Route 66

Just look to your left and click on guest appearances. If you do you're in for one heck of a surprise! This show had some great writing in the early years. Reruns were on the Nick-At-Night TV network in the eighties, I was so disappointed I haven't watched the network since. Every episode was a full and complete story, the writing had to be excellent to be able to pull in the caliber of talent that you see on this list. Many current and back then, future stars ought to make this show more visible than it is but sadly that's not the case. It had a great music score from Nelson Riddle and great stories written by Sterling Silliphant. Last but not least, a great car! PLEASE, SOMEBODY BRING THIS SHOW INTO OUR HOMES AGAIN.

Marty Milner and his sidekick George Maharis get into intrigue and adventure on the highways and byways. Mostly across the good old USA, but one stop each in Canada and Mexico.

Ahhh, what a great concept for a TV series in this post-war period. Two virile young dudes getting into a gorgeous Corvette and driving aimlessly until the gas money ran out. This was one of the more well written and plotted series of the day, too! Some have called the dialogue intellectual and poetic. It is one of those shows that was impossible to stop watching once you were in the first five minutes. Gorgeous scenery and the perpetual sense that adventure was always just around the turnpike.

Stan Lee and Marvel Comics wouldn't admit this, but it would appear they may have unintentionally ripped off the Buzz Murdock character in creating one of their stable characters, Daredevil. According to all the trivial facts about Route 66, Buzz Murdock hails from Hell's Kitchen! Daredevil's secret identity, MATT Murdock, hails from Hell's Kitchen! It seems to me in one episode, Buzz was even blinded! Matt Murdock is blind!

Nah, I don't really care either, but thought somebody out there might find it interesting.

It's said "they don't make 'em like they used to" and Route 66 certainly brings credibility to that statement. I was only about eleven years old when the show went off the air, but what an impact it had. I can't see one of those old two seater Chevys without the sweet theme song going lightly through my head. Here's a masculine buddy show, two good looking guys, side by side, all the way across the country. Pure and simple, clean and fascinating, both the relationship and the adventures they achieved. I have no doubt that my own cross country odyssey in a little open air two seater from New England to Southern California in the mid 1970s was subconsciously a way to live briefly as Buz or Tod. Can't wait for the DVD which I understand is coming out in a couple of months because the world is a place more lacking for want of reruns of this All American classic.

The romance of the road is alive and well as Tod (Martin Milner) and Buz (George Maharis) cruise the country in their snazzy corvette convertible and get involved in the lives of the people they meet. The series opens by explaining that the boys are lost and a "long way from Route 66," when they find themselves in a backwater Mississippi town that harbors a grim secret. From there, they're on to Louisiana where they get involved with a lady shrimp boat captain and find trouble at the New Orleans waterfront before befriending a Nazi-hunter on an off-shore oil rig.

This was the first drama to be filmed entirely on location (in 40 states and Canada) and the locations were really the key to the unique excitement of each show. The boys were mainly observers, albeit defenders of the underdog and good with their fists if need be. Each show featured many famous stars and well-known character actors; the quality of the acting and the scripts (most by Stirling Silliphant) were first-rate.

Clean-cut and twenty-something Tod and Buz bear no resemblance to the leering sex, drug, and rock and roll-crazed young men we often see on the screen today. Dressed in their button-down shirts and freshly-creased slacks, they were upstanding good guys who solved a town's problems in strictly G Rated style. It's fun to remember the old days through this wonderful series. And who could ever forget that cool theme music?

Simply one of the finest shows from American t.v.This is an undeservedly "lost" show ,amazingly neglected when so many inferior 60's series are wildly overpraised.If you have never seen "Route 66" try to,it's a rare gem.The scripts are not just highly literate,but often close to poetic(no wonder Jim Aubrey,downmarketeer boss at CBS TV disliked it!).There's a great deal of acting talent in the guest roles-Boris Karloff,Lee Marvin,Robert Duvall,Warren Stevens,Lew Ayers,Michael Rennie,Martin Sheen,Dorothy Malone,Ed Asner,Walter Matthau,Edward Andrews,Leslie Nielson,Anne Francis,Jack Lord,William Shatner and Dan Duryea are just a few to look out for.The two part story "Fly away home" has a haunting tortured performance by Michael Rennie as a doomed pilot;"Welcome to Amity"featuring Susan Oliver is both uplifting and truly moving; in "A month of Sundays" the "Route 66" camera captures Anne Francis at the peak of her stunning beauty and series regular Martin Milner gives the performance of his life as a drug crazed Tod Stiles in "A thin white line".These are just some of the highlights in "Route 66".The location filming (unusual then and now),provides a marvellous time capsule of a now vanished America.