Top Ten #211

1) Larry Storch: We lost the veteran comic actor not too long ago, and he would have been 100 today. I also want to highlight this great scene that my dad somehow stumbled on one night. A drunken guy played by Storch "holding court" at a cocktail party and getting huge laughs...despite making little if any sense! if you are interested, check out the first few minutes below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYlBnS21KJA

2) Remington Steele: The 1980s NBC show is a surprise add for Prime Video this month.

3) Set This Town on Fire (1973): 50 years ago tonight, Chuck Connors starred in this NBC movie written by Roy Huggins. A man returns to town after being convicted of manslaughter, and the witness who helped put him away doubts his own testimony. Also in the cast: Carl Betz, Lynda Day George, and a young Charles Robinson.

4) Bob Eubanks: Happy birthday to the iconic broadcaster and game show host.

5) Benson: Prime Video added the whole run of the series this month. So, yes, you get the one where Benson and Kraus were forced to put aside their differences and work together!

6) O'Malley/Inspector Perez:  Returning to NBC, the network 40 years ago tonight offered a double shot of failed pilots featuring "ethnic" themes. Jose Perez is a homicide cop who moves from NY to SF and lives with his mom. 

O'Malley features Mickey Rooney, Anne Francis, Tom Waits (!), and Mark Linn-Baker. According to Lee Goldberg's great Unsold TV Pilots, Rooney's Mike O'Malley "is an eccentric New York City private eye who works out of the back room of a Soho gallery, drives a '59 Caddy convertible, wears Hawaiian shirts, and likes to listen to big band music. A TCM description calls him a forties-style detective working in the Eighties. Unsold? More like SOLD as far as I am concerned!

7) National Bubble Bath Day: Enjoy a nice relaxing stint in the tub today.

8) Charles Osgood: Happy 90th birthday to the CBS newsman. This is the "good" CBS news guy named Charles, so it's OK to celebrate.

9) College football: Georgia and TCU will decide the national championship on the field tomorrow night. Back in my day. you had a bunch of teams play not necessarily the best other teams, and you took a POLL! And we liked it! Well, not really.

10) R.I.P. Earl Boen: One of the great "That Guys":