brucebaskin

Confession: After decades of loving both their movies and radio shows together, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce ARE Holmes and Watson to me (although Doyle's Watson was never the bumbler the writers had Bruce portray him as) to the point that I even resisted other actors in those roles. Until now.

I started watching this TV series on YouTube a few weeks ago and while Rathbone and Bruce still hold my virtual crowns, Ronald Howard and H. Marion Crawford have both charmed me after almost a dozen episodes. The series is much lighter and less dour than the Rathbone/Bruce collaborations could be and while some episodes are nothing close to Grammy material, others are quite decent. As others here have mentioned, Howard and Crawford work very well together and seem to be having fun with their roles. Howard is a younger and more buoyant Holmes than Rathbone and (a real bonus) Crawford's Watson is much closer to what Doyle seemed to have in mind: a step behind Holmes, yes, but nobody's fool and more colleague than subservient. They really carry the series even with the hit-or-miss writing they worked with. Archie Duncan does fine as Lestrade despite HIS role being written as a perpetual bumbler instead of Watson. The fact that episodes are set in Victorian times is a plus...no Nazi-chasing here.

If you're expecting the serious, sometimes darker version of Holmes as portrayed by Rathbone (who grew to hate the role because he was typecast by it) plus myriad plot twists, you won't find that here. What you will find is a more fun version sans plot twists because a 30-minute show is too tight for heavy intrigue. Just give it three episodes for a fair chance because, as mentioned, some scripts are simply not very good (the Texas Cowgirl episode being eminently avoidable altogether). It took three to win me over and I'm glad it did.

I have to admit that I'd never heard of "The Starlost" when it debuted (I was a 14-year-old at the time), and only discovered it as a stand-alone Roku channel. I figured "Why not?" and bookmarked it, and I've since watched a few episodes.

Where to begin? The production values were, uhhh, "spartan" (think latter-day Roger Corman), exemplified by the use of videotape instead of film for recording. The script-writing was more reminiscent of a hurried "Space 1999" than "Star Trek" and the acting...well, the cast wasn't all that great but it's hard to imagine Shatner and Nimoy making "The Starlost" work under the same conditions.

Many other reviewers have gone at length explaining WHY this show ended up the way it did despite a promising premise...suffice to say that SEVERE budget cuts unraveled Harlan Ellison's original vision to the point that Ellison bailed on the project before the first episode was taped.

With all those minuses, why do I give this a rating of 5 (out of 10) stars? Because (like a Monte Cristo sandwich) the cheese brings it all together. The fact that the cast plays their roles straight with no hint of a wink or a nod actually helps. For me, the result was a so-bad-it's-good show that only requires application of Hillary Clinton's "willing suspension of reality" line to enjoy.

If you take your SciFi with dead seriousness, "The Starlost" is definitely not for you. If you can take your SciFi with a grain of salt, give it a shot...if you just lower your expectations a bit, you'll probably "get" it.

I was first turned on to "Meeting of Minds" by my high school Humanities teacher during my senior year in 1977, the year it debuted. I'd had some interest in history and historical figures for a few years but NOTHING I'd ever seen before (or have seen since) brought history to life quite like this show. It's one thing to read about the likes of Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Teddy Roosevelt, et al., but to actually see them as characters in a talk show/interview format was simply incredible. There has never been a TV program like this one.

It's borderline tragic that this series has never been issued in a DVD format because it's a terrific learning tool and if I was a history teacher, you'd better believe I would incorporate "Meeting of Minds" into my in-class curriculum). Thank goodness several episodes are viewable on YouTube, but it really deserves to be available as a set and I don't know why PBS or Steve Allen's estate (whoever owns the rights) has never issued a boxed set. Some things deserve to be considered beyond rights fees and this series is one of them.