A couple of weeks ago my mother and I were discussing an old TV show. (We were watching one of its lead actors in another program.) Today for some reason I was reminded of that…oh yes. I heard on the radio that Sonia Sotomayor was asked about episodes of the Perry Mason show. I watched a couple of the Perry Mason TV movies long ago (the show was never shown in South Africa as far as I know) and I read many of the books. But I loved the theme music and still remember it well, and so I looked it up on youtube.
Sure enough, I found it, and it triggered a trip down memory lane as I searched for other shows I could remember. Riptide, Hardcastle & McCormick, Airwolf, A-Team, Magnum PI, TJ Booker, Knight Rider, Simon & Simon (competely forgot about this one!), Remington Steele, Voyagers!, Hart to Hart, Colombo, Jake and the Fat Man, Cagney & Lacey, Moonlighting, Bonanza, and many, many others. They look terribly cheesy now, but I definitely enjoyed watching them at time. I guess that you can find whole episodes somewhere, but I only watched (some!) of the opening credits. (And I have omitted the sitcoms and some more “touchy-feely” shows like St. Elmos and Thirty-Something.)
I noticed two things about these shows:
- Not only have the production values of “modern” shows changed — ok, improved — dramatically, but the content is very, very different these days. I cannot really think of any “action” shows on television. Granted I’m not really up to date with TV these days. I think that the stories are more complex (or are they?), but it is more than that. The whole attidue of TV shows has changed. If I think of the shows I have heard of (Lost, The Shield, The OC, Nip/Tuck) and the ones I have watched (House, Mentalist, Six Feet Under), their stories are presented in a much more intricate fashion. Perhaps Law & Order comes closest to these older shows.
- More importantly, just about all of these shows have brilliant, energetic, ass-kicking theme music. I just cannot think of *any* modern show whose theme song I need to hear again.
So, the real question is whether I would be satisfied by these old shows if I saw them now for the first time. Probably not. I have not necessarily matured, but at least heard things, seen things, and done things, and moved on from the middle of the eighties. That is a river I cannot step into again. A large part of the appeal of those shows are bound up with my memories of growing up.
One other thing. I have a lot of “disconnected” memories. For example, I vividly remember a show about a family who travel to Egypt on holiday, visit a pyramid, and somehow falls through a “portal”. They end up in a parallel universe and have to undertake a journey to…well, I don’t remember where. Kinda science-fiction/fantasy. I only ever saw two episode and have never come across it again. But today I found even that. It is called “Otherworld” and only ran for eight episodes. It doesn’t hold up well (well, not the opening sequence), but I really liked the idea at the time. Hmph.