My 3 favorite TV shows

The Twilight Zone. Sherlock Holmes (80’s BBC Version). Kung Fu.

The Twilight Zone is easily my favorite show of all time. The writing was incomparable, and the acting, cinematography, and directing all excellent too. Science fiction and fantasy tend to be my favorite genres anyway, and it’s fun seeing stars such as Burgess Meredith, Alan Klugman, Charles Bronson, and Bill Shatner in early TV roles.The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is generally considered the best episode, and rightly so as it deals flawlessly with a complex theme, but for my money there’s none better than The Obsolete Man, which features Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver in a tense cat and mouse game in an all too imaginable dystopian future. What’s not fun is thinking about how close to home the idea of an authoritarian government leveraging reality TV to control the populace hits these days. Wow. Never would I ever.

Everything the BBC does is ridiculously good, or at least it seems that way, and the 80’s version of Holmes is no exception. Apologies to Benedict Cumberbatch aside, Jeremy Brett owned the role, and by staying faithful to Doyle they created an environment where he could shine.

Kung Fu. It wasn’t right what they did to Bruce Lee, let me just get that out of the way up front, but Kung Fu was a great show. Even more than Holmes, this one is simply a character study, and David Carradine is great as the stranger in a strange land who, oddly for a a pacifist monk who preaches non-violence, winds up kicking a lot of racist bad guy butt. What’s not to like? Sometimes I just want to see the good guy win. Kung Fu scratches that itch all while serving it up with a side of Eastern philosophy that’s uniquely satisfying among shows of the era.