Best Nights of Television...in the US...over the last three, four decades...that I manage to remember...

This one's kind of another command performance, or suggested performance, from a line in Bill Crider's blog about how impressively, memorably good the 1972-73 CBS Saturday night lineup of programming (All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show) was. And it was, particularly if you, like me, were just eight when it was introduced. I'd mentioned how it was surpassed slightly for me by the local lineup in the Hartford CT/Springfield MA market in 1975, by which time CBS had already moved the first two half hours away from "family hour" and into slots on other nights, but the three remaining CBS shows gave way to the local PBS's run of Monty Python's Flying Circus in its first full run at 11pm, and that neatly fed into the first season of NBC's Saturday Night (Live) (three weeks a month, and the almost-as-good sly newsmagazine Weekend on the fourth week). The first hour on CBS by 1975 was given over to mostly forgettable but supposedly family-friendly sitcoms.

For me, there wouldn't be another full night of television nearly as satisfying till another local arrangement, the DC area's Friday nights in 1995-1996, which saw the local UPN station run the syndicated Babylon-5 at 8pm, The X-Files was offered on Fox at 9pm, and then Homicide: Life on the Street at 10pm on NBC. Though perhaps there was another contender for me on Friday nights in the southern New Hampshire/Boston market in 1978-79, which saw the local PBS stations offer Sneak Previews, The International Animation Festival (hosted by Jane Marsh), a rather good short film showcase hour whose title slips my mind (Short Subjects or something relatively generic like that, it was a national package), and a package of Janus Film Collection international classics that was tagged PBS Theater, at least as it appeared on WENH in Durham--I was first able to see The 400 Blows, Forbidden Games, Rashomon, and other impressive chestnuts thus.

Looking back at the national network schedules, it is notable how often one would have some difficulty finding consistently-good fare on any given night (and not infrequently have good shows pitched against each other, of course), but that doesn't take into account just how much more interesting and often impressive cable and syndicated fare was available, particularly around 2000-2002, which is in most ways the best two seasons US television has seen, and the last two, even with strike, haven't been too shabby, either (even given the inevitable tripe, around the millennium even much of the bubblegum was of a quality that would've shone like diamonds during most of the latter 1970s and

The Huntress

early 1980s seasons...contrast the Annette O'Toole vehicle The Huntress or even the Xena knockoff Witchblade with the witless crap that was The Dukes of Hazzard or The Fall Guy or Charlie's Angels...Lou Grant, WKRP in Cincinatti, The Rockford Files, The Paper Chase, SCTV, and eventually Hill Street Blues and Cagney and Lacey could've used the company among the more intelligent shows kicking around in those years). But while there have always been at least some good series to watch...those who claim there's nothing get no sympathy from me, it's a bit like saying there's nothing good on radio or nothing good to read anymore...finding a single night where the Newsradio or Scrubs bright spots haven't been interspersed with Veronica's Closet dreariness or at best Wings competence has been very much a rare and temporary thing. Tuesday nights at 8pm ET were particularly ridiculous a few years back, wherein at least four or five regularly scheduled series I enjoyed, including PBS's Nova and the WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, were simulcast (I believe Newsradio was part of that stack, though beginning at 8:30pm on NBC, and the only interesting series on the then new Pax network, Mysterious Ways), while there were long stretches throughout the week wherein any of those series would've been quite welcome.

And then there're Sunday nights...where pay cable and often also the "basic" cable stations come out to play, and if there's something interesting on the broadcast nets as well...well, one can be glad that the cable stations almost always repeat everything so often...and the broadcast networks are doing the same with their Saturdays, particularly.

Journeyman

The closest to a fully satisfying night we've had in the last season has been Mondays on NBC, where the fine Chuck, the foundering but still watchable Heroes, and the brilliant and cancelled Journeyman were offered in the first months of the short season...


But, of course, I have to give a nod to Saturday afternoons in the Boston area in the early 1970s, when viewers of Channel 56 got to see repeats of The Outer Limits followed by the Creature Double Feature...a solid five-six hours of outre photoplay, ranging from utter cheese to quite good indeed. Warped my mind.

China Beach (see comments)