Read All About It!

wow, this is great. i hadn't thought about this show in years and years when suddenly the word "intricacy" pops into my head and it all comes flooding back. i loved this show when i was a kid (and i completely agree with the dr. who analogy). the production values were cheap but effective (considering the age of the viewing audience), but the storytelling was the most important aspect. these folks really knew how to engage the viewer (i.e. the average 5 to 10 year-old) in a very adult way. i'll bet that if i had the chance to see these episodes again, they would still stand up. its good to see that such an obscure little show still has some fans more than twenty years later. perhaps there will be a DVD release someday...

i am on the look-out for anything and everything i can find on he subject of "read all about it". even if you are just someone else who watched the show. i loved this show when i watched it as a kid in atlanta, and in my whole life, have found only one person who watched it as well. feel free to e-mail me with any information you have. just title the email "read all about it"

The show really sticks out in my memories. That creepy clown with the organ?! I hope somebody can remind me what she had to do with the show. I do remember one episode where someone was sucking all the words out of books and it was in some creepy cave. Duneedon's head floating above that table/desk thing, Theta's creepy voice.

I'm glad someone reminded me about Sam, because Lynn and the boy are all I remembered, I think there was another kid in the second season, too. I think he was black and he was in the episodes at Fort York where some time travelling was involved. Dont forget that crossword they had in the clubhouse, and at the end of each episode they would write in another word with a black magic marker. Where do you get crosswords that large, anyway

I remember watching it in 8th grade; the year was 1989 and not in a reading class. My history class. We watched it because my teacher was just slack like that. But I really enjoyed the show.

Out of the blue a few weeks ago, I thought about "Read All About It". It's interesting in the 80s that a lot of the educational shows on American PBS were Canadian shows. But I have to admit, they were cool.

And there's this other sci-fi-type PBS show about reading that was American way. The main character is a librarian and something kind of catastrophe was about to happen, but a mysterious man puts her in some kind of deep sleep/suspended animation and then centuries later, she is awaken to a future Earth. It's kins like a strange mixture of "Escape from New York", "The Warriors" and a few other movies together. I can't think of the name of the show.

Hey:

This is the TV show that I'll credit for getting me into a career in journalism. I mean, growing up in a small Ontario town, it seemed obvious that being involved in a newspaper was a way to hang out with not one, but two (two!) brainy cute girls. Man, I had the biggest crushes on Lynne (whom I thought was short for Lyndsey for some reason -- it might come up in the show) and Sam. I mean, really, what more could a 10-year-old want other than two hot, brainy chicks with a penchant for gossip, a coach house, two robots and a desklamp that teleported you into another world full of psych-out flashing lights and an evil floating head -- and a damn creepy evil floating head at that? I mean, Cripes, there's enough imagery here to fill an entire album's worth of Meat Puppet songs.

For starters, I do remember very well that the first six episodes were produced/broadcast in 1979, and the remainder hit the air in 1980 -- *not* 1981. It should say so in the copyright information at the very end of each episode. I remember seeing the fifth or sixth episode as a small kid when it first aired. But then, circa 1984-85, I remember that I came across the listing for this show in some teacher's handguide and managed to twist the arm of my fourth Grade teacher into obtaining video tapes of the show from the Ministry of Education. We got to see an episode every second day, or something like that. Anyhow, needless to say, I briefly went from being a geek to a cool-ass kid in my class simply for making the recommendation.

There was, of course, a sequel. But we never got to see that. I think I'd given my teacher headaches from watching this weird little show.

I don't really remember a lot of this -- except that the girls were cute and that the adult cast had doppelgangers in the other universe (Trialveron or something like that). I'd personally give my left arm to see this again. I can only worry that this show was actually better in the day, and wouldn't hold up now. Even though I haven't really thought about this show in 15 years, I can say this: if anyone involved in the show ever reads this, know that you're responsible for at least one journalist. And one who writes wacky fiction on the side. Thanks a bundle. The cult may be small, but this show really needs a nostalgic Web site.

Yours, Zachary Houle