"Previously On..."

A recurring look at recent TV I've watched, notable industry news, items from my archive & their significance, and the history of TV programming as told through the pages of TV Guide.

Alien: Earth (FX): I am not a big fan of the Alien franchise at large although I enjoyed the first and second films when I originally saw them. Still, any premium scripted series on basic cable these days is an event because there are so few of them so I tried this new series from Noah Hawley whom I like from Fargo. However, I was quite bored and didn’t make it past 30 minutes. My issue was that the central plot, as far as I could tell, revolves around one of the most overused TV tropes today: young people who somehow get super powers.

Love Is Blind UK (Netflix). I am a sucker for unscripted dating shows and enjoy almost all incarnations of Love Is Blind which are now coming from all over the world, although I cannot remember anything that happened after the season ends.

This is S2 of UK and I am enjoying it just as much as any LIB season so far - which makes for good Summer viewing. However there are overused elements in this show which are really grating because of how often they appear. The ones that bug me the most are:

• The overuse of the phrase “Let’s Go” by the contestants.

• When the men say “Good Luck boys” before heading into the pods

• The fist bumps.

• The way contestants smile while walking down the hallway when the camera is focused on them while trying to pretend they don’t know they are on camera. Or even worse, when they make goofy hand gestures while acknowledging the camera.

• Calling the whole experiment “crazy” over and over again

• The chyron that tells us we are in the Men’s or Women’s Living Quarters. Hey Netflix - we can identify that ourselves!

The Yogurt Shop Murders (HBO): I vividly remember where I was when I first read about this 1991 tragedy. Back then I was a senior in college and my main source of news was USA Today and the article below appeared in the Tuesday edition after the murders, which occurred on a Friday. I have not really thought about the case since then, although I know it remains unsolved, so I was intrigued to watch this four-episode series. I have only seen E1 so far but thought it did a really good job setting up the horror of this mass murder. I hope that by the end there is some optimism the case will eventually be solved.

Martin Landau’s Mission Impossible Contract and Emmy Noms: Mission Impossible was a signature show for CBS in the 1960s and, of course, has become an incredibly lucrative franchise for Paramount which owns the rights.

While the original series was more about the plot than the characters, the performances of married co-stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were undoubtedly a key driver of its success in the early seasons. They both left at the end of S3 but here is the official document locking in Landau for that third and final season - and amazingly it’s just on one page. It is essentially an addendum to an overall development deal that CBS had with Landau. It is hard to imagine today that a lead in a series as buzzy as M:I would renew his/her contract on a single piece of paper

The signature has faded over time but is still legible.

Landau was nominated for an Emmy for each season of M:I and I own his nomination plaques for S1 and S2, shown below, along with the letter officially informing him about the S1 nomination.

1981/82 was a relatively inauspicious season of television with no true landmark shows premiering, mostly forgettable duds. There is still a lot to learn from inside these pages but its not a primer for the best of 1980’s TV.

Here are the new show premieres worthy of calling out — left-to-right, top-to-bottom for the images below.

• Falcon Crest was arguably the most successful new show of the season. The Primetime soap opera had no brighter decade than the 1980s and Falcon Crest created a trifecta of hits for CBS alongside Dallas and Knots Landing although it had the shortest run at nine seasons. That ninth season BTW is horrendous compared to S1-S8. A show that had sumptuous production values turned into cheap, 90s first-run syndication . Check out the S9 opening under the photos to see for yourself. S1 ranked 14th for the season, aided by the Dallas lead-in which was the #1 show this year.

• The Devlin Connection was a decent light mystery show on NBC marking Rock Hudson’s second series after McMillan & Wife but it never actually aired this season despite the Fall Preview positioning. Hudson had quintuple heart bypass surgery early in production and the show was pushed into 1982/83 where it lasted only 13 episodes and ranked 96th out of 99 shows that year. His co-star was Jack Scalia who had a lot of one-season series in the 1980s and 1990s but never become the lead actor that the networks envisioned.

• Gimme A Break lasted six seasons and is remembered for its catchy theme song and very “sitcom-y” writing but that’s about it. Unfortunately it is one of the few TV series to lose a lead while in production as Dolph Sweet who played the Chief died of stomach cancer in May 1985, at the end of S4. The show ranked 47th for its first season.

• The Fall Guy is a good example of a show that lasted five years but was ultimately forgettable even if it inspired a mildly successful theatrical movie last year. What I always found ironic is that the stunts done for the show - vehicular or fights - often appeared quite amateurish, with really bad green screen. How can I watch a show about stuntmen when the stunts in the show are dull? Yet the audience enjoyed it, ranking #27 in its first season.

• Simon and Simon did not start out so hot, ranking 70th in its first year on Wednesdays, but rocketed to 7th place the next year when paired with Magnum PI on Thursdays.

• The last panel featuring Today’s FBI and The Powers Of Matthew Star really doesn’t have much to do with TV history but for this 11-year old TV watcher in 1981 they were two of the new shows I looked forward to the most. Both lasted only one season and in rewatching them recently they hold up just OK.

Industry News Of The Day:

1. For those of us who grew up in the 1980s Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs were the faces and voices of 20/20 but the show debuted in 1978 without either of them. The first item in this article from the Fall Preview marks the official announcement that they would become co-hosts when the show returned in a few weeks for the new season.

2. The second item asserts that NBC was exploring national overnight programming — 2a-6am using owned, library entertainment content. This never happened although some overnight programming, primarily news shows, has aired over the years. We might find the networks contemplating this scenario again as more Late Night shows fade away - which they eventually will.

3. Given all of the lawsuits of the last 12 months in 2024-2024 involving media - from South Park to 60 Minutes to AI to The Pitt - it’s important to remember that the business of television has always been awash in legal accusations. In the Los Angeles section at the bottom of page one and on page two we see two such cases. One involves actor William Smithers who said that he was not billed as the star of a series as he was supposed to be. The other concerns the creators of Charlie’s Angels settling for a $1M payout for profits from the show.

4. The last note in the bottom section is about the fate of Fred Silverman, once the darling of Broadcast scheduling but now forced out at NBC. There was speculation that he would start a production company which he did and it eventually begat multiple hits in the “mature crime-fighter” genre such as the Perry Mason TV-movies, Matlock, In The Heat Of The Night, Father Dowling and Diagnosis Murder

Here is an ad for the S2 premiere of Fridays, ABC’s SNL clone. What stands out is that seven of the cast members are completely unknown today while two are recognized globally.

These were the top two telecasts of the week with a 22.3 HH rating each.

As noted in prior installments of “Previously On” recent/current networks series often aired on Broadcast daytime in the 1970s and 1980s. This time it’s The Love Boat. However these are not “All New” episodes- just your typical repeat.