The 50th Anniversary of Charlie's Angels

It was 50 years ago today that, on September 22, 1976, that Charlie's Angels debuted on ABC. The show would prove to be an immediate hit, ranking no. 5 during its first season and continued to do well for its next few seasons. While ratings for Charlie's Angels would eventually falter and it would be cancelled after five seasons, it would not only prove to be a success in syndication, but would lead to feature films and even reboot series.

Charlie's Angels centred on three female private investigators who work for the Charles Townsend Agency. The original Angels were Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson), who was the level headed brains of the three women, Jill Monroe (Farrah Fawcett), the action-seeking athlete of the group, and Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), the cool, calm glamour girl of the group. Assisting the Angels was Charles Townsend Agency employee John Bosley (David Doyle). As to Charlie (the voice of John Forsythe), the Angels had never met him in person nor would they ever meet him in person. He gave the Angels their assignments via speaker phone. Charlie had many enemies, so he never met the Angels face to face in order to protect them. While the Angels had never met Charlie, Bosley had. In the initial concept, the Angels were all graduates of the Police Academy who found themselves unhappy in their work after being given menial assignments. This would be changed for the final season.

Charlie's Angels was created by writers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, who had written the classic movie White Heat (1949) and for such shows as Burke's Law, Ironside, and Mannix. Due to the success of Police Woman starring Angie Dickinson, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts developed an idea for a TV show titled The Alley Cats, which would centre on three beautiful female private eyes. It was early in the pre-production of the series that producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg brought Kate Jackson, who had earlier appeared in their series The Rookies, onto the project. Kate Jackson was initially cast as Kelly Garrett, but found himself more drawn to the role of Sabrina Duncan. She then asked for her role to be switched. She also disliked the title The Alley Cats and requested that the title be changed. Kate Jackson partially came up with the new title after seeing a picture of angels in Aaron Spelling's office. She then suggested the three women could be called "Angels." The series would then be called Harry's Angels, with the Angel's boss being named "Harry." ABC objected to the title, worrying it could be confused with the show Harry O starring David Janssen. What had started out as The Alley Cats and was then named Harry's Angels was renamed Charlie's Angels.

Farrah Fawcett was the second Angel to be cast. At the time, she was married to Lee Majors and so she was billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Aaron Spelling had seen her in the movie Logan's Run (1976) and offered her the part of Jill Monroe. Auditions were held for the role of Kelly Garrett. Initially Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg had wanted the women to be a brunette, a blonde, and a redhead, but the role ultimately went to brunette Jaclyn Smith because of how she interacted with Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.

Initially, Charlie would have been a millionaire who assisted the Angels in the field. It was Kate Jackson and Aaron Spelling who decided that Charles Townsend should be more of a mystery. While Charlie remained a millionaire, he communicated with the Angels only by speaker phone. Gig Young was originally cast as Charlie, but showed up so drunk he could not even read his line. In a panic as to what to do, Aaron Spelling made an emergency call to his friend John Forsythe, who was already in bed. John Forsythe rushed to 20th Century Fox wearing only his topcoat and pyjamas and read the lines. John Forsythe then became Charles Townsend.

Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg cast David Doyle as John Bosley. ABC was concerned that audiences would not accept three women fighting crime more or less on their own, so for the pilot David Ogden Stiers was cast as Scott Woodville, who was Charlie's second in command and hence both the Angels and Bosley's superior. As it turned out, the character of Scott Woodville was not well-received by audiences. Aaron Spelling, who felt having both Woodville and Bosley was redundant, used this as leverage to persuade network executives that the character should be cut from the show.. Bosley would then remain the Angel's only liaison with Charlie.

Charlie's Angels proved to be a hit in the ratings, and ultimately ranked no. 5 for the year in the Nielsen ratings for the 1976-1977 season. While television viewers loved Charlie's Angels, many critics dismissed the show as fluff, lacking any substance at all. Worse yet, many critics labelled "Jiggle television" or "T&A Television," the term "Jiggle television" having been coined by NBC executive Paul Klein as a criticism of ABC under Fred Silverman's leadership. Other shows labelled "jiggle television" while Fred Silverman was president of ABC Entertainment were Three's Company and Wonder Woman.

Although Charlie's Angels was labelled "jiggle TV" and developed a reputation for putting its actresses in skimpy costumes, none of this was actually warranted. The vast majority of time the Angels wore what could be described smart streetwear: blazers, button-down blouses, turtlenecks, and the like. The only time that any of the Angels might appear in skimpy clothing was only under very circumstances, such as at a pool party or in a beauty pageant. Indeed, it was in Kate Jackson's contract that she would never appear in a bikini.

The success of Charlie's Angels resulted in a proposed spinoff series. The fourth season episode "Toni's Boys" was a backdoor pilot for show to be called Toni's Boys. It would have essentially been Charlie's Angels with the genders reversed. Toni Blake, played by the legendary Barbara Stanwyck, had her own detective agency in which she employed three handsome young men as her operatives. Unlike Charlie, who always remained hidden from the Angels, Toni ran her agency in person. Ultimately, ABC did not pick Toni's Boys up as a series.

During its run, Charlie's Angels would go through several cast changes. The first and most famous would be when Farrah Fawcett left the show after its first season. Farrah Fawcett left the show for multiple reasons, including the desire to pursue a movie career as well as the intense production schedule of a weekly television series. She had no formal long-term contract, so this would result in a protracted legal battle with ABC.Ultimately, Farrah Fawcett agreed to return for six guest appearances. On the show, it was explained that Jill Monroe had left the Charles Townsend Agency to become a race car driver.

Farrah Fawcett's departure necessitated the search for a new Angel. Eventually Cheryl Ladd had been the singing voice of Melody on the animated series Josie and the Pussycats and had made guest appearances on such shows as The Partridge Family and The Rookies. She was cast as Kris Munroe, Jill Munroe's sister. Cheryl Ladd would remain with the show for the rest of its run.

As Charlie's Angels continued, Kate Jackson became disenchanted with the show. She felt the script quality had declined dramatically from what it was in the first season. During the third season, she was offered the role of Joanna Kramer in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) , but the production schedule of Charlie's Angels forced her to turn the role down. Ultimately, Kate Jackson asked to be released from her contract.

Several actresses would be considered as Kate Jackson's replacement. Among them were Barbara Bach, Connie Sellecca, Shari Belafonte, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Ultimately, Shelly Hack was cast as Tiffany Welles. At the time, she was best known as the face of Revlon's Charlie perfume. Unfortunately, Shelley Hack was not well received. Critics attacked her acting ability. Audiences did not warm to her either. Charlie's Angels ranked no. 10 for the year in its third season. With its fourth season, it dropped to no. 20. Ultimately, Shelley Hack would be fired from Charlie's Angels.

As Shelley Hack's successor, supposedly 2000 actress applied to be the new Angel. Among those who tried for the role were Jayne Kennedy and Susie Coelho. Ultimately the role went to Tanya Roberts, who had appeared in such movies as The Yum-Yum Girls (1976) and Tourist Trap (1979) and had guest starred on the show Vega$. Tanya Roberts's character Julie Rogers was a sharp break from earlier Angels. While previous Angels had all been graduates of police academy, Julie was a model who had a rough background including a six month stint in the Sybil Brand Correctional Facility.

While Tanya Roberts appeared to be better received by audiences than Shelly Hack had been, ratings for Charlie's Angels would plummet in its fifth season. Having aired on Wednesday night for its entire run, ABC moved Charlie's Angels to Sunday night where it faced the high-rate Archie Bunker's Place and One Day at a Time on CBS and the high rated CHiPs on NBC. ABC would move Charlie's Angels back to Wednesday at mid-season, but it was too little too late. For the first time ever, Charlie's Angels did not rank in the top thirty for the season in the Nielsen ratings. In the end, Charlie's Angels was cancelled after five seasons.

This would hardly be the end of Charlie's Angels. It proved to have a successful run as a syndicated rerun. It would air on such cable channels as TNT, TV Land, and Cloo, and on such digital broadcast networks as MeTV, Cozi TV, and get TV. It is currently available on several streaming services, including Crackle, Plex, Prime Video, The Roku Channel, and Tubi.

Charlie's Angels would also become a franchise years after the show had been cancelled. The movies Charlie's Angels (2000) and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) could very nearly be considered sequels to the original series, with John Forsythe returning as Charlie. A reboot of the original show aired on ABC during the 2011-2012 season, but was cancelled after only seven episodes. Yer another film, this one again titled Charlie's Angels, was released in 2019.

During its original run, Charlie's Angels was dismissed as fluff and worse yet as "Jiggle TV." From today's perspective, it seems that critics were not giving the show enough credit. True, Charlie's Angels was not Playhouse 90, but it was not necessarily a bad show either. Shelley Hack may have said it best in an article in People after she had been cast on the show, "Of course it's fluff, but high-grade fluff. You don't compare Agatha Christie to Tolstoy."

What is more, it was high-grade fluff with an important subtext. Before Charlie's Angels, there were only a few action-adventure shows with female leads. In the Sixties, there were The Avengers, Honey West, and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. In the Seventies, there were Police Woman and Wonder Woman. And on most of these shows, the female leads were assisted by a male character. The Angels were intelligent, independent, and competent women who fought crime on their own (Bosley really wasn't that much help). Girls and yong women at a time when women only recently had gotten the right to have their own credit card could look to the Angels and realize that they were not limited to the traditionally female occupations of the era. Charlie's Angels may have been an escapist show, but it was one with an important underlying message.

Thank You for A Successful Blogathon

I want to thank everyone for a successful 13th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon. Provided no unforeseen circumstances occur between now and next September, I can guarantee the blogathon will return next September! 

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

(This post is a part of the 13th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon, hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts)

The 1940s saw a number of supernatural fantasy films on both sides of the Pond. From Hollywood emerged such movies as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), I Married a Witch (1942), It's a Wonderful Life (1946). The British film industry produced such films as The Ghost Train (1941), Blithe Spirit (1945), and Miranda (1948). Arguably, the greatest British supernatural fantasy of the 1940s was A Matter of Life and Death (1946). The movie was produced, written, and directed by The Archers, a film-making partnership consisting of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It counted among the best movies The Archers ever made, and they made some of the greatest movies of all time.

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) centres on RAF Squadron Leader Peter David Carter (David Niven), who miraculously survives after parachuting out of his damaged Lancaster bomber over the English Channel. As it turns out, Peter was supposed to die, but survived when his guide to the afterlife, Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) failed to find him in the dense fog. By the time Conductor 71 does make contact with Peter, he has already met and is in the process of falling in love with June (Kim Hunter), a United States Army Air Forces radio operator stationed in England. Fortunately, Conductor 71 tells Peter than he had been granted an appeal. If he can prove his case before a Heavenly court, he will be allowed to return to life.

The origins of A Matter of Life and Death (1946) emerged from World War II. After being united for much of the war, friction began to reemerge between the United Kingdom and the United States late in the war. Jack Beddington, head of the British Ministry of Information’s film commission, then approached The Archers about making a film that would address this friction. Fortunately, for movie lovers everywhere, the Archers agreed to do so. To a degree, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) had some basis in a true story. On March 24, 1944, RAF tail gunner Nicholas Alkemade bailed out of his failing Lancaster bomber from 18,000 feet without a parachute and miraculously survived. Another source of inspiration was the 1938 book Journey Around My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy, which chronicled his experience with a non-cancerous brain tumour and the surgery to remove it. To this mix, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger added a plot involving a romance between a British serviceman and an American, and the plot involving the Heavenly court.

From the beginning, The Archers wanted David Niven to play Peter. This would not set well with actor Marius Goring. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger offered him the role of Conductor 71, but he wanted to play Peter instead. Messrs. Powell and Pressburger solved the problem by telling Mr. Goring that if he turned down the role of Conductor 71, it would go to Peter Ustinov instead. For the role of June, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had no particular actress in mind, beyond the fact that they wanted an American. They went to Hollywood with the goal of casting the role of June, and even considered Betty Field, who turned out to be in a play on Broadway. It was Alfred Hitchcock who suggested Kim Hunter. Mr. Hitchcock had used Miss Hunter to read lines off-camera for Ingrid Bergman's screen test for Spellbound (1945). 

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) was filmed at D&P Studios and Denham Studios in Denham, Buckinghamshire.The scene on the beach in which Peter meets June after he bailed out of his plane was filmed at  Saunton Sands in Devon. The village seen through the camera obscura belonging to Dr. Reeves (Roger Livesey) was Middle Street in Shere, Surrey. The film was shot from September 2, 1945, to December 2, 1945. 

Pre-production on A Matter of Life and Death (1946) would be both long and complicated.  Much of this was due to the construction of the escalator (nicknamed "Ethel") that connects Earth to Heaven above. The escalator was built under the supervision of the London Passenger Transport Board. It took three months to build  £3,000 to build (that's £116,226.85 today). Ethel was massive. It had 106 steps, each of which was 20 feet wide. To power Ethel, it took a 12 horsepower engine. Over the years, film trivia sites and accounts of the production have claimed that Ethel was so noisy that all dialogue had to be dubbed in post-production. This seems unlikely given cinematographer Jack Cardiff has said that the escalator was completely silent.

With regards to the photography in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), it can be considered the reverse of The Wizard of Oz (1939). The scenes in Heaven were in black-and-white, while the scenes on Earth were in colour. One might think the scenes in Heaven were shot in black-and-white, but in truth they were shot in three-strip Technicolor. When the scenes were printed, color simply was not added.  As a result, the scenes in Heaven look different from most black-and-white movies of the time. In the credits, the process is referred to as ""Colour and Dye-Monochrome Processed in Technicolor." 

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) would be historic as the first film chosen for the Royal Film Performance. This occurred on November 1, 1946, at the Empire Theatre in London. It went into wide release in the United Kingdom on December 15, 1946. A Matter of Life and Death (1946) opened under the title Stairway to Heaven in New York City on Christmas Day, December 25, 1946. The title was changed for American audiences because of Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin, who were marketing the movie in the US. They argued that films with "death" in the title had never done well at the American box office. Emeric Pressburger pointed out the obvious example of Death Takes a Holiday (1934), but Messrs. Krim and Benjamin argued it only did well because Death was on holiday and hence there would be no death in the movie. A Matter of Life and Death (1946) did very well at the box office in the United Kingdom. In North America, it made $1.75 million, a respectable amount for the era.

While the public clearly loved A Matter of Life and Death (1946), critics in 1946 did not quite know what to make of the movie.  E.W. and M.M. Robson thought with A Matter of Life and Death (1946), The Archers  intended to "bash the British in the sight of our Allies." A critic in The Observer was puzzled by the film's tone, writing that it "leaves us in grave doubts whether it is intended to be serious or gay." American critics were much more receptive of the movie. Surprisingly, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times gave A Matter of Life and Death (or Stairway of Heaven, as it was called in the United States) a positive review. He wrote in his review, "And if you will listen now to this reviewer you will hear that the delicate charm, the adult humor and visual virtuosity of this Michael Powell—Emeric Pressburger film render it indisputably the best of a batch of Christmas shows."

Of course, now A Matter of Life and Death (1946) is not only regarded as one of the best supernatural fantasies of the 1940s on both sides of the Atlantic, but one of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's best films. Indeed, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) is an extraordinarily sophisticated film. The "other world" in the film is never referred to as Heaven, although there are several clues that it could be, including a brief scene of individuals being measured for angel wings. It is also unclear whether Carter's visit to a another world and the celestial court are real or simply hallucinations produced by his damaged brain. There are things in the plot of the film that can support both ideas. This sets A Matter of Life and Death (1946) apart from other films of the era, such as It's a Wonderful Life (1946), in which the events in the movie are undeniably real.

While the movie has an impeccable script, in addition to the direction of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and the cinematography of Jack Cardiff, it would not have succeeded without David Niven, Kim Hunter, and the rest of the cast. There isn't one bad performance in the entire film.

British critics were a bit baffled and even offended by A Matter of Life and Death (1946) upon its release, although it proved to be a favourite with audiences on both sides of the Pond. If there is a reason for its success, beyond the fact that it is a very sophisticated movie, it's that it is a film that insists, to paraphrase Song of Solomon 8:6, love is stronger than death. For those who have lost someone or very nearly lost someone, this is a powerful message and one that is full of hope. While there I have no doubt it had an impact on those who had lost loved ones during World War II, it still has an impact to this day.

The 13th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon

The 13th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon is Here! While many think of Hollywood when they think of movies, the fact is that many classic films originated in the United Kingdom. From the Gainsborough melodramas to the Ealing comedies to the Hammer Horrors, the United Kingdom has made many contributions to classic film. The Rule, Britannia Blogathon will run from Friday, September 18 to Sunday, September 20 2026.

Without further ado, here are this year's entries

Realweeegiemidget  Reviews: "FILMS… Revisiting Richard O’Sullivan, as a Hip Young Thing in an Early British Slasher Movie" 
Realweeegiemidget  Reviews:  "FILMS… Soft Top, Hard Shoulder (1993)"

Silver Screenings: "Monday at the Theatre: Curtain Up (1952)" 

Smoke in the Library: "Villain"

Films from Beyond the Time Barrier: "What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Four Sided Triangle"

Diary of a Movie Maniac: "If... (1968)"

Crítica Retrô: "Um Gosto de Mel (1961)/A Taste of Honey"

johnrieber: "O Lucky Man! Malcolm McDowell’s “Seinfeld” Connection!!"

Liberal England: "Sammy Going South, Suez and the end of the British Empire" 

A Shroud of Thoughts: "A Matter of Life and Death (1946)"

Moon in Gemini: "The 13th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon: Waking Ned Devine (1998)"

The Spirochaete Trail: "Kill List (aka There's A Bigger Picture In The Business World)"

18 Cinema Lane: "Take 3: The Winslow Boy (1948) Review"

Godspeed Leslie Parrish

Leslie Parrish, who appeared in the movies Li'l Abner (1959) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and guest starred on shows from 77 Sunset Strip to Star Trek, died on November 14, 2025 at the age of 90. Her death was not made public until late August.

Leslie Parrish was born Marjorie Hellen in Melrose, Massachusetts on March 18, 1935. She grew up in Black Eddy, Pennsylvania. She studied piano when she was very young and studied piano and composition at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music when in her early teens. She was 19 when she became a model with the Conover Agency in New York City, primarily to earn money to continue her education at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. She was "Miss Colour-TV" for NBC, who used her to check skin tones for their colour broadcasts. It was not long before she was signed to Twentieth Century Fox.

At Twentieth Century Fox, she appeared in the movies A Man Called Peter (1955), Daddy Long Legs (1955), The Virgin Queen (1955), How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955), The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), and The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956). She signed with MGM in 1956 and for the remainder of the 1950s she appeared in such movies as The Power and the Prize (1956), The Opposite Sex (1956), Hot Summer Night (1957), Man on Fire (1957), Missile to the Moon (1958), Tank Battalion (1959), and Li'l Abner (1959). She made her television debut in 1959 in an episode of Steve Canyon. In the Fifties, she guest starred on the shows 77 Sunset Strip; The Rough Riders; Bold Venture; Tightrope; The Aquanauts; The Roaring 20s; Bat Masterson; Hawaiian Eye; The Red Skelton Show; Perry Mason and Michael Shayne.

In the Sixties, Leslie Parrish's career shifted largely to television. She guest starred on the shows Acapulco; Hot Off the Wire;77 Sunset Strip; Bringing Up Buddy; Follow the Sun; Surfside 6; Perry Mason; Bachelor Father; The Red Skelton Show; Hawaiian Eye; Alcoa Premiere; Channing; The Lieutenant; Kraft Suspense Theatre; Kentucky Jones; The Reporter; My Three Sons; The Wild Wild West; Tarzan; Batman; Star Trek; Good Morning, World; The Man From U.N.C.L.E.; Insight; Iron Horse; The Big Valley; My Friend Tony; Family Affair; Petticoat Junction; To Rome with Love; Love, American Style; and Mannix. She appeared in the movies Portrait of a Mobster (1961), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), For Love or Money (1963), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Three on a Couch (1966), The Money Jungle (1967), The Candy Man (1969), The Devil's 8 (1969), and Brother, Cry for Me (1970).

In the Seventies, she guest starred on Love, American Style; Hogan's Heores; Bearcats!; Marcus Welby, M.D.; Cade's County; O'Hara. United States Treasury; Adam-12;The Magician; McCloud; Logan's Run; and Police Story. She appeared in the movies The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), Crash! (1976), and The Astral Factor (1979). After the Seventies, Leslie Parrish retired from acting to focus on social activism and environmental causes.

Leslie Parrish was certainly lovely, which explains why she was so much in demand as a love interest in movies and TV shows, but her presence on film and television went well beyond merely being ornamental. Leslie Parrish had real talent and could play a variety of roles. She may be best remembered as Daisy Mae, who was hopelessly in love with Abner in L'il Abner, and the sweet, but ill-fated Jocelyn Jordan in The Manchurian Candidate, but she could play roles well-removed from those. In the Batman episode "Ice Spy"/"The Duo Defy," she played the glamorous, slightly narcissistic ice skater Glacia Glaze, who was working hand in hand with Mr. Freeze (Eli Wallach). In the Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?,' she played archaeologist and anthropologist Lt. Carolyn Palomas, who becomes the focus of the god Apollo's attentions. In the Wild Wild West episode "The Night of the Flying pie plate she played the leader of a trio of female con artists claiming to be from Venus. In Three on a Couch, she played Southern belle Mary Lou Mauve, one of three women dated by Christopher Pride (Jerry Lewis). Leslie Parrish was a remarkable actress with a great deal of talent, who also accomplished a lot with regards to various social and political causes.

Thoughts on the 60th Anniversary of The Monkees

Sixty years ago today, on September 12, 1966, The Monkees debuted on NBC. The Monkees would go onto become a cultural phenomenon, resulting in a highly successful recording career, a movie, and two television specials. It has also been my favourite sitcom since childhood. The Monkees also remain my favourite American band of all time. I already wrote an extensive post on the occasion of The Monkees' 50th anniversary, so today I will simply write my personal remembrance of both the show and the band.

The earliest I can remember watching The Monkees is when reruns of the show joined CBS's Saturday morning line-up in 1969. That having been said, I remember being excited when I saw the ads announcing The Monkees was coming to CBS, so I must have been aware of the show or the band before then. Given my age, it's possible I may have seen at least part of the original primetime run of The Monkees on NBC. I had certainly heard The Monkees by that time. My much older sister owned their albums and they were constantly played on the radio in thee mid to late Sixties. 

Regardless, I became hooked on the TV show when it was rerun on Saturday afternoons on CBS. According to my siblings, I could not be moved from the TV set and would throw a tantrum if my parents insisted that I did. I played my older sister's records and even cut the 33 1/3 records off Post Cereal boxes that came out in 1970. In 1972, The Monkees moved to ABC, although it was regularly preempted by sporting events, which did not make me happy.

The Monkees entered syndication in 1975, although I would not get to see it regularly. None of the stations carried it in the Columbia/Jefferson City market, and our reception of the St. Louis stations could be hit and miss. I wouldn't get to see it again until February 23, 1986 when MTV showed a marathon of The Monkees. A lot of times we learn that things we enjoyed as children really weren't that good, but that was not the case with The Monkees. I loved it as much in my early twenties as I did when I was five years old. The marathon was such a success that it sparked renewed interest in The Monkees. MTV began airing it daily and Nick-At-Nite also picked it up. Local stations began airing The Monkees again. I was able to watch it on KPLR out of St. Louis.

Unfortunately, MTV, Nick-At-Nite,  and local stations would eventually drop The Monkees, and I would go years without seeing it again. I did watch the special Hey, Hey, It's The Monkees that aired on ABC on February 17, 1997, but as much as I loved it, it wasn't the same as the original series.  Fortunately, in 2000 it was rerun back to back with The Partridge Family as part of the Screen Gems Network that was syndicated to local stations by Columbia Pictures. This programming block would only last for the summer of 2000, when the two shows were replaced by reruns of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie (the shows that had originally aired on the Screen Gems Network). Fortunately, I would not have to wait so long to watch The Monkees again.

It was in 2003 that Rhino Entertainment released the entire series of The Monkees on DVD, with each of its two seasons in a box set, along with the special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee. Never again would I have to go without watching The Monkees. Not that I would have to. In 2011, Antenna TV began airing The Monkees and did so for years. IFC also aired the show. FETV started showing it in 2017.  In 2019 MeTV began rerunning The Monkees and did so for time. More recently, it was added to Catchy Comedy's schedule. It was only recently that The Monkees became available on streaming. It can be seen on Tubi and The Roku Channel.

As to why The Monkees has remained my favourite sitcom for nearly sixty years, that is difficult to say. Much of it must be nostalgia. The Monkees reminds me of my early childhood, when I didn't have much responsibility and all of my needs were seen to by my parents. Watching The Monkees transports me back to a time when I felt safe and secure and my biggest worry was what was on television on any given day. And it is easy to see why the show would appeal to little boys. Over the course of the show, The Monkees faced gangsters, mad scientists, spies, Western outlaws, and even aliens. And through all of this they played some of the best pop rock songs of the era.

Beyond the nostalgia factor, another reason it is that in many ways The Monkees was ground-breaking. Not only did it employ the sort of zany humour common to sitcoms in the Sixties, but it was meta before meta was a thing. Not only did the show regularly reference pop culture ("The Spy Who Came in From the Cool" referenced both I Dream of Jeannie and From Russia with Love), but The Monkees regularly broke the fourth wall. For a Sixties show, it was very fast-paced and even experimental in nature, using jump cuts, sped-up film, and montages of the sort for which videos on MTV would become known. Indeed, The Monkees won Emmy Awards, including  Outstanding Comedy Series (beating out The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, Get Smart, and Hogan's Heroes) and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy. 

Ultimately, what I think appealed the most to me about The Monkees, especially as a young man, was that no matter what happened, The Monkees won in the end. Here was this down-and-out rock band composed of four twentysomethings who still somehow managed to defeat everything from alien invasions to organized crime to foreign spies. Quite simply, the messages of The Monkees were to never give up in the face of adversity, that even an underdog can win if the cause is just, and that good always defeats evil in the end. As corny as those messages may sound, I think they were important in 1966 and they are still important to this day.

As it is, I think The Monkees will continue to be popular for decades to come. The reruns on CBS and ABC on Saturday morning in the late Sixties and Seventies created a new generation of fans. The syndication run created yet more and the MTV run even more. Each revival of The Monkees has created new fans. Indeed, today I encountered a 19 year-old fan whose favourite show is The Monkees and whose favourite band is The Monkees. She wasn't even born in the century in which the show originated. The Monkees has been popular for sixty years now. I think it will remain popular for sixty more

The 25th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks

25 years later I still don't have words for the worst terrorist attack on our soil in American history. My heart goes out to the survivors of the victims in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93.