TV Night - Fishing with John

Film director Jim Jarmusch (holding cheese slice) tries to
coax a shark to the surface for actor & musician
John Lurie (holding gun) to shoot.  This is not a
recommended way of catching fish, but it will work.

John Lurie is a musician (founding a band called the Lounge Lizards), an actor (starring in Stranger than Paradise by Jim Jarmusch for example) and an artist (whose work has been shown in New York, Amsterdam and Moscow, where his work Bear Surprise became a sensation), who has some interesting friends.

In 1991, Lurie decided to combine his eccentric friends, including Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Matt Dillon, Willem Defoe and Dennis Hopper, with his total blissful ignorance of fishing to bring this six episode television show from the Independent Film Channel.

With episodes that include hunting shark off Montauk, New York & meeting up with a mystical jungle fisherman in the wilds of Costa Rica who shows the sportsmen an ancient fishing dance, Fishing with John is not a show if you are looking for tips on how to catch fish.

However, if you are into the absurd and enjoy the interaction between extremely creative people, then Fishing with John is a show for you.

Check it out!!! (WP)(AMG)(IMDB)(RT)

TV Night - Freaks and Geeks

The freaks and the geeks

If there needed to be any more proof of the horrible nature of American TV, the way the series Freaks and Geeks was treated is that proof.

This series, which ran for one season on NBC, starred Linda Cardellini as Lindsey Weir and John Francis Daley as Sam Weir.  With story arcs that tracked their lives during the 1980-1981 school ear at William McKinley High School, just outside Detroit, the series was a case study of life in American high schools.

Lindsey Weir has been a model student until now.  Getting good grades and participating as a "mathlete", Lindsey starts to question the world around her after the death of her grandmother.

She begins hanging out with the "freaks" of the title.  Daniel Desario (James Franco), Ken Miller (Seth Rogan), Nick Andopolis (Jason Segel) and Kim Kelly (Busy Philipps) hate school, like rock music and just like to hang out.

Sam Weir is new to high school and feels like a fish out of water.  He and his "geek" friends Neal Schweiber (Samm Levine) and Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) enjoy comic books, science fiction and comedy.

The Weir family is rounded out by their parents, Harold (Joe Flaherty), a sporting goods store owner and their mother, Jean (Becky Ann Baker), a stay at home mom.

After running for less than a season, NBC cancelled the series, without having at least the decency to finish the run of the series.

Eventually, Fox Family picked up the last few episodes, but the series was doomed.

For the next four years, the series obtained an almost cult status while fans (and others who just wanted to watch good TV) clamored for a DVD release.

Producers and music industry types worked to hammer out expensive details regarding the original music in the series and an expansive DVD box set was finally released in 2004.

If you are interested in well written, well acted television, you will enjoy the Judd Apatow produced series that should have be given more of a chance that it got.

You should...

...check it out!!! (WP)(AMG)(IMDB)

TV Night - The Avengers

Patrick Macnee as John Steed and
Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale
during the second season of
"The Avengers"

Before the bowler hats, the Savile Row suits and the campy (yet, still awesome) storylines, there was a very well written spy-fi series.

The first iteration of the series "The Avengers" starred Ian Hendry as Dr. David Keel.  In the first episode, Dr. Keel meets up with a gentleman by the name of John Wickham Gascoyne Berresford Steed (Patrick Macnee) who not only helps him but talks him into working with him on other cases.

Unfortunately, only two of these episodes survive, neither available to the public.

For the second season, John Steed became the star of the show.  An agent with "the Ministry," Steed works with nightclub singer Venus Smith (Julie Stevens), Dr. Martin King (Jon Rollason) and, most importantly, Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), a widower who is not only an anthropologist but is also an expert in Judo.  Steed and his assistants work to solve cases involving rogue diamond merchants, Irish thieves and computer experts.

Macnee as John Steed and
Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in later seasons of
"The Avengers"

Blackman went on to star in the James Bond classic, "Goldfinger", but the series continued, (famously) with Macnee along with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel.

A little bit of trivia, Patrick Macnee is "an avid nudist" & "once invited Honor Blackman to watch him play tennis in the nude, an invitation she declined."

You should....

Check it out!!! (WP)(AMG)(IMDB)