YouTube Spotlight: The Zoo Gang and ITV

On the most recent podcast, we broke down The Zoo Gang, and today we spotlight one of the clips in the episode's video playlist.

You may be asking why this is in the list, but it's just an attempt to get some of the flavor of ITV 1974 (when Zoo Gang premiered) into the mix. I do love this set of promos, though, because of the variety of the subject matter--Benny Hill, followed by a peppy advert for TV Times, the absolute classic Thames TV indent...The only thing that would make this better would be to see an actual glimpse of the sobering epic documentary that followed, The World at War.

Show Notes and Video Playlist: Episode 13-8: The Zoo Gang

*The Zoo Gang aired in 1974 for 6 episodes on ITV in the UK. 

*John Mills is not in The Love Boat episode that we talked about, but he was in Dr. Strange!

*Lili Palmer and Rex Harrison were married from 1943-1957. She is indeed in two episodes of The Love Boat! She's in an extended episode/two-parter from 1984, starring with Loretta Swit, Marc Singer, and Catherine Oxenberg.

*Barry Morse is not in The Love Boat, though an unasked-for AI prompt told me he was.

*Might as well play this out: Brian Keith was not on The Love Boat, but John Mills was in an episode with daughters Hayley and Juliet.

*Band on the Run came out in late 1973.

*Shout-out again to The McCartney Legacy, the multi-volume biography written by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair.

*The Zoo Gang novel by Paul Gallico appeared in bookstores in 1971.

*Speaking of that playlist, please enjoy our video playlist for this episode with promos, intros, commercials, and more! It also contains the full episode that we discuss on the podcast as well as a series of promos. Click below to go right to it, or you can always visit our official YouTube page for all of our past episodes and similar lists for each one of them!

Tomorrow on Battle of the Network Shows...

 

YouTube Spotlight:

We complement each week's episode with a YouTube playlist of related clips, and we like to highlight particularly interesting videos with their own post. This week, straight from the episode 5-3 Dr. Strange list, is something we mention during the pod: the theme song to the short-lived ITV UK series The Zoo Gang:





I have never seen an episode of this, and frankly I don't know if I want to, because how can it ever be as fabulous as this opening sequence?

And speaking of fab, that evocative song is the handiwork of  Paul and Linda McCartney!

The 1974 series, based on a Paul Gallico novel about a team of WWII resistance fighters who reunite in the 1970s to fight crime, lasted 6 episodes. It is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, but sadly, it's Region 2.  According to Wikipedia, the series aired as a "multi-evening event" (back then, I'm sure it was just "filling airtime in the summer" on NBC over 3 nights in July and August 1975.