Revisiting my 2021 streaming "wishlist" for Black History Month

As we say goodbye to February (All together now: "Bye-bye, February!"), let's take a look at the list of 10 shows I suggested could appear on streaming video in February 2021--Black-themed shows of the BOTNS era to mark Black History Month. My original comments are below, sans the original embedded YT clips, with 2022 updated comments in bold: 

Soul Train: As much a fixture this show is in the national consciousness even today--witness BET's fictionalized portrayal of Don Cornelius and the show's place in society--it has never been available on streaming as far as I know. There are hundreds of hours of a fantastic time capsule just sitting in CBS Viacom's vaults, part of the vast library of music history MTV Networks' parent company bought to (presumably) keep away from potential competitors.

Unfortunately, if BET, which has a fictional series based on the original series, maintains the Soul Train Music Awards, and has its own streaming service that has plenty of room for archival content, isn't going to do anything with the show, we'll probably never see it except in clips and retrospectives. I guess the best we can hope for is that CBS continues to ignore uploads of the show to free video sharing platforms.

That's pretty much exactly what has happened. No progress that I know of on this despite continued strength as a nostalgic "brand."

Frank's Place: Hey, speaking of shows CBS Viacom owns but isn't doing anything with, consider Tim Reid's short-lived but critcally beloved 1980s dramedy. BET aired reruns years ago, but it is missing in action right now, with nary a hint of a DVD release. How about popping this one on BET+, especially if doing so avoids the thorny music clearance issues that may preclude a home video effort?

No word on this, and Paramount Plus, which in a better world would be a home for it, seems to think Black History Month is better celebrated with recent reality shows than with series that actually got critical acclaim.

The Flip Wilson Show: it received limited "best of" DVDs that are now long out of print, and the reruns are MIA on cable and GET-TV. It's time to bring it back in some form, preferably original hourlong cuts with music, but even the half-hour Best ofs are welcome.

A super-expensive best-of set is available from Time-Life, which may be a harbinger of the show turning up elsewhere or at least in less-super-expensive trimmed-down sets.

Julia and Room 222: I pair these two because Aspire had them at launch, and it's easy to understand why. The shows have a certain middlebrow patina of virtue, and if that sounds like a knock, hey, I especially love Room 222, and it irritates me that the network has dropped both shows (Julia turns up every now and then).  Julia is known more for being "groundbreaking" in its depiction of Diahann Carroll's titular young professional Black woman, but its gentle nature and charm make it an easy watch. As for Room 222, Shout's season 1 DVD flopped, perhaps because consumers rejected the non-"remastered" prints, but perhaps because quality shows without bug syndication presence just don't always sell.

The good news is more episodes are popping up on YouTube, but there's no indication of any other DVD releases nor Aspire showing them again. However, I could see Fox-owned Tubi pulling them out of the vaults someday and showing them. So it's a little more likely than it was last year at this time, I think.

Paris: This 1979-1980 CBS police drama has an impressive pedigree; created by Steven Bochco, it also gave James Earl Jones his first role as a fictional TV series regular.  It's not well regarded, but this description in Brooks and Marsh's The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows makes me want to see it even more:

What Paris lacked, unfortunately, was a little bit of believability. James Earl Jones, a highly respected actor, strutted through this role speaking in booming, stentorian tones as if it were Richard III.

Isn't that exactly what you want from James Earl Jones? This is an MTM show that should be accessible in the vaults somewhere.

No change here.

The New Odd Couple:  I can't make a strong case for this, but, come on, it's Basically I'm just a sucker for anything Odd Couple.

I still think the OC name makes it a possibility with all the obscure stuff coming to streaming, but as mentioned, Paramount seems to have no interest in doing anything with shows like this. Maybe it will license them out someday.

The Gary Coleman Show: We talked about the whole Gary Coleman phenomenon a bit on our Diff'rent Strokes episode, but as big as the child star was, not much apart from the sitcom is still around.  There are many TV movies still unavailable, and while Boomerang did show reruns of this cartoon series featuring Coleman as an angel (itself adapted from one of those movies, The Kid with the Broken Halo), it's not currently streaming anywhere.

No sign of this one.

I Am the Greatest: The Adventures of Muhammad Ali: Speaking of NBC cartoons, this 13-episode show was a flop, but it did feature the voice of Ali himself. In a time when a new book and/or HBO documentary about the boxing legend comes out every other month, to say nothing of the cult popularity of Mike Tyson Mysteries, it's surprising this isn't out there.  Maybe the ownership--it was produced by an independent company--are in dispute?

No change here, either, despite Ali still being a frequent topic of documentaries.

Get Christie Love!: The TV movie that spawned the series is in public domain, or must be because it was a staple of every dollar store's "media" section in the DVD era, but since some scattered cable runs, I have only seen a batch of episodes on Brown Sugar when it launched.  The show is a watered-down version of films like Cleopatra Jones, but...so what? 

Nothing happening here.

I also mentioned The Insiders, but that doesn't seem on the way anytime soon. Overall, not much happened with this list, but we did see an explosion in short-lived series hitting streaming, mainly on Crackle with the likes of One in a Million. Free streamers like Crackle and Tubi continue to surprise us with new titles each month, so maybe some of this will appear eventually. And maybe Paramount will finally do something with Soul Train. Flip Wilson's arrival on DVD isn't priced for value, but it's something.

Top Ten #166

1) One of the Boys: The noble YouTube uploader who gave us the 1982 Mickey Rooney/Dana Carvey/Nathan Lane sitcom a few weeks ago has been struck down by--corporate haters? Bots? The Scatman Crothers estate? Who knows? It may have been something else the account had posted that caused external forces to interrupt our critical reappraisal of the show.

All I know is life is a little less joyous without all of this:

2) ALF: Shout Factory announced it purchased worldwide multimedia rights to the character and the entire ALF-brary, hinting that it would eventually rectify the home media situation in which only syndicated edits exist on official DVD. One person said this was the event ALF fans had been waiting for. You know who's not thrilled by this news? Cats.

3) Stefanie Powers: ME-TV ran an article this week saying that the Eighties positioned her "as the most interesting woman in the world." Then it quoted a 1960s article and a few other sources talking about things she may or may not have actually done and failed to make much of a case for her ever being the most interesting woman in the world.

You be the judge by reading it here!

4) Jennifer Slept Here: Geno in our Facebook group reported an enjoyable and surprisingly meaningful through the short-lived sitcom, and I plan to take a look myself. I won't mention where to find the episodes, but let's just hope they don't end up like One of the Boysi.

5) Tom Snyder: Tom Who?, a documentary about the late-night icon, is now in production. Let's just hope they include that priceless footage of Jerome Smith!

6) Rascals and Robbers: On this night 40 years ago, CBS aired a TV movie about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn...with Anthony Michael Hall as Huck!

7) Freddy's Nightmares: Here's an interesting new streaming add, a combination of lesser-known show and lesser-known platform: Screambox now has the 1988-90 syndicated anthology.

8) Search: We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the TV movie that launched one of our favorite series this past week. Man, that's pretty wordy. Why can't I be as smooth as Hugh Lockwood?

9) International Polar Bear Day: What would YOU do for a Klondike? Would you wrestle a polar bear?

10) Anna Karen: R.I.P. to the On the Buses star.

RetroFan Magazine delivers (delivered) another fine issue

The latest issue of RetroFan came a little later than usual because of shipping delays, but I didn't mean to ignore it, lest you think the ish was a letdown. It was lighter on 70s/80s content than many others, but it still had a lot of great reading.

Andy Mangels has a spread of Christmas cards sent out by animation studios, and it's maybe the most BOTNS-era-ish piece in the mag. It was no less fun for hitting my household after the holidays. Well, maybe about 10% less festive, but no less fun.

Cover girl Barbara Eden's interview focuses more on Jeannie and less on Harper Valley PTA, but that's no surprise. The most surprising article for me is the interview with former child actor and cartoon voice actor Tommy Cook, who was one of the organizers of the Battle of the Century TV event waged between tennis pros Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. He dismisses talk Riggs threw the match, but he does say he took it lightly, and he also doesn't put King in a very positive light.

There is a look at Hanna-Barbera superhero toons of the Sixties, and the mag expands its horizons a bit with great stories on the old Monster Times publication, 8MM film collecting, and "how to draw" books. Overall, what it lacked (relatively) in 70s/80s content, #18 more than made up for with the eclectic nature of the subject matter. Once again, TwoMorrows' great magazine comes highly recommended. Check it out here if you can't find it in your local bookstore!

What We Saw: TLC (1984 NBC unsold pilot)

The Museum of Classic Chicago Television YouTube account continues to bring us fantastic rarities and interesting broadcasts, almost always with original commercials and presented as originally aired. One that struck my eye was the unsold pilot "TLC," a sitcom set at a nursing university in Philadelphia:

Jim Vallely and Jonathan Schmock went on to all sorts of things, including behind-the-camera work on Arrested Development and Real Time with Bill Maher, respectively, and were in other shows, but who else remembers them as one of the weirdest comedy teams of the 1980s, The Funny Boys?  After this effort failed, they joined the cast of another NBC show, Double Trouble, presumably to up the zany in that sitcom's second season.

Double Trouble, then in reruns of its first season, kicked off this August night, followed by repeats of Jennifer Slept Here (shout-out to our Facebook group) and The Facts of Life. Then St. Elsewhere followed this broadcast of TLC. 

CBS had an episode of newsmagazine The American Parade and a rebroadcast of movie Bare Essence, which had been picked up as a primetime soap and failed already on NBC.

If this sounds like NBC and CBS burning off programming, well, it is. Not only is it August, but ABC was showing the popular 1984 Summer Olympics from Los Angeles this week.

As for TLC, it's kind of an odd piece. Some of my thoughts:

*The fact that the Funny Boys are the first and only male enrollees isn't emphasized the way you'd think it is. You'd think they would really hammer that point home.

*That said, Mary Garripoli as the love-starved student fixated on Vallely's character ought to have given royalties to Wendie Jo Sperber from Bosom Buddies.

*Jessica Walter seems to be enjoying herself as the heel dean with a heart of gold. 

*It's funny to see Ritch Shydner cast as a musclehead!

*There are some moments that hint at something, but things seem to happen too quickly in this pilot, almost like we are seeing a drastic cutdown of a longer episode.

Thanks again to the Fuzzy Memories account for bringing such cool stuff on a regular basis!

Streaming Video Report Cards for 2021: Part 5

 It's time to finish off this sprawling series of posts! I'll be concise!

Peacock: B (Last year B+): Uh-oh, it's hard to be concise because this is one of the toughest to grade. It remains modest compared to some of the giants, yet it did a lot more adding than subtracting in 2021. Most of the classic content shows up on the free tier (Good Times is a notable exception), and I still find Peacock's ads to be the least obtrusive of the major commercial-supported streamers. 

There is so much missing from this service, which presumably has access to the Universal library, including many series that were pulled from the NBC app but have not made it over here yet. Where is The Equalizer? The Incredible Hulk? And of course I have been asking for Kojak and Quincy for a long time. However, Peacock added some of these types of series at the end of the year, like Miami Vice and Knight Rider, so it gets some credit for steady (if too slow) improvement.

Britbox: A (Last year: A): It didn't have quite as strong a year as it did in 2020, but it continued to add without subtracting much, bringing in the likes of Red Dwarf, Open All Hours, and Brideshead Revisited. All this and a relatively clean interface, no ads, and no constant changes to annoy its customers. I think it is running out of 70s and 80s content, but hopefully it has some things in mind for 2002.

Roku Channel: B- (Last year: B+): Yeah, there is a lot of stuff on here, but Roku made it harder to find what was new, it continued cycling content in and out without enough transparency, and it remained more a casual "let's see if we can find something" spot than the destination it could be. I do like Roku making an effort to get stuff from multiple sources, shows like A-Team and Starsky and Hutch and Magnum P.I., and they just added a watchlist-type function, but in 2021 I thought this one slipped a bit overall. However, it's still free, and it looks like Roku is continuing to try to improve and not giving up on older material. I just think this could be more.

YouTube: A+  (Last year: not ranked): The biggest treasure trove for lovers of our era of TV is still YouTube. It does have ads, material can be yanked at any moment, and a lot of uploaders deliver imperfect material like syndicated or sped-up versions of episodes. Worse, many distort the material, like messing with the aspect ratio. That said, there is tons of rare television here that you really will not find elsewhere, and it's all free. Sometimes you get what you pay for, but there is always something to see, and it's fun going down the various rabbit holes and finding out, "Hey, it's THIS!" I spent a lot more of my streaming time in 2021 trying to catch rare specials and programs before they are gone, and I expect that will continue in 2022.

It Was 50 Years Ago Today, Burgess Meredith Taught the Band to Play

50 years ago tonight, the TV movie Probe premiered on NBC. The movie led to the series Search, which we discussed back in this episode. The show has a soft spot in my heart (and Mike's, too, I'm sure) because I associate it with our deciding to do a podcast.

Burgess Meredith, Hugh O'Brien, and Elke Sommer were in the cast in the movie, which followed an episode of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. The story introduces us to World Securities Corp., a private security/investigations firm that uses all kinds of sweet technology in its work. When the series proper began on September 13, it changed its name to avoid conflict with a public broadcasting program.  It also began rotating O'Brien, Tony Franciosa, and Doug McClure as the leads.

I'm partial to the Hugh Lockwood episodes with O'Brian/ "The Murrow Disappearance," the premiere episode, is one of those and also the one we selected for the podcast, but the whole series is entertaining and recommended if you can find it. Warner Archive released it on DVD and streamed it on its Warner Archive Instant service. Probe is available as a separate DVD release.

It all started 50 years ago tonight, and though Search only lasted one season, it gave us a movie and almost a couple dozen fun hourlong installments. Today we salute the show, and the movie that launched it, once more!

Top Ten #165

1) President's Day Weekend: Let's honor the man who led all 3 major networks at various times: BOTNS favorite Fred Silverman.

2) The Honeymooners Valentine Special: I celebrated the holiday with this 1978 comedy special. Yes, everyone is older and a little slower, but it's still the 'Mooners. Plus, unlike the Color Honeymooners of the Sixties, Audrey Meadows is onboard. The 1970s specials have an appeal the 1960s episodes don't quite offer, at least in my book.

3) Code Red: Crackle continues to run away with the streaming wars. Its latest addition is this 1981 Irwin Allen firehouse drama starring Adam Rich and Lorne Greene. Greene is a station chief who, I assume, puts out fires started by Rich.

4) Marla Gibbs: Gibbs is featured in an extensive Hollywood Reporter profile/interview. Read it, or she'll threaten to quit. Or at least sass you.

5) One of the Boys: After we talked about the show here on the site, a YouTube account posted many of the episodes. I'm not saying there is any correlation, of course. Just in case, anyone have Aloha Paradise?

6) Sandy Duncan: Happy birthday to someone so upbeat and positive, even Valerie Harper must have sent her a card each year.

7) Rhoda: Decades has a marathon of the show this weekend. It goes right up to the point when Sandy Sandy Duncan took over and it became Rhoda's Family.

8) The Adventures of Nick Carter: Debuting 50 years ago tonight on ABC, this 1972 TV pilot movie stars Robert Conrad, Broderick Crawford, and Shelley Winters set in 1912 New York City!

9) National Love Your Pet Day: Why not show your pet your love by serving some Alpo? Here's Chief Lorne Greene to explain:

10) How the West Was Won: Tubi TV recently added this 1970s series. Didn't Thomas Jefferson win it in a crooked card game?