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Watching The Detectives

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This week, a retrospective of TV detectives inspired by a Tweet and begun on that other podcast. Then, the curious media coverage around Kim Jong Un's sister at the Olympics, Black Panther is here to save the world, the guys tell you what they are currently watching, and for the kids in our audience, a discussion about long departed talk show host Merv Griffin.

Hosts:
John PodhoretzJonah GoldbergRob Long

Discussion (32)

  • EJHill@EJHill
    Merv Griffin actually hosted The Tonight Show during the transition between Jack Paar and Carson. He was one of many guest hosts that was considered for the post and lost out to Johnny. But NBC was sufficiently impressed to reward him with a daytime talk show. Unfortunately that lasted just one season. Two other things: It was a gentleman named Dick Wesson who was the voice of Quinn Martin Productions, not William Conrad. And Conrad wasn’t always obese. He was considered for the TV role of Matt Dillon but when he didn’t get it he continued to play the role on radio. Both series ran concurrently from 1955 to 1961. The original run of Gunsmoke on television recycled many of the radio scripts. (The show was a half hour long its first six seasons.) One thing that isn’t widely remembered about Conrad is that he was also a decent director. He had 30 episodes of weekly television to his credit - including directing Jim Arness in two episodes of Gunsmoke.
  • OccupantCDN@OccupantCDN

    I used to get home from work at like 8:30 am and I used to love to watch all the old detective shows being re-run on A&E.

    I really liked Banacek, because it was rarely a murder mystery - it seemed more realistic for a PI to be involved in insurance cases, than a murder case where the police would brook no interference. Remington Steele was also a favorite.

    While its great to discuss old time TV - What do you think of the state of the art detectives? Maybe of the last decade or so?

    Castle, CSI, NCIS, Chuck? (because of netflix), Rizzoli and Isles, Lucifer? Maybe going back for Veronica Mars?

    TV has certainly changed from the classics ... More minorities, more scandalous plots, less episodic. While they're now less "Preachy" than they used to be "Major Crimes/The Closer" being an exception - they all have an episode or 2 where they fall into it.

    As for the good stuff to watch right now - I recently finished "Altered Carbon" (10 episodes in the first season) and would recommend it. Its a fantastic thought experiment on a dystopian future where even death can be cheated for a price.

  • Mrs. Ink@MrsInk

    You forgot the great Peter Gunn, Magnum, P. I., and Miami Vice.

    Rockford was a doofus.

    Murder, She Wrote was a copy of many golden age and even recent British mysteries, many of which were set in villages of 2,000 souls and had about murder a month.

    I wish you would talk about Comrade Detective. I liked it and found it wonderfully weird until the last episode, which fell flat for me.

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