Dave's Fiction Warehouse

  J anuary 2025, the last days of democracy in America. So of course I’ve been bingeing ancient episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” It is a way to pass the bleak winter evenings when one has decided to unfollow the bleak winter news. About the show: I’m not kidding when I say ancient. It started in 1955 and ran for seven years, meaning most of these stories are about as old as I am. Like me, some of them have not aged all that well.  But some old things can seem better just by virtue of their age, can’t they? And ’50s TV shows have the rare distinction of looking better now than when they were new. That’s because of high resolution, big-screen TVs. When I saw my first episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (a rerun even then, of course) it was probably on a blurry 19-inch RCA. These days you can spot flaws in the sets and makeup that would have been invisible to viewers in the ’50s. Right now I’m on Season 3. Almost 200 episodes still to go! That’s another thing: Back the...

I've been slow to embrace Mad Men , AMC's drama about ad executives in the early 60s, but I think I'm ready now. I loved the scene in last night's episode where anti-protagonist Don Draper drains his beer and casually hurls the non-recyclable can across the park. And seconds later, when his wife Betty cleans up the family picnic by simply lifting the blanket and letting the litter tumble to the grass. In a couple of minutes, that scene captured the spirit of the age better than 40 pages of dialogue: it was the American way to use it up and move on, preferably in a '62 Coupe De Ville. For me, the charm of this series is not the stories so much as the period detail. I was around 10 years old when people were driving cars the size of PT boats and tossing their trash out the window, but I vividly remember it was a time when that sort of thing was acceptable. I remember when every adult worthy of the title smoked a pack a day, when those Maidenform bra commercials were s...

As much as I liked The Man From U.N.C.L.E as a kid, I don't recall ever lusting to see any particular episode more than once. In fact, we'd usually scorn the summer reruns as being beneath our dignity. Same with Bonanza , or Mannix , or Petticoat Junction . You'd fight for a place in front of the Zenith when they first aired; months later those same shows were of interest only to old farts and invalids who couldn't be bothered to turn off the TV after watching Hollywood Squares . So it's interesting to note the success of various networks selling people stuff they've already seen, and, in the case of Showtime and HBO, already paid for. Apple made waves today by leaking word that it plans to sell HBO shows on iTunes -- for a higher price than its other dog-eared reruns, like The Office . The news is supposed to be the concept of variable pricing, but to me the real shocker is how many millions of people will pony up again and again for the same content. Is th...

We don't watch a lot of TV here at the ancestral manse, and now that "The Sopranos" is history, we watch even less. My current viewing schedule is about the same as it was a decade ago: Reruns of "Seinfeld," mostly, and the odd episode of "American Justice." But whenever the wife and I rave about "The Sopranos," certain friends and relatives keep insisting that the HBO series "The Wire" is not only just as good, but better. Recently we went off to Blockbuster to test the truth of that assertion. The verdict, after viewing the first two episodes: It ain't bad, but it ain't "The Sopranos." What made Tony and the crew so appealing was the constant tension between Tony's role as a modern suburban family man and his role as boss in the volatile and amoral mob. That tension allowed a lot of incisive, surprising and frequently humorous commentary on American life. "The Wire" does deliver some sharp writing, ...