If you experience déjà vu while reading this, it’s because the Wednesday schedule for NBC was erroneously posted in my previous piece about Tuesday nights in 1972. That piece has since been corrected. So let’s start with an encore presentation of that NBC schedule, as my quest to watch at least one episode of every ‘70s prime time series continues.
NBC
Adam-12
The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie (Banacek, Madigan, Cool Million)
Search
It was season five for Adam-12, still on patrol and pulling enough audience to stay in the top 30.
After that, NBC presented another
rotating series of mystery stories, of which
Banacek was the marquee attraction. It was always a treat watching the
laid-back (bordering on arrogant) insurance investigator Thomas Banacek (George
Peppard) solve a seemingly impossible locked room mystery.
Madigan, by contrast, never clicked with me, which is a surprise because star Richard Widmark was usually one of the most charismatic presences in any project. But he never seemed all that engaged here as a world-weary NYPD detective, and he wasn’t served well by predictable storylines. I liked Cool Million more, with James Farentino as private eye Jefferson Keyes. He had an elite clientele, as those were the only folks in a tax bracket that could afford his rate of $1 million per case. But if he didn’t solve it, the client paid nothing.
I’ve never seen an episode of Search, and that’s my own fault because it has been released on DVD. It looks like a series I would enjoy – a team of experts investigate dangerous situations a la Mission: Impossible, but here they rely more on advanced technology than ingenious strategies.
When I get around to it, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, on the list it goes.
CBS
The Carol Burnett Show
Medical Center
Cannon
If you’re like me you’re still surprised to see Carol Burnett on any night other than Saturday, when her variety series anchored one of the most storied prime time lineups of the decade, if not of all time. But it was already pulling top 20 ratings here, as was Medical Center. This was season two for Cannon, which moved to Wednesdays from Tuesdays.
ABC
The Paul Lynde Show
Wednesday Movie of the Week
The Julie Andrews Hour
In the opening credits sequence of Paul Lynde’s short-lived sitcom, he loses all his paperwork when his briefcase flies open, slips on wet pavement, trips over a hose and falls into a pool. None of this is funny, or the kind of schtick audiences expected from an actor whose comic gifts were verbal, not physical.
Lynde plays Paul Simms, an attorney who doesn’t spend much time in court, and a family man who doesn’t seem to care much for his family. You can make a protagonist this misanthropic work with good material, but there wasn't much of that here. Still, there are always a few laughs in the episodes I’ve seen, because it’s almost impossible to make Paul Lynde not funny. There just aren’t enough of them to qualify the series as anything other than an interesting failure.
My parents were great fans of Julie Andrews (weren’t everybody’s?) so I do have a memory of my very small self watching her variety show with them. In retrospect I’m surprised it did not last beyond one season, as it was certainly among the classiest examples of its genre. Who wouldn’t want to spend an hour a week with Julie, especially when she was welcoming such A-list guest starts as Jimmy Stewart and Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peggy Lee?
Seven Emmy wins and ten nominations were not enough to bring it back, and while you can buy DVDs of the Captain and Tennille variety series, this one remains frustratingly out of circulation (at least from official channels). Thankfully, YouTube offers a few clips of the amazing moments that are still locked in some network vault.
It would be just a few more years before ABC would shake its perennial third-place status among the three national networks, and maybe that played into its lack of viewer support. Otherwise how could this series not have held its own against Search and Cannon, neither of which ranked among the season’s top 30 shows? It’s a mystery even the Search team might struggle to solve.
Shows Missed:
The Don Knotts Show (1970)
San Francisco International Airport (1970)
Nancy (1970)
The Headmaster (1970)
The Man and the City (1971)
The Chicago Teddy Bears (1971)
Search (1972)
Boy does this bring back happy flashbacks; my older brother Duke and myself were in Boy Scouts and our meets for Wednesday nights after school. We lived on a farm, so my dad would drop us off in town. After our meet, we headed to Waynesburg restaurant for dinner where our grandma was a baker. Then we would head to her apartment down the street where we watched the NBC lineup from 8:00 to 10:30 or so. Strangely if we didn't have Scouts that night, then we always watched Canon and Medical Center on CBS with our parents. I can't believe I never saw the Julie Andrews show! Damn!
ReplyDeleteThose sound like wonderful memories. Though you must share in the blame for Julie getting the axe. :)
DeleteRE: The Paul Lynde Show --I've had the episode "Pollution Solution" on my DVR for five years (back when Antenna TV paired it with Lotsa Luck) strictly because of guest actor Ronda Copland. If you've seen the episode, you can probably guess why. Pity she didn't have a more substantial career. Also, I think the series was funny enough to deserve a second season. I think the main faults of the program is its tendency toward shrillness and trying to hard to appear relevant and "with it".
ReplyDeleteThat may have had something to do with it. It might also have been successful had it come along later, when shows about parents who didn't seem to care much for their kids were more common.
DeleteStrangely enough, THE PAUL LYNDE SHOW was already in pilot form 10 years earlier, when it was called "Howie" based on the son-in-law character played by Will Hutchins. Hutchins was only 4 years younger than Lynde, who played his father-in-law.
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