With this morning's screening of
Minerva, Mayhem and Millionaires, I have now watched every episode of the classic
Batman serial from '60s in the order they were originally transmitted.
Thanks to the great
Talking Pictures TV channel here in the UK, this has been my Saturday morning ritual for the last 28 months or so.
While the idea was to simply ensure I saw all the episodes of this magnificently camp crimefighting show, I can't help but pass comment on the third - and last - season, when the show's makers swapped out Aunt Harriet (Madge Blake) for Batgirl/Barbara Gordon (Yvonne Craig).
Clearly, they felt a '60s audience of (
mainly) young boys couldn't cope with two lead female characters at once. It's a pity because as much as I welcome Craig's take on Batgirl, I did miss Aunt Harriet's obliviousness to the Bat-centric shenanigans going on under her nose in stately Wayne Manor.
It was also a bit sad - but emblematic of episodic TV at the time - that Dick Grayson/Robin's (Burt Ward) aunt wasn't even mentioned this season.
Then again, perhaps she left Gotham at just the right time as the storytelling took a massive nosedive, thanks to attempts to mix things up.
The show largely abandoned its winning two-part story formula (
thus eliminating the highly entertaining cliffhangers at the end of part one of every tale) as well as bringing in a host of bland new villains instead of relying on the iconic comic book antagonists (
Joker, Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman etc).
The many, wildly popular, comic book continuations of the show have shown that with the right writers and characters,
Batman '66 could have run and run.
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| Batman '66 #1 from 2013 |
This isn't to say, however, that the TV show was ever less than perfect Saturday morning entertainment.
No matter what silliness was unfolding onscreen, you could always guarantee that Adam West's Batman would take their circumstances seriously... and always have exactly the right Bat-doohickey in his utility belt to help him, Robin, Batgirl, and Alfred (Alan Napier) out of any sticky situation.
But
Batman isn't the only vintage show I've watched from start-to-finish in the last couple of years.
I started with all the available episodes of
Dad's Army, being shown on
U&Gold.
This has always been a very special show to me (
and warranted its own article here), because of its connections to my dad.
Then, thanks to
Legend, showing four episodes each weekend, I saw every episode of the original
Twilight Zone.
Most recently, thanks to the
BBC, I watched the entirely of the sublime
I, Claudius from the 1970s. I remember watching some of the episodes when I was a child and some, much later, when I was in hospital recovering from my aneurysm. But I'd never seen the entire show from start-to-finish before.
The thing is I have Blu-Rays of the complete runs of both
Batman and the
Twilight Zone, but it felt somehow more 'authentic' to watch them weekly as new episodes were released on standard definition channels.
I'm also a great believer in the concept of "appointment television". I've a ton of shows on
Netflix (
where all the episodes drop at once) that I've started, but then felt no incentive to push on with.
However, knowing I'll have to wait a week for a new episode keeps the flame of enthusiasm lit.
Of course, I do binge shows. I'm not a luddite. But weekly shows are still my preferred form of delivery. Because I'm that old.
It did strike me that there was possibly something a tad morbid about this particular project of mine: ensuring I'd seen every episode of select great shows before I pop my clogs.
But I can assure you my motives are a lot more positive. There's so much great television being made all the time that it's easy to overlook the classics of old in the rush to embrace the new.
This is especially true for shows that - over the years - I've dipped in and out of, rather than watching religiously.
With my increasingly unreliable memory, I want to make sure I'm not missing great television from earlier decades while consuming the current crop of high calibre entertainment.
I'm now contemplating what show I might tackle next.
The original run of
Star Trek is definitely a contender, although that will be a binge rather than appointment viewing as it's on
Paramount Plus these days.
It's actually being shown on
Legend as well, but that channel is in the middle of the second season and I don't want to have to wait for them to get round to the start of season one again if I'm going to go "where no man has gone before" as soon as possible.
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| Will I be boldly going from start to finish on the Final Frontier next? |
