What's on TV? Thursday, May 7, 1981

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were still hosting Sneak Previews back in 1981, when their viewing included these two blockbuster movies. According to IMDb, the other movies reviewed on the program included Hardly Working, Breaker Morant, and Mon Oncle D'Amerique. The dogs of the week were Alice Sweet Alice (Roger) and Going Ape! (Gene).

I'm convinced that Bosom Buddies exists only to prove that even the biggest stars have to go through some kind of purgatory before making it to the big time.

As long as Hollywood Squares had Paul Lynde and George Gobel, it still had a chance.

My thought in looking at WTCN's afternoon lineup, as was the case with KMSP, is that this is where classic television fans come from. Not that I'm a fan of the shows here; my point is that it's the after-school watching that kids used to do, with shows that had been aired in the recent past, that makes the impression on them. In my case, for instance, I remember Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea not from their original runs, even though they were on when I was growing up; it was when I watched them in the afternoon a few years later that they became part of my television cultural heritage.

This is when KTCI, the companion PBS station in the Twin Cities, was in its phase of showing repeats from what KTCA had shown earlier in the day (or week). For example, unless I miss my guess, the Mystery episode tonight aired on the big station Tuesday, featuring one of the lesser-known (to me, anyway) British detective series, "Sergeant Cribb" (Alan Dobie). TV