ABC Weekend Specials

wow , married now and going on 34. Iv'e recently married someone younger than me.remembering one thing to another i stumbled upon recalling a Saturday morning special show . I couldn't remember the name something og the land of. I just remembered the story was great for television for that era. My wife looks at me like I'm crazy she being 26 and me in my thirties she never heard the show. i was amazed the someone still remembers the good o,l days when you could get up and watch T'V till one o;clock. what about the other special they would show with the guy that had the perfect fly back hair do. and i think he had special powers or something , i do recall a cat. oh well i could ramble all day about then.but life goes on oh tho I hope that someone will bring back those shows. TY SC native here

Back in the early-80s, on Saturday mornings, if my dad didn't drag me off to work with him (he was a plumber and electrician) -- I would stay home and watch the Weekend Specials on ABC. I had many favorites: "Land of Og" (about those little green guys who lived under ground); "Zack and the Magic Factory (the beginning was so intriguing -- the boy arriving by taxi at night at the front of this ominous-looking building, and the creepy monster and gadgetry guarding the inside of entranceway -- scared the be-Jesus out of the boy, riveted me to the sofa); and "The Haunted Mansion Mystery" (where the boy and girl are trapped under an old mansion in a secret room, which they think is haunted by the spirit of a rich old man -- who one day, miserly, hauled his money home from the bank in a wheelbarrow and died there, leaving his skeleton to entertain the boy and girl in the secret room). They just don't make programs for children of that quality anymore. I could mention many other shows, but I don't think there is space enough here.

The Weekend Specials were sometimes good, sometimes crap, and I rarely watched regularly. Generally I'd stick around long enough to see what this week's story would be, and then, washed out and headachey from four or more straight hours of watching jumpy animation on a black and white TV, I'd go off to have breakfast. So the distinctive theme music and animation were my signal that Saturday morning was over...but oh, what great music and animation it was! Like a flourishing coda to a Bach concerto, in fact. Even though it wasn't one of the shows that I stayed around to watch, it was nevertheless probably more ingrained in my memories of Saturday mornings than anything else, except for maybe the Bugs/Roadrunner Show, In The News, and ABC's various between-show thingies (Schoolhouse Rock, the "Bod Squad" segments...)

This was almost a decade before my time. When I did catch this, I would watch it rarely. In fact, the only one I vividly remember seeing well is Jirimpimbira: An African Folk Tale. I couldn't even recall the first part of that special's title, but I knew it began with a "j" and I had to look for it. I don't even remember any of the specials ever being released individually on VHS, but evidently they really were from the pictures of the VHS covers to some of them displayed on this site. How did I or could I have missed those? My now defunct, local Blockbuster probably had them at the time of their release or they might not had ever been available there. I would have loved to rent them, so I can catch up on the majority of what I missed. Earlier this month, I watched a couple of them on Youtube (The Bunjee Venture and The Bollo Caper) and neither of those seemed familiar to me.

Anyway, this series is similar to CBS Storybreak, in that it featured televised adaptations of kids' books. But the difference is while CBS Storybreak (aside from the live action openings and closings of each episode with a host) featured animated adaptations of those stories only, the ABC Weekend specials featured both live-action and animated adaptations of certain stories. From the research I've done, the latter has had a variety of hosts before eventually settling on the nautical outfit-wearing cat, O.G. Readmore, who appeared in both puppet and cartoon form. Both of these programs encouraged kids to read and develop a love for literature. Of the two aforementioned shows, CBS Storybreak has always been the more familiar one to me, as it's the one I saw more often. I always thought it could be because it aired more often whereas ABC Weekend Specials aired less frequently and were done so more sporadically, or I just wasn't able to catch that if and whenever I tried, I don't know for sure. I can't or don't even recall if any episodes were ever even repeated. They probably may not have been, I think, because otherwise I would've been able to catch and remember more. Another thing of interest about this show is that some of the characters are recurring ones and some, particular specials received sequels, and holiday specials. But I don't favor one show over the other, as I like them both equally, from the ones I viewed so far online.

The only thing left I have to say is this is high quality, television entertainment and how more shows like this should be done: Memorable story lines, characters, etc. None of the mindlessness that's unfortunately plaguing the majority of the airwaves today. Definitely one of the best. It hasn't been nominated for nor won any Emmy or Annie awards, but it should have. Very commendable.

I had almost completely forgotten about the Captain and his friends and all the mornings I had actually woken up on time to watch them until my friend and I were talking on the phone one night. She says "What is this on Channel 99?" I turn on the TV and there's Cap't Readmore talking about Jack and the Beanstalk. I think I nearly went into shock. This was a little celebrated piece of the 80's and a memory of ABC before the Disney takeover (when they used to play good Saturday Cartoons).