L'aventure est au bout de la route

I was the ripe old age of 10 when this show came on, but I never missed it. My mother and I used to make time every week to sit down with a bottle of Coca-Cola and watch it. The very first 45 (yes! a vinyl record!!) I bought was the theme song to this show--I thought! I ended up with "Movin' On" by Bad Company! I was very upset. Looking back I don't know why I thought I'd be able to find the theme song to a television show about truckers in the "Top 20" section. Anyway, I would love to watch this again on TVLand, or someplace. It's one of the sadly forgotten 70s shows that were very entertaining, even if they weren't the most popular or well-known.

I never missed this show. Tuesday nights, at 8 p.m. CST, I was there, waiting for 'Movin' On'. I even took off work one night, to catch it.

With dependable old Claude Akins in the lead, and a catchy theme song by Merle Haggard, I figured this show couldn't miss. And I was quite disappointed when it got cancelled in '76.

Some of the plots were pretty silly - Most notably, the one where Sonny (Akins) makes a statement about truckers being 'The toughest men in America', which gets picked up by the press, and leads to a slug from a Logger, and a stint in Marine Corps boot camp - But there was that certain 'something' that kept me watching.

Akins - Perfect casting, if there ever was any - Fit the role of a gypsy trucker to a tee, and became one of my TV favorites (Though, oddly enough, I never watched 'Sheriff Lobo'). Converse - A heckuva fine Actor - Makes a great sidekick (Too bad he hasn't gone on to bigger and better things), and occasional appearances by Art Metrano and Rosey Grier add comedy relief.

It's not available on tape or DVD, and, judging from it's low popularity, it probably never will be. I can only hope that TV Land, Hallmark, or Trio will show the series, someday.

If you are old enough to remember the 1970's, the "trucker as a modern day cowboy" phenomena and the great CB fad (10-4 Good Buddy and watch out for Smokey) you remember and maybe even saw this series when it first aired!

I watched this show during its first run in 74-76 and had dim memories of it (I remembered the premise of truck drivers and Claude Akins being in it), but couldn't remember the name of the show or characters or much else about it. I had some of the merchandising tie-ins from the series including a model of the Kenworth and the mobile CB rig (a cheap transceiver radio that was low powered and only worked on CB CH 14 both of which were legal limitations for an unlicensed CB radio at the time).

For those hoping to catch this series again (since it apparently was never released on DVD or VHS) the Retro TV Network has started showing it as of late June 2011! As I write this it's only been on for a week, but I'm enjoying the trip down memory lane and seeing these shows for the first time since I was a kid watching them when they first aired.

It wasn't the greatest series, but I always liked Claude and I especially love all of the location filming that shows the world and highways of the 1970's and seeing the guest stars of the era.

Hope everyone that misses it will be able to catch it again.

As a small boy, I loved ROUTE 66; as a teenager, it was THEN CAME BRONSON; as a young man, it was MOVIN' ON. And while there were other series about wanderers on the road, often pursued by others (THE FUGITIVE, THE IMMORTAL, KUNG FU, and later even THE INCREDIBLE HULK), what appealed to me most was a story about people who wanted to be on the road, meeting others, experiencing live & the breadth of human situations.

Things had changed by the mid-1970s, of course; but trucking still provided a vehicle (ahem) for such human stories. Gifted with two fine actors in Claude Akins & Frank Converse, it presented the panorama of life as it was then, with all of the drama & humor & unexpectedness of simply being alive. No need for aliens, the supernatural, spies, conspiracies, etc. -- all of those fine & enjoyable in their own right, to be sure! -- just stories about people with needs, dreams, fears, meeting one another, their lives intersecting for a brief time.

And these were "ordinary" people ... and by that I mean real people that you or I would have met, not the supermodels with extravagant lifestyles who seem to populate so many TV shows today. They looked & sounded & acted REAL, with real lives that we could identify with ourselves. I really miss that sort of show; and I'm delighted that MOVIN' ON is finally available on DVD at last. Now to relive those times once more!

This show ruled! I can't believe it lasted only two seasons. The realism was astounding. It may not have been the ER of it's time, but it was certainly the Chicago Hope of it's time. I missed watching Fonzie jump the garbage cans on Happy Days just to watch this show. This show laid ground work for shows like Knight Rider and Love Boat. What else can I say?