Search results

This year, I did something different. I watched one Christmas-themed sitcom episode for every year of the 1980s. 1980 WKRP in Cincinnati: “Bah Humbug” (12/20/1980, CBS) Baby, if you ever wondered why sitcom writers are so obsessed with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, start here. While...

From 1982 to 1985, NBC would play its network promo music over the credits. My CBS affiliate did the same with its local promo music often from the time it became a CBS affiliate in the mid-1980s until the early 1990s.

I actually had to review Santa Claus Conquers the Martians twice because Kino (not yet Kino Lorber) left about 10 minutes of the movie off the Blu-ray disc! Good going, now I'm haunted by memories of the theme song!

That's why The Disney Channel used a clip of it in their promo when they reran it in the 1990s. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't seem to have a copy uploaded, but I recall it from memory. Her family hated that book he wrote about the show, however.

Latest viewings: The Judy Garland Christmas Show (12/22/1963): Aired in glorious black-and-white on CBS a month after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, this must-see legendary special radiates class with a capital "C." Opening with "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which...

I finished getting through the Henson-era Muppet Christmas specials: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (12/3/1978) One of the best Christmas specials of the decade and one of the highlights of the show's first decade on the air, this one has three interlocking stories. After a credits sequence...

Since the 1980s seems to be getting a lot of attention (more than I expected), I took the liberty of watching some more shows from that decade: Punky Brewster "Yes Punky, There Is A Santa Claus" (S1E12/13, 12/16/1984) The first of three Christmas episodes, although it's counted as two for...

Well, yesterday I inaugurated my new 4K set up with the UHD disc of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The timeless special looks more colorful and sharper than ever. It even sounds better too, almost too good since you can see things like cel flares and film grain that were concealed by the lower...

I wouldn't imagine so. A glance at their episode list shows they didn't do a Hanukkah episode either.

That is in the book Annie: A Theater Memoir by the late Martin Charnin, which tracks the development of the show from inception to Broadway.

What's ironic about Annie going back to pre-WWII pop for inspiration is that composer Charles Strouse's early career did involve rock music — at least the way it was before The Beatles went to India — since in addition to Bye Bye Birdie, which is not so much a rock musical as a musical about it...

Married with Children did an episode where Al and Peg try to find something else to watch. Their Christmas episodes were usually pretty funny because they managed to cut through the sappiness and forced cheer of the worst episodes/specials. That particular one, "The Worst Noel," (S8E13...

I honestly thought that concept worked better when Family Ties did it in its second season ("A Keaton Christmas Carol", S2E9, 12/14/1983). Making Alex the proxy for Scrooge was the most obvious choice, but having a younger character standing in for a part usually played by older actors was at...