It's About Time.

Re: It's About Time.

Are you asking about the television show with the "It's about time, it's about space, about two strangers in the strangest place" (or something like that) theme song? If so, I don't know about it being released, but it is a fond memory from my childhood. I watched it and loved it many years ago. It had an odd premise, but then again, so did The Second Hundred Years.

Re: It's About Time.

Since it was a UA production, it's owned by Sony/MGM.

Re: It's About Time.

I doubt it will ever get an official release. I loved it and The Second Hundred Years.

Re: It's About Time.

If you want to see this show on dvd, you will first have to get past the Roman senators, past the armored knights, past the firing minutemen to this modern site.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28788149/

Actually, you have to get past Sony, and seeing as how bad their business has been lately we'll be lucky to get ANY tv shows from them in the near future. The article above reports that they are taking their first annual net loss for the past 14 years, and also this: "Trouble has been brewing at Sony for some time. In October, it lowered its forecast to a $1.7 billion profit, but it said conditions had worsened since then." Well, boo hoo. That's what they get for not releasing the Flying Nun season three on dvd!

Re: It's About Time.

so it looks like bootleg dvds for now. Oh well.

Re: It's About Time.

Oh, NO! Now I've got that song stuck in my head!

"It's about time, it's about space. About two men in the strangest place. It's about men, cavemen, too, about a time when the Earth was new..."

(That, of course, is the original theme. They changed the lyrics later in the first and only season when they brought the astronauts "back to the future" with their cavemen friends in tow. In elementary school we'd change the lyric to "It's about time, it's about space, It's about time to slap your face" before hitting somebody.

Pity there don't seem to be any plans to release the show. And put me down as another vote for The Second Hundred Years ("There was a midget in that box trying to shoot me!")

Regards,

Joe

Re: It's About Time.

I just had a good chuckle on the school lyrics. We used to sing "It's about time to slap your face" too. In fact I just sang it a couple of days ago!!

Re: It's About Time.

I thought it was BECAUSE they released seasons one and two?

Really, i joke.

I have only seen pictures of It's About Time, and of course i have the theme on one of those TV show theme CDs. I was born in 63, and to my knowledge this show has never seen the light of day, well, since back in the day.

Re: It's About Time.

Joe,

We did this too in elementary school, but made slightly different changes to the lyrics.

Re: It's About Time.

I can't muster up any sympathy for Sony (and anyone who knows me knows why), but let's remember that Sony only owns 20% of MGM, and their current home video deal is with Fox.

Re: It's About Time.

...and we all know how wonderful FOX is with older shows they don't own

Re: It's About Time.

Not to mention the shows they already own, as my signature reveals......

Re: It's About Time.

Yeh

Sorry to resurrect this thread with no news.

 

I only wanted to add my vote for this series. I used to watch this as a kid in the 80's. It ran on Qatari television and I even taped a few episodes. I may have to fire up the old Betamax and see about transfering these to DVD one of these days.

I recently came into posession of the Its About Time complete series.  I hadn't seen it since it originally aired when I was a kid, but I always remembered the show, mostly because of the catchy theme song.  If its any consolation, to my now adult eyes, the show wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it, and in fact it was almost unwatchable.  I really wanted to see it for nostalgia value, but honestly that's all its worth.  I wouldn't recommend spending money on this one.

When I get nostalgic over an old show, I'll hunt through YouTube for clips. The rosey-tinted specs usually get dashed to the floor. That has spared me from regretable purchases.

 

The It's About Time theme song was a real earworm, when I was a kid.

There are many shows from the sixties for which the catchy theme song is by far the best thing about them.  The Patty Duke Show and It's About Time are two examples.  Would Gilligan's Island still be popular today if it weren't for that opening theme?

And "Mister Ed" and "Green Acres."

 

I sat down to watch "It's About Time" the first night it was on, after watching CBS Sundays at 7:30 EST for years ("Dennis the Menace" and "My Favorite Martian" had preceded it in that time slot) and I thought it was probably the stupidest thing I had ever seen (and I was only 16).  It was due to shows like this that I began to lose interest in network television.

I have to stick up for Patty Duke and Gilligan's Island, here.  I thought Patty did a fine job in the dual role of the cousins, especially with all that annoying split-screen work. (OK, so I also had a crush on her. Who didn't?  )  And Gilligan got by mostly on the charm of its characters.  That was one of the problems with It's About Time.  While some of the performers were arguably better than those on other shows, the characters weren't as likeable and there wasn't the chemistry between the actors that lifted a Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, or I Dream of Jeannie above their goofy premises.  Beyond Imogene Coca and Joe E. Ross, I don't even remember who was in It's About Time.   I could name most of the regulars and many recurring guest stars from the other shows I mentioned.  (I thought William Schallert did an especially nice job as Patty's father/Cathy's uncle, now that I think about it.)

 

In the "theme song was better than the show" category, I'd nominate Gidget.  I "really liked" Sally Field a lot better in The Flying Nun (not to mention Smokey and the Bandit and Norma Rae) than in her first series, but the theme song was great.  Replace the name "Gidget" with something else and that pseudo-Nelson Riddle arrangement wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Sinatra album. 

 

Regards,

 

Joe

"The Patty Duke Show" and "Gilligan's Island" are two fine examples of the type of family-oriented non-offensive shows which dominated the airwaves in the sixties and I didn't mean to denigrate either of them.  However, it's hard to overpraise the impact that their tuneful theme songs had in their longevity.  F-Troop and The Beverly Hillbillies are other examples and Green Acres is the perfect one.  Green Acres is an unabashed classic, filled with zany, surreal humor that plays as well today as it did forty-five (!) years ago.  But that theme song sung by Eddie and Eva went a long, long way in keeping the show alive in people's memories.

 

And in the case of "It's About Time" I'd wager that NObody would remember the show at all today if it weren't for the wonderfully insidious "It's About Time, it's about space.  About two men in the strangest place..." against those cartoon titles that ingrained itself for life in the impressable minds of every ten-year-old in the U.S. at the time.

 

It's a lost art, really.  And a sad loss it is.

My sentiments pretty much mirror Joseph's.  I thought the first seasons of both Gilligan's Island and Patty Duke were actually pretty solid, all things considered.  Especially Patty Duke's series.  I think you hit on a huge part of the difference when you mentioned the interaction of the cast and the "likeability" of the characters.  I'm not trying to be a downer with It's About Time, but I have to admit that after seeing a couple of episodes again about a year ago it was horrible.  There's a reason some shows survive in syndication and others don't.  I think the reason is pretty obvious in the case of the three shows I've mentioned above.  Yes, they all had interesting and somewhat catchy theme songs, but the similarities end there.

 

Gary "I also like the theme song to Gidget and have to agree it was the best part of that series" O.

 

 

I have to dissent slightly, because I think it is easy to overpraise the theme songs.  Yes, they are one of the elements that people remember fondly, but the reason these shows lasted long enough to accumulate enough episodes to be viable for daily syndication in the first place is that they were good shows.  (Unlike It's About Time which flopped despite a format-ectomy 2/3rds of the way through its only season.)   The songs, which were all very good, were icing on the cake - or maybe the sizzle that accompanies the steak, rather than a reason the shows succeeded.  I don't think people came back to Gilligan's Island week after week during its initial run because they wanted to hear that song again. Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, after all, were similar shows to all of the ones discussed here, and also shows I watched with the whole family as a kid, and they had pleasant, but not great instrumental theme music.  They weren't iconic in the way the great TV songs or great TV themes are.  (I'm thinking the ones discussed in this thread plus things like Peter Gunn, Perry Mason and the soon-to-be-remade Hawaii 5-0.)

 

Hmmm...

 

Great idea for a new thread.  See you guys later...

 

 

Joe

I'm not saying a great theme song made these shows hits in their day or in syndication.  You're right -- if a show is lousy ("It's About Time") it's a lousy show and it's going to fail on the network and never reach syndication.  What I'm saying is that a catchy (or an insidious) theme song will make a show more *memorable* long after its initial run, whether that run was one season or twenty.  Nobody would remember "It's About Time" if it weren't for its theme song.  (Does anybody remember "Glynis"?)

 

"Gilligan's Island" didn't need its theme song to achieve TV immortality, but that song further ingrained "Gilligan's Island" into the popular culture to the point that even people who hated the show could sing that opening theme.

 

Another one-season flop with a catchy Vic Mizzy theme song "The Pruitts of Southampton."  -- ("The Pruitts of Southampton live like the richest folk.  But what those folk don't know is that the Pruitts are flat broke!")  The show probably hasn't met a TV antenna since 1968, but I'll bet there are more than a few boomers who can sing the opening credits.

 

And how about "The Addams Family" with that wonderful harpsichord (snap! snap!).  Neat!

True, a great theme song won't make a show a hit, but it can sure set the stage, especially if complemented with arresting visuals. Who can forget "Hawaii Five-O" and "Mary Tyler Moore" -- both edited by Reza Badiyi to that grab-you-by-the-shoulders music?

 

Other openings that set the stage: "The Fugitive," "Hill Street Blues," "St. Elsewhere." There are more, but you get the point. But they only set the stage. The writers, actors and directors have to make it worth your time to stay.

 

Finally, there is one theme that has caused more sleepless nights by not going away and running around in your brain. You can't shut it off. It's music's gift to sleeping pills.

 

"A horse is a horse,

Of course, of course . . ."

One thing I hadn't remembered about this show (since I was about 5 or 6 when it was on tv in first run), is how tied it was to Gilligan's Island.  Not only the Sherward Schwartz connection, but even much of the incidental music in the episodes was exactly the same as on Gilligan's Island.  However, in comparison, the writing and acting on Gilligan's Island was "Citizen Kane" compared to this show.  I actually really like Gilligan's Island and sometimes still enjoy watching it - I know a lot of episodes pretty much by heart and can even sing the "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" song straight through ... however, trust me ... It's About Time sucks.

 

Dan

Sherwood Schwartz shows were insipid and written for elementary school kids. So yes, I watched It's About Time and Gilligan's Island because I was the right age for them. By the time The Brady Bunch came on, I was 12 and a little too old for his brand of "humor", and I use that term loosely. He did have a knack for theme songs though. Another horrendously bad show with a great theme was Ugliest Girl in Town.

The right theme can sometimes be one of the most memorable and iconic parts of a show. I give you exhibit A, m'lard - a theme that's known for sending kids scurrying in terror from just the first note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKg9tuSbXmk