If you haven't seen The Prisoner yet, you may want to skip the first fifteen or so minutes of this podcast, because we talk about the whole damn thing this week. Jason Hughes and Allison Waldman join me to talk about the AMC remake of the British cult classic, as well as these topics:
Another dip into our Ask TV Squad mailbag, where we discuss the use of laugh tracks and why multi-camera shows are written differently than single-camera shows,
As usual, the music at the beginning and end of the podcast is "Life" by Justin Trawick. Though I decided to add a small surprise at the beginning, a call-back to an interview I did a few years ago. Hope you enjoy it.
Wow, it's one thing to write about the death of someone like Edward Woodward, someone who was older and not in good health, but it's another thing to write about the death of someone only 52. Ken Ober, who hosted the classic (well, in my mind it's a classic) MTV game show Remote Control in the late 80s, died yesterday of unknown causes.
If you've never seen Remote Control, it was a wacky pop culture trivia game show that supposedly was filmed in Ober's basement. Besides being a really fun game show (especially for someone raised on television), it costarred a lot of people who later became household names, such as Adam Sandler, Denis Leary, and Colin Quinn.
Ah, another day, another list. This one is from PopCrunch, and it lists the 25 Best Game Shows of All-Time. And yes, it will provoke discussion and hair-pulling.
It's not a bad list actually, as these things go. It's a little predictable (and I certainly wouldn't have included Love Connection, Deal or No Deal, or Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?), but there are some good choices here. Press Your Luck was a great show (though it should be higher on the list), and it's hard to argue with how high shows like Jeopardy and The Price is Right are. I also like that they included The Mole (the first two Anderson Cooper-hosted seasons) and Remote Control.