Just because a show only lasts a single season is no reason to think it is a bad show. Yes, yes, I know, most WERE bad and were thankfully put out of our misery quickly, but some were tossed by the wayside merely due to the way the TV industry machine works. Here are a few of those gems in the library’s collection that you may want to take a look at.
Back in the 1970s NBC ran an anthology series that collected several shows under the banner of the NBC Mystery Movie. It included shows like Columbo and Banacek which were longer format shows (90-120 minutes each) that NBC didn’t think would stand on their own as a scheduled TV series. I loved the show and the intro was great; a dark storm-cloud laden sky, a shadowy figure approaching the camera with a flashlight, spooky-ish theremin music (by Henry Mancini, no less), and in the lens flares from the flashlight it’s revealed which series and which stars would be on the show that night. It fairly radiated “mystery”.
One of those shows was The Snoop Sisters. The sisters, Ernesta and Gwendolyn, were played by the incredible Helen Hayes and great Mildred Natwick respectively. Ernesta wrote mysteries and Gwendolyn transcribed them. Somehow, in each episode these prim and proper ladies stumbled into, and solved, a mystery that fueled their next novel.
Hayes and Natwick, like Ruth Gordon, play their characters like a grandma you wish you had; outwardly proper but slightly naughty for the best of reasons, and just looking like they have a candy dish of hard candies secreted somewhere and are about to offer you a piece. I would describe this series as delightful and just plain fun.
Mr & Mrs Murder is a crime-comedy show from Australia. Shaun Micallef and Kat Stewart star as Charlie and Nicole Buchanan, a husband and wife duo that runs a crime-scene cleaning business. During their clean-ups they tend to find clues the police missed or ignored and, due to an over-abundance of curiosity, look into things on their own.
The series is incredibly funny and the sharp writing and fast interchanges between the two main characters is very well done. Like The Snoop Sisters, this show is just great fun and light fare and gets you speculating right along with them.
I admit it, every time I think of Darren McGavin I picture Carl Kolchak; cheap suit and ratty “bird feeder” hat. McGavin was an accomplished actor from Spokane, WA and had a stellar career, but in my head, he’s Kolchak.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker follows Carl Kolchak, a reporter for Independent News Service (INS). Constantly harried by his editor-boss, the bumbling, hyper-active, and never-quite-on-time reporter covers the somewhat seedy and sensational news for the small wire service, which invariably leads to somewhat seedy and sensational stories that are too unbelievable to print.
Stumbling onto unusual news bits, Kolchak follows the crumbs into eventual confrontations with mythical monsters and other literary characters. Vampires? Yes. Werewolves? Yep. Ghosts? Of course. Lizard creatures? You bet! Even Angelique (Lara Parker), the witch from Dark Shadows makes an appearance as a witch, though disappointingly not named Angelique.
The series was spun out of a pair of well-received TV movies, but ultimately suffered from a Friday night time slot and a kind of ‘monster-of-the-week’ vibe that did it no favors. After McGavin bailed due to being overworked and uncredited for his (re)writing and production work, the show was cancelled. The series, rather than fade into obscurity, gained a bit of cult status – rightly so in my opinion – and subsequent showings (on different networks) cemented its place as a classic.
If you need something for that weekend binge-watch SPL has you covered with these three great options.
~Posted by Jay F.
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