At Last the 1948 Show (1967) Prior to 1967 it was a dark time. Comedy 
hadn’t yet been invented and the population was just starting to accept the world becoming colorized after thousands of years being a nice, calm, black and white.
Enter two scholars from Cambridge, John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Well, them and this other guy they dragged off the street by the name of Marty Feldman. And maybe a couple other people too. I mean, who really remembers 1967? Anyways, after a 19-year delay the long awaited At Last the 1948 Show finally hit the airwaves. People around the world were overjoyed.
Initially there were 13 shows aired in the UK, and technically it was 2 seasons, but much of it was lost (possibly due to an invasion of Norwegian Blue Parrots) and only a few of the missing episodes were able to be pieced together, probably by a mixture of magic and rifling through the cushions of innumerable British couches.
This series is a great look at the development of the folks that went on to become Monty Python and wonderful showcase of the great Marty Feldman’s talent.
And now for something completely different…
The Great American Dream Machine (PBS 1971-1973) The Great American 
Dream Machine showed up on PBS in the early 1970s. Hosted by Marshall Efron it was an interesting mix of skit comedy, musical performance, commentary, and even animation. It was described as “the intellectual Laugh-In” and included such contributors as Albert Brooks, Andy Rooney, and Chevy Chase (as one of the ‘singing faces’, notably) among others.
While technically it also lasted for two series, since it’s sporadic appearances on PBS the show has been repackaged with variable numbers of episodes, and several skits were adapted for the 1974 movie The Groove Tube, so I’m making a judgement call here.
This is an excellent window into the times and included performances and performance art that didn’t make it onto the networks and rarely even on PBS.
Ellery Queen (1975) If you liked reading the Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid then this is a must-see show for you. Jim Hutton (father of Timothy Hutton) played the titular character, the distracted son of Police Inspector Richard Queen, played by the great David Wayne.
Besides a light undertone of humor and a setting in the mid-1940s, the show engaged the audience by showing all the clues during the episode and, right before the final denouement, Ellery would break the 4th wall to “ask” the audience whether they had caught certain clues and had solved the mystery too. The addition of John Hillerman as Simon Brimmer, an egotistical radio play dramatist and sneering ‘rival’ to Ellery, adds another incentive for the audience to solve the mystery as well.
Charming and accessible, this is a fun watch.
~ Posted by Jay F.
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