corny but, yes, they truly don't make them like this any more

jarvis-33

i'm sitting at home in London, 3.00 in the afternoon watching an old episode of the first Star Trek series when i should be working.

the episode featured Sharon Acker as "Odona" and she was so striking i looked her up on IMDb and found that she was a regular in all those truly fantastic 60s and 70s shows - her career touched my formative years intimately: Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Wild Wild West, Love Boat, Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Rockford Files and of course, Alias Smith and Jones.

I hate to get sentimental, but suddenly the 60s and 70s seems like such a great time to have been growing up - particularly for me in San Francisco, just a little too young to be a hippy but old enough to find the whole thing hilarious.

I would be glued to every episode of Smith and Jones - why was it so good? Pete Duel's laconic, knowing character, Ben Murphy's more macho delivery. what a great piece of casting - there seemed to be a genuine bond between them that created a "buddiness" rarely seen on the screen. And there was a sensitivity and vulnerability to Pete Duel that seems even clearer given his suicide. Too far to call him a poor man's Steve McQueen? No, he was a rich man's Peter Deuel.

Then I see that Douglas Heyes, the writer, also wrote a load of episodes for Twilight Zone, Naked City and 77 Sunset Strip (now there was a series). There has to be a PhD thesis here - why were so many of the low-budget TV series of the 50s and 60s so cool, so well-written, so effective and compelling with no money, no special effects, no computer animation, no mega-stars. Oh, yeah, I see...

Pete, Ben, Sharon, Douglas - thankyou so very much.

score 10/10

jarvis-33 7 June 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1669590/