In the early, pre-Barnabas Collins, days of Dark Shadows, the show tried to behave like a normal soap opera, albeit with Gothic trappings. The main storylines centered around Victoria Winters, a grown-up orphan who had come to Collinsport to take a job as governess to the young Collins heir because of a hint she had received that … Continue reading THE PERRY MASON/DARK SHADOWS CONNECTION, PT. 3: Dennis Patrick
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THE PERRY MASON/DARK SHADOWS CONNECTION, PT. 2: John Lasell
Hollywood cemeteries are strewn with the graves of thousands of forgotten actors and, for most of us, John Lasell is one of them. He had a respectable twenty-five year long career, mostly on television where he hit the ground running in 1960 and made single appearances on a wide variety of classic shows. One of … Continue reading THE PERRY MASON/DARK SHADOWS CONNECTION, PT. 2: John Lasell
CREATIVE HOPSCOTCH: The Perry Mason/Dark Shadows Connection
You all know how much I love Erle Stanley Gardner, especially his most famous creation, defense attorney extraordinaire Perry Mason. For the past few years, I’ve been weaving across the Mason canon and, as is my wont, whenever I review a novel, I like to cover any film adaptations that exist. On that score, I tend to … Continue reading CREATIVE HOPSCOTCH: The Perry Mason/Dark Shadows Connection
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE PROBLEM OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
Let’s talk about the public domain. Because, frankly, I’m confused. “Every year when the clock strikes midnight on January 1, while most people are singing Auld Lang Syne and partying with their loved ones, copyright lawyers and librarians celebrate a different occasion: the annual expansion of the public domain, AKA Public Domain Day. All copyrights … Continue reading SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE PROBLEM OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
NETFLIX CLOCKS IN: Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials
You probably won’t ever find me sitting on a panel extolling the superiority of Agatha Christie’s thrillers. Oh, there’s fun to be had, but there’s also a good deal of silliness: Christie veered toward ideological conspiracies and hidden master criminals a lot. Still, even in the absence of Marple or Poirot, she could be clever … Continue reading NETFLIX CLOCKS IN: Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials
NEW YEARS EVIL AT THE COBEN-CABANA
On a cold and rainy weekend in Northern California, I curled up on my sofa with a cat on either side of me and binge-watched all eight hours of Harlen Coben’s Run Away on Netflix. AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Coben has written nearly forty books – well, they’re not books actually; they’re more like Rube Goldberg contraptions in print. They … Continue reading NEW YEARS EVIL AT THE COBEN-CABANA
BRAD TAKES THE COLBERT QUESTIONERT
Something a little different today . . . Citing financial reasons, CBS has cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The timing couldn’t be worse. Colbert has the #1 rated program on late night TV and, quite frankly, his hilarious political commentary has gotten me through a rough ten years. We’ve waded through the dirty morass … Continue reading BRAD TAKES THE COLBERT QUESTIONERT
CRIME WATCH: New Mysteries on TV
A new trailer has dropped for the upcoming third Knives Out movie, Wake Up, Dead Man. The lovely thing about it is that it is heavy on imagery and light on spoilers, and it trumpets to the skies that it concerns what detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) calls “for a man of reason the Holy Grail” – an … Continue reading CRIME WATCH: New Mysteries on TV
G-G-G-GAME CHANGER: Poker Face, Season Two
I’d like to see you try and name a better mystery series on TV these days than Poker Face. Creator Rian Johnson (Knives Out) has taken the beloved Columbo formula and gone one better by creating the delightful cocktail-waitress turned amateur sleuth Charlie Cale, played by the ever-delightful Natasha Lyonne. Season One chronicled Charlie’s cross-country adventures trying to elude … Continue reading G-G-G-GAME CHANGER: Poker Face, Season Two
ENCORE: More TV Mysteries to Watch
After recently reviewing the first two episodes of Netflix’s The Residence and a few other series, I received a request and two suggestions. So here I am, delivering on my . . . well, I promised nothing, and nobody asked. So here goes. The request came from Hannah, who was interested to hear what I thought about The … Continue reading ENCORE: More TV Mysteries to Watch
