B E S T / /O F
Sit back and enjoy tales of television long ago -
this blog covers current and classic TV shows
and reviews of upcoming television programs
along with the latest TV on DVD releases!
NEW ZOO WHA...????
Thanks to Justin Kaplowitz for pointing this one out - remember the outtake of Freddy the Frog and Charley the Owl from The New Zoo Review having a sexual romp? If you don't here it is:
Think that's bad, look at a segment that actually aired. Ick!
Wednesday,
March 10, 2010 - 6:42am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND?
BEFORE LOST THERE WAS...
An
off-course airliner goes down on a mysterious island where
the survivors find themselves in eerie, bizarre surroundings.
Lost, right?
No my friend, it's The New People, a one-season wonder on ABC that aired from September 22, 1969 to January 12, 1970.
The similarities to Lost are numerous. As in Lost, the survivors find food and shelter - although of a more conventional nature here - and a cache of guns (what's a drama without guns?).
Just like in Lost, a character sabotages the only hope of rescue early on and the show sports a multi-cultural cast (a bit of a rarity at the time) rife with racial tensions.
Similar to Lost's John Locke, The New People had Mr. Hanacheck
(played by Richard Kiley), a know-it-all who becomes the de-facto leader
- except here he dies in the first episode leaving our college aged miscreants
to fend for themselves, Lord of the Flies style.
Here the comparisons pretty much end. On The New People the doomed airplane is filled with young people, mostly flower power hippies. After the crash, the castaways discover an entire city populated by department store dummies, a town fully outfitted with cars, food, drink and everything needed to sustain life. They've even got dune buggies to race. Turns out the town was set up in order to measure the effects of a nuclear explosion. Why the government needed to test the effects of a bomb blast on dune buggies was just one more unanswered mystery.
The series was developed for TV by Rod Serling and was an Danny Thomas / Aaron Spelling production although it appears Serling had little or nothing to do with the writing. Too bad, because the basic premise was a strong one.
The
New People was mostly an opportunity to play out societal tensions,
it's what was known as a 'relevant' drama at the time (see also Room 222 that year on ABC).
More than anything the production reinforced stereotypes of 1960's hippy dippy college kids as violent anarchists, reflecting the campus unrest going on over the Viet Nam war and TV's insatiable need to draw broad caricatures.
The
core cast included Tiffany Bolling, Zooey Hall, David Moses, Dennis Olivieri
and Peter Ratray. Guest stars over the series run included Susan Howard (Dallas),
Tyne Daly (Cagney & Lacey), Billy Dee Williams (Roots) and Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws).
Many of the young people in the cast were interchangeable with guest stars popping in each week to play various castaways that were never seen again.
Typical plots: one of the unmarried girls becomes pregnant with the island's first baby and is overcome with guilt; several people disappear so the hippies venture to the other side of the island to discover who else might be living on the island of Bomano. Come to think of it, weren't those plotlines on Lost?!?
The
format was somewhat unique, the show ran for 45-minutes. Although, with
fewer commercial breaks than we are used to today, the actual running
time was about what we're used to in a modern day hour-long drama.
The New People aired on Monday nights at 8:15 following another 45-minute show meant to appeal to young folks, Music Scene. Neither show caught on and both were gone by mid-season.
IN REAL PLAYER FORMAT:
Here's
a teaser for
upcoming episodes.
Tuesday,
March 9, 2010 - 11:45am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND?
THE GOLDBERGS ON DVD
I just got a look at Shout! Factory's The Ultimate Goldbergs, which is available exclusively at The Shout! Factory web site or at the UCLA Film & Television Archive - it won't be available in stores or on Amazon.
I've really been looking forward to this one - all known surviving episodes of The Goldbergs (71 in all) have been collected into a deluxe package that includes 12 radio episodes and a booklet with two fantastic essays relating to the importance of the show and writer/creator/ producer/star Gertrude Berg.
A massive hit on radio since 1921, Gertrude Berg enthusiastically embraced TV at a time when most radio stars were extremely reluctant to make the jump. As a result, in 1950 Gertrude Berg won the first ever Emmy for Best Actress in a TV Series for her portrayal of Molly Goldberg. Success and a long run were assured until the actor that played Molly's husband Jake (Philip Loeb) was named as a Communist during the McCarthy witch hunts of the fifties. Ratings quickly started to erode because of the bad publicity while Gertrude Berg, virtually the only woman with any power in show business at that time, stood by her co-star - and went down with him when CBS cancelled her now controversial show.
READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW HERE!
Monday,
March 8, 2010 - 8:20am
WOULD YOU
LIKE TO RESPOND?
TELEVISION BLOG
:The Best of TV Blog:
 |
This Television Blog is hosted by Billy Ingram, one of the nation's top Pop Culture Gurus and expert on classic TV. Seen on VH1, These TV Blog entries are from the TVparty! website. (I'm not normally this smug - this photo was shot for a film where I played a villain.) |
More Television Blog Highlights:
The Goldbergs on DVD / Star Trek Bloopers
/ Melvin Monster Comics
/ The Great Timmie Rogers/ Twin Cities Local TV Book
/ William Shatner Sings on Daytime TV in the 1970s /
Kids Are People Too
/ World's Finest Comics /
Actors in North Carolina / TV on DVD Reviews
Ordering TV shows on DVD
from the United Kingdom - Click Here!
| Latest
TV on DVD Reviews |
Classic TV / TV Blog / Television Blog / 2010 TV Shows / Classic Television / Television Shows / TV on DVD / TV Shows on DVD / TV shows on DVD - order from the United Kingdom Here! / Prime Time TV / Television Blog/ TV Show Reviews / TV Shows on DVD Reviews / TV DVD Reviews / DC Comics on DVD / Batman TV Show on DVD
PAST TV
BLOG
ENTRIES:
New Zoo Review - the Vulgar Outtake!
Is Lost a rip-off of The New People?
Afternoon Talk Shows of the 1970s
On Tour With Milton Berle, Donald O'Connor, Frank Fontaine and Georgie Jessel
Saturday Morning TV Commercials of the 70s
Martha Raye and Tallulah Bankhead
TV BLOGS:
