I’d certainly recommend Taggart, and for something different, Cadfael.

Incidentally, when I watch old UK police dramas, I smile when I think about how archivists/collators are probably not a thing in the technological era.

I understand it’s more efficient to have everything on computer, but it must have been satisfying for an archivist/collator to have such a job.

Oh, I’d also recommend UK cop drama The Bill, which ran from 1984 to 2010 (earlier years are better, the later era is too “soap opera”). Set in London, it features a mixture of uniformed and CID stories.

Well, at least the episode was scientifically accurate.

Got my hands on three of the four SCTV Box Sets today, very happy. Loved this stuff in my youth, still incredibly funny

Battle of the PBS Stars.....

If you were a kid in the 70s, you may recall that the holidays meant cartoons. Not just the Peanuts specials or The Grinch; but, also, literary adaptations.

CBS used to feature their Famous Classic Tales, with adaptations of different literary works, starting with Tales of Washington Irving. The animation was done by Australian studio Air Programs International (API), until 1972, when API was purchased by Hanna-Barbera, who outsourced much of their production to them, including continuing to do the classic tales work. Alex Toth has written about going to Australia to work with them and get them into the H-B style of production, for network television.

Quite a lot of Jules Verne was adapted, including Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Master of the World, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island, Five Weeks in a Balloon, and Off on a Comet.

One of the cartoons I distinctly remembered I finally found on Youtube: their adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, which introduced me to the story, which is one of my favorite romantic adventure tales....



Later, another Australian animation house, Burbank Films, did a series of classic tales, covering much of the same territory. Many of these were later available, for discount prices, at various retailers, including Walmart and K-Mart. The releases often had a mixture of Burbank and API versions. For years, the only Ivanhoe I could find was the 1986 Burbank Films version, which I knew wasn't the version I saw in the 70s. I just watched the API one, after finding it, last night. I came across this playlist, on youtube, which has several of the API works. You can also, with a bit of searching, find some of the others, like the excellent Last of the Mohicans and the Sherlock Holmes adaptations they did, in the H-B ownership years.

Meanwhile, a recent Secret Galaxy Youtube feature on Rankin-Bass reminded me (since they glossed over it) of R-B's competing package, Festival of Family Classics. This ran from 1972-1973, featuring the animation of Japanese studios Mushi Production (started by Osamu Tezuka) and Topcraft (which included Hayao Miyazaki, before he formed Studio Ghibli, after Topcraft's bankruptcy), who produced animated works for R-B, for Saturday morning, such as The Jackson 5, The Osmonds and Kid Power (based on the Wee Pals comic strip). Some of those can also be found on Youtube.

ABC used to show some of their Saturday morning stuff, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, including the Super Friends and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

API's A Christmas Carol, produced in 1969, used to appear in syndication, for many years. I saw it after the masterful Chuck Jones 1971 version (with Alistair Sim and Michael Horden reprising their roles, from the 1951 version) and it wasn't the same league; but still pretty good. Ron Haddick, who voices Scrooge, would do the same for a 1982 version, by Burbank Films (Burbank repeated a lot of API's productions). The API version also appeared as part of the Famous Classic Tales series.

We lived in an area where it was hard to tune in CBS, unless you had an external antenna (which we didn't) and I only got to see these if we were at relatives, for the holidays. I distinctly remember seeing both Ivanhoe and The Adventures of Sinbad, while visiting my Dad's Aunt Beatriz (we just called her Auntie), for Thanksgiving. Those were always great visits. They lived in Ogden, IL, east of Champaign-Urbana (where the Univ of Illinois is), in a little house that I think was circa the 1930s. My Dad's Uncle Clemmons collected glass and ceramic insulators from power lines and had this big collection of them, including two very large ceramic ones, which were a decorative feature on the sidewalk up to their front door. Their bathroom had sliding doors and we used to play with them, like it was an elevator. Auntie was my grandmother's sister, who defied her father and ran off to elope with Uncle Clemmons, and was the sweetest person you could ever know. She passed away when I was in college and I accompanied my Dad to visit her, at a nursing home in Champaign at least once, before her death. The house is long gone and I have no idea what happened tot he glass insulators. The ceramic ones would have been worth some money.