# Your TV "holy grails" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 18, 2012, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099 "2012-03-18T01:41:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/1 "2012-03-18T01:41:06Z")
Everyone has a TV memory that they either saw years ago or heard discussed that probably will never be seen again. YouTube and other video outlets have helped find a lot of these “holy grails”, but many remain. Mine is actually a show I’ve never seen, the one episode wonder from 1969 [Turn On](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-On). It was a show so controversial that some West Coast stations refused to air it due to bad feedback back East, and half the network affiliates cancelled it the next day! It would undoubtedly be tame by today’s standards, but I still want to see what the fuss was about. What’s yours? ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/2 "2012-03-18T02:06:43Z")
[How I Spent My Summer Vacation](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061788/). A young Robert Wagner matches wits with his girlfriend’s father (Peter Lawford). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/3 "2012-03-18T02:07:47Z")
That’s [Turn-on] a good one. Everybody talks about it but I wonder if anyone bothered to save it. [Yes, on checking at IMDb, [the Museum of Radio and Television](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063960/reviews) has the first two episodes.] Similarly, there was the 1977 reboot of [Laugh-In](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078641/) that lasted a month. But the one I actually saw that I’ve never seen again - and I’m pretty sure has never been on video or DVD or ever rerun on TV - is the 1979 tv movie pilot for a [Nero Wolfe](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076447/) series. It starred Thayer David as the best Wolfe ever. He died shortly after filming and they burned off the movie and buried it after a single showing. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/4 "2012-03-18T02:16:07Z")
This won’t mean anything to non-Southern Californians. About twenty years ago, on the KTLA Morning News, Mark Kriski did a live in-studio interview with Debbie Fields, who was (is?) the actual flesh and blood “Mrs. Fields” behind the cookies that bear her name. A table was already prepared with ingredients, utensils, and a blender, and she was going to talk Mark through the process of preparing a batch of cookie dough. First the cookie dough and so on went in to the blender, and then she told Mark that the next ingredient was a bar of butter. Before she could explain that he needed to slice up the butter (or melt it, I don’t remember), he impulsively put the entire solid bar of butter into the blender and turned it on. Although the result wasn’t catastrophic, it was hilariously wrong, and Ms. Fields fell into the worst (or best) fit of on-camera uncontrollable giggling I’ve ever seen. Mark, who was the show’s funniest anchor, ran with it, and the next several minutes were some of the funniest I’ve ever seen on TV. I would give anything to see that entire sequence again. . ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/5 "2012-03-18T02:26:26Z")
All of mine, in the age of YouTube, would be my Dad and me appearing on Kansas City UHF TV - “41 Treehouse Lane”, “The Mother Nature Show”, etc. He was a magician and puppeteer and I was a ventriloquist. Nobody would have bother to record or save it and home recorders didn’t exist in the late 1960s. ---
**Author:** ![Mixolydian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Mixolydian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mixolydian)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/6 "2012-03-18T02:29:48Z")
Mine was [Colonel Bleep](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_eNVLx-YFg). Before the interwebs, I had asked a childhood friend to look up the name of the show in old TV Guide he found because neither of us could remember what it was called, as we were probably 5 or so when it stopped being broadcast in the NY area. It was the first show on every Saturday morning - I do remember waking up at dark o’ clock, turning the TV to the proper station and watching the onscreen snow/static until the broadcast day began. First came the Star Spangled Banner, and then the countdown. Because of the impressionability of a 5 year old mind, it remained “the coolest show ever that I never got to see again” for decades. True, it doesn’t hold the same mystique now that I’ve gotten to view episodes recently, but given its historical importance (first televised color cartoon), it will always hold a special place in my heart. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/7 "2012-03-18T02:34:53Z")
My niece by marriage won the dance contest on Wonderama in the early 70’s. She won a bike. It’s one of the stories told at my husband’s family gatherings. I’d sure like to see that. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/8 "2012-03-18T02:38:18Z")
I’d like to see **That Was The Week That Was**. I have a CD of some highlights, and watched a couple episodes and the Museum of Television and Radio several years ago. Someone said _Turn On_ would be tame by today’s standards. TW3 was vicious. Check out [this clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NtmGlvHbqA) for an example. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/9 "2012-03-18T02:40:02Z")
> [@Biggirl](#): > > My niece by marriage won the dance contest on Wonderama in the early 70’s. She won a bike. It’s one of the stories told at my husband’s family gatherings. I’d sure like to see that. YouTube has a bunch of Wonderama videos. [http://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=wonderama&oq=wonderama&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs\_sm=3&gs\_upl=8316l13064l0l13254l17l13l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wonderama&oq=wonderama&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=8316l13064l0l13254l17l13l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0) The odds are probably against it, but maybe she’s in one of them. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/10 "2012-03-18T02:41:37Z")
Mine is a Japanese monster movie I saw as a kid and can only just barely remember. The aliens were sort of like squids that stood up, and they came in a spaceship. It scared the bejeebers out of me. Also a couple of other scary movies I saw as a kid–one where the killer terrorized two kids in a car–I think they died of fright or something. And another one where the monstery thing peeked up out of a sewer. It was all about the same time that I saw that movie where rats overrun the city and eat everyone. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/11 "2012-03-18T02:50:13Z")
Straight to the gutter for mine, but I remember as a lad watching a local TV show that used Charades as the hook. This was the late 60s, so the women guests were in miniskirts, and [Deanna Lund](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deanna_Lund) (of _Land of the Giants_ “fame”) did some action that had her flopping on the floor and showing exactly what color and style her panties were. Made quite the impression on pubescent little me, it did. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/12 "2012-03-18T02:58:53Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I’d like to see **That Was The Week That Was**. I have a CD of some highlights, and watched a couple episodes and the Museum of Television and Radio several years ago. > > Someone said _Turn On_ would be tame by today’s standards. TW3 was vicious. Check out [this clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NtmGlvHbqA) for an example. Damn! Do you know if that was from the BBC version or the NBC version? The accents are American, but that could be simply because it’s mocking America. I’m having trouble believing this would have aired in the US in the 60s. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/13 "2012-03-18T03:09:44Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I’d like to see **That Was The Week That Was**. I have a CD of some highlights, and watched a couple episodes and the Museum of Television and Radio several years ago. > > Someone said _Turn On_ would be tame by today’s standards. TW3 was vicious. Check out [this clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NtmGlvHbqA) for an example. Wow. Had I been alive, I would have laughed my ass off. But I can’t see anybody in the 60’s laughing at that. Ouch! ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/14 "2012-03-18T03:21:40Z")
Years ago I saw the end of the 1966 British period piece/black comedy _[The Wrong Box](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Box)_ on cable, and enjoyed it so much that I kept checking the movie listings until I found it was going to be on again. I taped it and watched it many times…until I went away to college. The VCR was definitely on the way out by then, and I’ve never owned one myself. I tried repeatedly to find it on DVD, but for some reason it was only released in Spain – which is Region 2 and no good to me as an American. This story has a happy ending, though. Just a few days ago I idly decided to search on _The Wrong Box_ and found that it’s been available as a burn-on-demand DVD from Amazon since last year: [Amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Box-Michael-Caine/dp/B004H9X4CG) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/15 "2012-03-18T03:22:14Z")
I’ve got several episodes of **Colonel Bleep** on DVD. It’s wonderfully awful science fantasy, but it was interesting in haing an _alien_ as the sympathetic title character. I’ve been to the Museum of Television nd Radio to see some of the episodes of That Was The Week That Was, as well. Many of Tom Lehrer’s songs were composed for it, and first appeared thee. I wish they’d release these for home viewing. I, too, have heard about the Thayer David _Nero Wolfe_. From all accounts it was very good – much better than the one starring “Cannon”. (Thayer David played Saknussem in the 1959 _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ and Clint Eastwood’s employer in _The Eiger Sanction_) I’d love to see it. The one I’d like to see – and it still exists. I think the Museum of TV and radio has a copy – is Rod Serling’s _Carol for Another Christmas_. It’s highly regarded, but hasn’t to my knowledge ever been rebroadcast or mad available on home media. Sorta “Twlight Zone Meets Christmas Carol”. Another thing I’d love to see is the circa 1959 TV series _Man Into Space_. I vaguely recall seeing it when it was first broadcast – hard SF without aliens or unrealistc technology, pretty well done from what I’ve heard. For years it was not even acknowledged in books on SF on TV. Even reference books listing episodes of SF TV stubbornly refused to say much about this series. Iy wasn’t until the internet mecame a big deal that I found info on the series, including a few pictures and episode synopses. Again, as far as I’m aware this was never rebradcast, nor made available on laserdisk, VHS, or DVD. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/16 "2012-03-18T03:25:12Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Damn! Do you know if that was from the BBC version or the NBC version? The accents are American, but that could be simply because it’s mocking America. I’m having trouble believing this would have aired in the US in the 60s. Browsing around a little, it looks like that was the BBC version. One line I do remember from my CD (of the American version): “We’re sure Governor Wallace has nothing against the American negro. No doubt he thinks everybody should own one.” ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/17 "2012-03-18T03:28:40Z")
I’d actually love to see **[The Space Explorers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Explorers)** again. It was a science lesson disguised as a science fiction series, with much of the material recycled from Communist and Nazi movies. I saw it around 1958, and it got me interested in science fiction. BTW, I did watch **Turn-On** (the entire episode) and also watched at least one episode of the **Laugh-In** revival (with Robin Williams in the cast). ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/18 "2012-03-18T03:35:42Z")
There was a short National Geographic special several years ago about the [snow monkeys of Texas](http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2005-08-05/283057/). The story is presented with a humorous (and almost incredulous) tone and the narrator has a great Texas twang. It’s an interesting story that involves people as diverse as Wayne Newton (who appears in the video) [and Nolan Ryan.](http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Nolan-Ryan-talks-about-being-an-ambassador-for-s?urn=mlb,122926) (the audio interview linked to on that page is worth listening to) I only saw it air on television that one time, and I’ve looked for it online several times with no luck other than a few [short clips.](http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=1886&aid=) ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/19 "2012-03-18T03:37:30Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Damn! Do you know if that was from the BBC version or the NBC version? The accents are American, but that could be simply because it’s mocking America. I’m having trouble believing this would have aired in the US in the 60s. I was too young to stay up late enough to watch TW3 at the time, but |I remember lots of talk about it, and I can tell you what is going on here. At the beginning, David Frost is doing a (rather bad) impression of Eamon Andrews, who was the host of the British version of This Is Your Life. Andrews was Irish, so that is meant to be an Irish accent. The singers in blackface are a pastiche of _The Black and White Minstrel Show_, which was hugely popular on UK TV at the time. Stylistically (though not lyrically!) This is quite typical of what they would do, all sung and danced by white guys, dressed in white, and in blackface, and often singing American traditional (or Stephen Foster type) songs about Mississippi, Alabamy and the like. It was meant to be like traditional American minstrel shows, and played perfectly straight. At some point in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s it dawned on someone at the BBC that the whole thing was horrifically racist, and the show was hastily pulled from the air, but it had a good run. At the time this was made, singers in blackface like that, as such, would not have seemed strange at all to a British audience. It is only the words they are singing that make it satire. Millicent Martin, the woman singing, was a TW3 regular. I think you will find that all the performers were British (I am not sure who the curly haired guy is), and this was made for a British audience. > [@Biggirl](#): > > Wow. Had I been alive, I would have laughed my ass off. But I can’t see anybody in the 60’s laughing at that. Ouch! British people laughed, or, at least, the hip young people at whom the show was aimed. They were laughing **at** Americans (though perhaps also at the clulessness and dated style of _The Black and White Minstrel Show_). TW3 was a huge (though maybe cultish) hit. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099/20 "2012-03-18T03:38:55Z")
I remember seeing the Sesame Street/Electric Company prime time special “Out to Lunch” as a child and thinking it was the funniest thing ever, but to my knowledge it was never shown again. Muppet Wiki entry [Here](http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Out_to_Lunch). It was kind of a proto-Muppet Show. I remember it fondly. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-tv-holy-grails/616099.md?page=2)