Small-Screen 66 – #55: Legends of the Hidden Temple (Nickelodeon, 1993-95) It’s a theme that we’ve returned to time and again on this page: I never had cable as a child. “90s kids” apparently remember a lot of early-90s Nickelodeon shows with fondness, but for the most part I only began to play catch-up in…
Small-Screen 66 – #56: The Munsters [and The Addams Family] (CBS, 1964-66 / ABC, 1964-66) “Unlike life’s messy questions, the answers in trivia are always clear-cut…binary…you can’t be sure that you shouldn’t have accepted that job in Fresno, but you can be 100 percent sure that the Munsters lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.” – Ken Jennings…
Small-Screen 66 – #57: Lost in Space (CBS, 1965-68) You should probably just get used to these delays in between posts. But don’t think I’m slacking off! I’ve simply been devoting my time to thorough research…which, in this case, entails watching a lot of TV (both the show du jour and those further down the…
Small-Screen 66: #58 – It’s Academic (WRC-TV [NBC 4], 1961-Present) Don’t quote me on this, but today’s selection just might be the only local TV series on this list, as opposed to a nationwide network or cable program. It’s also the closest I’ve come to being on “real TV”…yet. For the full story, we’re going to need…
Small-Screen 66: #59: Arthur (PBS, 1996-Present) “Listen to your heart, listen to the beat, listen to the rhythm, the rhythm of the street.” I promise this will be the last PBS series for a good 15 posts or so. I’ve previously written about Arthur several times on this page, and each time I’m astounded anew by…
Small-Screen 66 – #60: Trailer Park Boys (Showcase, 2001-08, Netflix, 2014) So apparently there are trailer parks in Canada. Trailer Park Boys is a mockumentary-style comedy which grew out of a pair of independent films directed by Mike Clattenburg in the late 90s. Like the films, the series chronicles the exploits of Ricky and Julian, two…
Small-Screen 66 – #61: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX/FXX, 2005-Present) And now we leap from virtue to depravity. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows five friends who own and operate a rundown Irish pub in Philadelphia. Though I probably should have put quotation marks around “friends.” And “operate.” And maybe “pub.” Anytime we see “the…
Small-Screen 66 – #62: Adventures from the Book of Virtues (PBS, 1996-2000) I admit it. There’s a lot of PBS on this list. As I explained in the Creepy Classics Countdown last October, I never had cable as a child, so most of what I watched on TV up until about the age of 10…
Small-Screen 66 – #63: “The Joy of Painting” [and “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “How It’s Made”] (PBS, 1983-94) / (CBC/PBS, 1963-2001) / (Discovery Channel Canada, 2001-Present) Okay. This is definitely the most ungainly selection of the Countdown. Lumping three shows into one post may seem like cheating. Unlike Hercules and Xena, they aren’t “twin” series by…
Small-Screen 66 – #64: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (CBS, 1993-98) This may be a short post. I know those six words tend to sound the death knell of any chance at brevity here. But the fact is I have a bit less to say about this show than some of the others. If we do…