all of us strangers” a new movie, w Paul mescal, and Claire foy- these have just been 15 -20 min clips, and a 35 min one man play, SEA Wall. So I’m enjoying kind of actor “film festivals”.
because the new actor, Nicholas G, officially sings in 3 of his movies, and his co star sings in another one, I’ve been exploring bunches of pop music. YouTube gives me lots of similar artists. It’s different, for me. Billie eilish, Lana del Rey, bunch of young guys singing stuff. Alabama shakes. just widening out, surprised by songs I guess I had heard, here and there, and interesting flavors in the pop music genre.
When I can’t stand it, I go straight back to Mozart, and palestrina, Thomas Tallis, and Simon and Garfunkel, David parsons.
FDRLincoln
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: it is such a weird show. So much ridiculous hippie punching and pot-is-gateway-to-death stuff. But there are also anti-Nazi, anti-racist, and even an anti-militia-gun-nut episode. Webb was one weird dude.
NotMax
Curiously, Decoy has a foot in both camps, having both aged and not aged well.
Wikipedia:
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Anotherlurker: It’s said that “Barney Miller” is the only realistic cop show. My cop uncle loved it, as did all of his friends in the NYPD.
lurker
@lowtechcyclist: pretty sure there was a made for TV movie at some point where they got rescued, eventually did a reunion on a new boat and wound up on the same island all over again…
and then Gilligan became an R congressman from the midwest of course…(note – the actor, xxx, represented Indiana for a while)ETA: wrong – I was thinking of “Gopher” from Love Boat – Fred Grandy represented Iowa in congress for four two year terms
zhena gogolia
@FDRLincoln: It’s one of my favorites.
delphinium
@West of the Rockies:
Biden is too old?
FDRLincoln
My wife and I watched the early 60s police series The Naked City a few years ago. A mixed bag, but a lot of it held up, better than cop shows from the 70s.
Steeplejack
@West of the Rockies:
I don’t think they were trying to make the audience “figure out” the last words. The whole point, IMO, was that they were unknown, and you were left to make of that what you could. “Lost in translation,” so to speak.
Steeplejack
@Ken:
MeTV trims a lot of shows for time, and they almost always make dreadful choices. Ditto for insertion points for extra commercials.
FDRLincoln
Music-wise, I firmly believe Dark Side of the Moon will be listened to hundreds of years from now the way we still listen to Bach and Mozart now.
Gloria DryGarden
Rewrite, the very short answer
new movie, also the book The Idea Of You
book and movie Red White and Royal Blue
— Amazon prime
,movie All of us Strangers
actor Andrew Scott, probably anything
actor Nicholas Galitzine
— you tube
let me know if you liked or connect w any of these
Gloria DryGarden
@Steeplejack: classic, ghostbusters. “He slimed me”, favorite quote
Gloria DryGarden
@FDRLincoln: yes, I’m sure you’re right.
Chief Oshkosh
@Scout211:
Groundhog Day? Scrooged?
sab
@Chris: My husband and I love Banachek because it is so unbelievably horrible. We howl with laughter when he smuggly rows by in the opening credits, and we could always count on it get worse as the episode progressed.
Gloria DryGarden
@delphinium: next time I’ll bake you a cake, and we’ll hang out in the garden.. or perhaps something racier is said..
perhaps, when you get up, will you pour me a whiskey?
Tehanu
@Splitting Image:
I ran into David Rasche at a bookstore, must be 30 years ago now, & told him how much I loved Sledge Hammer, He was really nice.
Somebody mentioned Have Gun Will Travel. We watched several episodes recently and they hold up well, all things considered.
And the Ellery Queen series with Jim Hutton — I absolutely loved Jim Hutton! Haven’t seen it in eons though so I don’t know if it would still hold up.
JMG
Another one, hard to see now. “Secret Agent” starring Patrick McGoohan. Titled “Danger Man” in GB, but best known for Johnny Rivers theme song in USA. Solid James Bond knockoff, also featured a great many attractive young women (hey, I was 16, sue me!).
Poe Larity
There should be some mst3k treatment of Dragnet. Young people see it and laugh, and I’m like “this was your grandparents favorite show!”
@JMG: The Avengers!
kalakal
@Splitting Image: Fun fact.
Fry and Laurie have worked together since they were at university . Fry thinks Laurie is the smart one
Yes Minister/Prime Minister hold up well, hilariously funny, brilliant acting and writing. As do Fawlty Towers and Father Ted.
I made the mistake of watching a program I loved when I was about 10 called Randall & Hopkirk( deceased) detective comedy, one of the characters is a ghost only the other can see. Awful, I lasted 10 minutes
Anything with Cary Grant is still good
Gloria DryGarden
@Tehanu: you met the actor in a bookstore! Were you in his hometown? He was filming in your location? Do tell..
sab
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Aside from Perry Mason having a full on trial at the prelimimary hearing, I agree about Perry Mason aging well. I think a lot of it was having a woman executive producer, so sexism wasn’t much in evidence. Della and Perry had a perfectly normal friendly professional relationship like a real secretary with a real attorney. And that was true of most of the clients and witnesses in their various offices.
Geoduck
Re: Gilligan’s Island. Yes, they did a special eventually where the Castaways get rescued. Tina Louise either refused to do it or was booted, and was replaced. I’ve read that if the original show had gone another season, they might have written Ginger out by having her be rescued alone, because Louise was being such a pill.
Ironically, she has outlived all the other cast members.
NotMax
As a kidling, tuned in for I Married Joan and My Little Margie.
Neither. Holds Up.
On the other hand, The Jack Benny Program does still work. As does, mostly, Private Secretary.
princess leia
@West of the Rockies:
Oh, yes. Hard to watch in so many places. The Breakfast Club, though, I think holds up pretty well.
Gloria DryGarden
Snow pancakes, with sigourney weaver, and Alan rickman.
2 fabulous character actors. Mind blowing
moonstruck, a friend and I just were talking about how we liked it so much.
I really liked a star is born, w lady Gaga.
years ago, Kate Hudson and Joan cuszak ( incredible character acting as the older sister) Raising Helen. Kate ends up w her sister’s kids. It’s cute. But the sister, Joan C!
Chris
@Mike E:
It’s also The Fugitive.
Like all the best nostalgic products, it mixes and matches several of its influences while adding just enough new and modern to be its own distinct thing.
NotMax
Didn’t even hold up at the time: both Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific.
@kalakal
Aired in the U.S. as My Partner, the Ghost.
If one turns the flame under the brain to a low setting, the show has its own brand of cuteness.
Chris
@Splitting Image:
I feel like fiction used to be better about this in general. MacGyver is the ur-example, since that one just fully adopted RDA’s anti-gun politics. But the same was true of Columbo, where the hero rarely carried a gun and even more rarely used one (did he ever?) And The Equalizer, where unlike the modern revival, the hero was much more of a fixer and con artist than a killer. And Rockford, as you said, didn’t like guns.
Another thing I’ve had pointed out to me on this blog was that seventies and eighties crime shows especially were often a lot more ambiguous about their relations to the authorities. Which makes a lot of them refreshing to watch in an age when copaganda has turned into such a thing.
kalakal
A few films that hold up
The Blues Brothers
Local Hero ( and Bill Forsyths other films such as Gregory’s Girl)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
David Lean’s epics
2001, Dr Strangelove, Paths of Glory
Some like it hot
some that don’t
MASH, Ghostbusters
I’d like to see Hill Street Blues again, I loved that show, hope it’s still as good as I remember
FDRLincoln
The Bedford Incident, starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poirtier, is a Cold War flick that holds up.
Percysowner
Aged well, Babylon 5. It is as relevant, if not more so, today then when it was written.
Chris
@Ruckus:
M*A*S*H isn’t without its problems, but I really like it as a relic of the age when the military was a job, and it was okay to laugh at it, bitch about it, and shake your head at its various absurdities like you would any job.
The all volunteer force combined with the anti-anti-Vietnam-War backlash’s success have pretty much killed that – far fewer people have served, and most of pop culture is stone cold terrified of portraying the military in any way that may cause offense. In modern television, you’re not supposed to relate to the people in the military. You’re supposed to swoon at how much more awesome they are than you, and be grateful that you live in a world where such heroes protect your lazy unworthy civilian ass from all the monster at the gates.
Related to this: you almost never encounter military or ex-military main characters anymore who’re from non-combat roles. Heck, it’s hard enough to find characters from non-special-forces roles. It’s getting to the point where it feels like a breath of fresh air just to meet a character who says “oh yeah, I was regular infantry” as opposed to “oh yeah, I was a Navy SEAL.”
Eolirin
@Percysowner: It’s one of the very few TV shows from the 90s that did.
Chris
@Karen S.:
Agreed, and I’ll add one other thing in the same vein. The entire story about the importance of liberating Europe in general and France in particular, about people from different backgrounds coming together in universal brotherhood, about freedom and how important it is to fight for it? Is all happening within a French colony. People like Renault’s men are understandably pissed off at having their country overrun and occupied, but there’s nothing in the movie to remind you that the entire reason they’re in Casablanca in the first place is because they’re doing the same thing to another people. And these native people never appear except very occasionally as background scenery, and in the most stereotypical way possible (the street peddler trying to haggle with an uninterested customer is the only one I can think of).
Still a great movie in a lot of ways, but it definitely still has its… “blind spots,” shall we say.
zhena gogolia
@Poe Larity: My favorite Dragnet line by Jack Webb is, “You sat there dropping bennies and goofballs and chasing them down with cheap port wine!”
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: I recently tried to watch My Little Margie. 😂
Splitting Image
@Chris:
I seem to recall an episode where they made a plot point out of the fact that Columbo hasn’t even done the training he needs to carry one. Columbo gets a new boss who finds out that he hasn’t been doing his annual tests at the firing range and threatens to suspend him from homicide unless he takes it.
zhena gogolia
All Hitchcock movies always hold up.
KrackenJack
@JMG:
Anne Francis! Forbidden Planet! Creatures from the (Shakespearean) id!
Don’t know how well it aged. Aside from a central damsel in distress plot, I don’t recall anything else as problematic.
Chris
@CaseyL:
Meh. I appreciated the movie if nothing else for being one of the first pieces of pop fiction I ever saw that portrayed Confederates as the same kind of evil and totally killable scumbags that other movies had long portrayed Nazis, Communists, or terrorists as.
One of the worst things about the TV show is that not only does the Civil War legacy rarely appear, which is one thing, but when it does appear, it’s exactly as nauseatingly Lost Causey as most Westerns from the same era. Which somewhat tarnishes the premise where, for once, the heroes are explicitly Union veterans and special agents of Ulysses S. Grant, as opposed to the much more common ex-Confederates you usually see in the genre.
kalakal
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is still a lot of fun
sdhays
@Percysowner: Agreed. Awesome writing, amazing acting. Still relevant.
Geoduck
@Chris: There was one WWW episode where the villain (played by Ricardo Montalban of all people) was an ex-Confederate who plotted to go back in time and assassinate Grant, to change the course of the war.
prostratedragon
@matt: A lot of UK premium tv shows have fantastic, well thought-out music scores. These vignettes are from a period-influenced soundtrack for Mr. Selfridge, by Charlie Mole.
“The Lift Girls”
“The Dolly Sisters”
“No Place for You”
“Our Place”
randy khan
@FDRLincoln:
The bad episodes were pretty bad even then. I remember watching Trek in syndication and even to my pretty young eyes some of them were impressively awful.
Chris
@Geoduck:
Yeah, they had Confederate villains sometimes. It was very, very rare, and (including in that episode) they were generally treated with the usual “worthy adversary” cachet.
But elsewhere, it gets worse. One of the episodes had them fighting (what appears to be) a resurrected John Brown. There’s no note at all of the man and his group having any political leanings whatsoever. He’s simply understood to be a crazed homicidal bandit and killer.
A while after that, they have to investigate a “ghost rider” sighting near an old plantation. The ghost rider, as it turns out, is a hoax meant to expose the bad carpetbaggers who murdered the plantation owner and stole his land. And the person running the whole hoax to avenge the beloved plantation owner? Is his loyal former slave. (Yes, of course “ghost rider” means a rider in full Ku Klux Klan regalia).
… Yeah. They rarely go into Civil War and ajacent politics, but when they do, it’s not good. The best you can hope for is Confederates as generic Worthy Adversaires, like Ricardo Montalban. The worst is quite a bit worse than that.
dimmsdale
Nobody mentioned Cheers yet??? Maybe it’s too new to make the list? Absolutely holds up, and it’s a master class in comedy writing and acting. I recently re-watched the pilot of Maverick, the James Garner oater from the late 50s, and it was pretty wonderful, sort of a Jim Rockford in frock coat & stetson. (I think it got a bit stale after the first season or two, but if you look at it as part of the “Warner Brothers Western Franchise” from the late ’50s, which consisted of six or seven (?) nearly identical Western shows starring fairly interchangeable Hollywood glamor-guys, and make allowances accordingly, Maverick is just fine).
Route 66 was one of the series I HAD to see, no matter what, when it originally aired. Two young guys in a brand-new Corvette, blasting around the country, getting into scrapes, talk about food for the adolescent imagination. Seen today, I’d say they obviously didn’t always have 55 minutes of material to fill 55 minutes with, and there was a fair amount of slightly condescending “fine writin'” about man’s destiny and whatnot that grates somewhat (at least on me) today. The acting was terrific, though, and the series was shot entirely on location all around an America that barely exists any more (factories! Steel mills! Mines!) with some of the best featured actors of the day
One other favorite from that time that absolutely, positively holds up: Rocky & Bullwinkle! At the time, a slightly subversive sendup of Disney, superhero shows, and any other TV trope that took itself even slightly seriously.
Mel
“Mulberry” (one season, BBC 1992-93). I loved it then, and still do. It’s warm, bittersweet, sad, funny, and beautiful.
Splitting Image
@zhena gogolia:
The funny thing about Hitchcock’s movies is that while men can be threatened by a wide variety of dangers, women are nearly always put in danger by their husbands, lovers, or family members.
In the usual damsel-in-distress formula that other Hollywood movies used, a woman might be threatened by (depending on the genre) Indians, gangsters, African natives, government agents, giant apes, creatures from the Black Lagoon, Martians, or zombies, but she’ll always be protected by her love interest.
In real life, women are far more likely to be killed by their husbands, family members, and boyfriends than anybody else put together.
This is part of why Hitchcock’s movies hold up so much better than the others. Dial M for Murder is about a man trying to murder his wife. So is Suspicion. Strangers on a Train is about a man trying to murder his mother. When you strip all of the misdirection out of them, Vertigo is about a man murdering his wife and Psycho is about a man murdering his mother. Nothing much has changed here unfortunately, so all of these movies still hold up.
Funnily enough, Rebecca the book was about a man murdering his wife, but they stripped that out of the movie due to the Production Code. It would actually fit better in Hitchcock’s oeuvre if they had left it as is.
randy khan
@thruppence:
<s>You must have missed the episode with the Bat Rain Deflector.</s> (Or maybe I missed an episode and it actually did exist.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
We must have been the 12 or so people who watched that. Fantastic show, great writing.
stinger
@zhena gogolia:
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
There are some good moments in MTM season 1, but that’s another show that took a while to find its true comedic footing. Most of the hilarity is in the later seasons.
slybrarian
Babylon 5 has aged extremely well. Sure, the CGI is a bit rough, it’s got a lot of very 90s design vibes, and some of the characters stuff that was supposed to be funny back then is very much not anymore, but it predicted post-2001 politics extremely well and remains very relevant. And honestly, “the cop is a terrible sexist person” may not be funny but it’s also pretty accurate.
Craig
Cop Rock has aged well. It was insane when it came out and dinged Steven Botchco’s career. It’s still insane now. The opening court scene with the He’s Guilty Judge He’s Guilty gospel number is genius.
Trollhattan
Honey West had a pet ocelot. As one does.
Mingobat (f/k/a KareninGA)
@Splitting Image: House is probably the fourth-best TV series Laurie has worked on in his career. His work on Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster is magnificent, as is A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
No argument from me. I remember stumbling on House one night and it took me a couple of minutes to realize it was him. Loved A Bit of Fry and Laurie – I think I first found it on Bravo in the early 90s, before Bravo became trash.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
As shopworn as it is, still get a kick out of Gertrude Hoffman as Mrs. Odets. She’s a right scamp.
;)
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Rich and Strange, nope.
Rope, swing and a miss.
Frenzy and Family Plot, 50/50.
columbusqueen
@West of the Rockies: No, Rick sells the bar to his main competitor, but part of the deal is Sam keeps his job.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Chris: Lt. Frank Columbo did not carry a gun, in fact he would not even take the required gun proficiency exam; he would get a fellow officer to take the exam for him.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@kalakal: Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t hold up for me anymore. It’s too much of a hagiography. The most interesting character in the film is that of Dryden, the smooth, unscrupulous intelligence agent.
Mike E
@NotMax: I find Vertigo a humorless exercise in fetish and The Birds plays like a sick, unfunny practical joke… this is coming from a big Hitch stan btw.
scav
@Splitting Image: There’s also the little known Fortysomething where he’s with Benedict Cumberbatch and a bit of Peter Capaldi. So it may or may not be rock bottom.
Mike E
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Columbo’s weapon of choice was a bag lunch fixed by his wife
Death Panel Truck
@FDRLincoln: The black and white Dragnet episodes were more entertaining (Friday managed to crack a smile now and then), but the radio episodes from 1949-1955 are even better. At first Webb was loath to take the show to TV, as he thought radio was the perfect medium for crime dramas. The episodes used to be available for free at the Internet Archive; maybe they still are. Sound quality varies from episode to episode. Some are great, some are good and a few are unlistenable. No hippies to bash, but lots of Bill Parker-approved copaganda.
columbusqueen
Compared to all the other big sitcoms from the 90s, I think Frasier holds up wonderfully & remains the gold standard.
Also, 2 fun facts about Hugh Laurie:
1) He and Emma Thompson dated when they were both at Cambridge, & are still friends.
2) He was a champion rower at Cambridge heading for the 1980 Olympics trials when a case of mono derailed his plans. His father Ran Laurie was a rowing gold medalist at the ’48 London games, who was also a member of the British eight man boat at the ’36 Berlin games.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@NotMax: Is Torn Curtain any good?
NotMax
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
As always, YMMV. Not among his best, IMHO. Worth a look if in the mood for by the numbers film making by Hitch , though.
hoosierspud
My husband and I were watching “An American in Paris” and turned it off after a few minutes. What was considered to be romantic behavior at that time now comes across as creepy stalker stuff.
wjca
Definitely!
Llelldorin
@slybrarian: To my mind the best thing about Babylon 5 is that to a modern audience the fascist version of ISN reads as a “take that” to FOX News — which didn’t exist when Babylon 5 aired.
wjca
What’s impressive, in retrospect, is how often that hired gunslinger managed to deal with the problems without using his gun. Today’s enthusiasts for the wild west and it’s supposed gun culture, obviously are too young to have seen it.
wjca
And it’s hard to go wrong with James Garner.
EDT He (and Julie Andrews) were also great in Victor/Victoria.
lgerard
A small shout out to the first TV series to feature a female cop, Decoy, with the underappreciated Beverly Garland. It only lasted a single season and did not have the budget of Naked City, but had the same noirish New York City vibe. Worth tracking down.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@NotMax: You could you post a top five or ten Hitch list (in no particular order)
wjca
More precisely, Bernie Taupin (his lyricist) did.
Rudi666
Charlie Chan was portrayed by white actors, except for two Japanese actors.
https://hhjonline.com/how-many-chinese-actors-have-played-detective-charlie-chan/
NotMax
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Purely subjective. In historical sequence,
The Lodger
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The 39 Steps
The Lady Vanishes
Rebecca
Saboteur
Shadow of a Doubt
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
The Trouble with Harry
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Wrong Man
North By Northwest
Psycho
.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@NotMax: Pretty notorious list you have there, certainly not for the birds. But no need for anyone to cast suspicion or to go into a frenzy.
David_C
@Chris: Total agreement on Casablanca. Unlike Citizen Kane, it didn’t aspire to high art – just a nifty love story gone south, but redeemed at the end (which I don’t think the writers were sure of). The got Bogie and Ingrid, a bunch of contract players, and people with accents who happened to be refugees and poured their hearts into their parts.
Honey West was cancelled along with the other Friday night show, T.H.E. Cat, about a cat burglar gone good. The Avengers was even cooler and better. Prime has the series and the Honor Blackman episodes are cramped and too clever for their own good. Mrs. Peel was a step up.
Other show on Prime is Route 66, which has its moments, but a surprising amount of fisticuffs. They had a fascinating jazz episode with a lot of the aging greats like Coleman Hawkins. Like Twilight Zone, they drew from the stable of not-yet-famous guest stars. The location shots themselves are worth watching.
Still trying to catch up with more recent shows, like watching The Wire last year for the first time. Talk about aging well.
David_C
@hoosierspud: Maybe put on Gigi instead?
David_C
@Death Panel Truck: If you want a full dose of Webb, try his first show – Pat Novak, for Hire, which was almost comical in its noirish elements.
Falconer
The invaders…
I am surprised it hasn’t been remade…
The one thing that is truly when you look at it today is how white the crowds are in the street scenes.
Percysowner
@David_C:
Gigi is really creepy these days. \
Nelson
Made the mistake of watching an old Quincy episode the other day. Quincy and friends were all worked up about punk rock literally inciting our kids to kill one another.
SteverinoCT
When I was a lad in the 70s, I wandered through the living room where Dad was watching a show. The Good Guy confronted the Bad Guy, socked him in the jaw to knock him out, and immediately clutched his hand and continued on, bitching in pain. I was charmed, and hooked. The Rockford Files.
BillD
I would love to check out “What’s Alan Watching” again. Corin Nemic, Barbara Barrie, Fran Drescher, Shelley Berman, George Carlin and Eddie Murphy playing James Brown. It only aired once in 1989, but I bet it holds up.
Death Panel Truck
@David_C: “You know, the only time San Francisco really gets hot is when a tourist calls it Frisco, and then it gets warm enough to give a sleigh dog a Southern accent.” — Jack Webb in “Johnny Madero, Pier 23.”
Kinda hard to top that one.
Tamospam
@Chris: There was an episode where Columbo had to requalify for his gun accuracy. He was told several times that he couldn’t be a detective if he didn’t pass his test. He avoided taking the test during the whole episode. I can’t remember how he passed, but I remember shenanigans were involved. According to this episode, it is cannon that he is a horrible shot.