GET-TV. A Go To Channel, Now Showing Gene Roddenberry's THE LIEUTENANT

Tonight they started showing THE LIEUTENANT on Get-TV. 28.2 on rabbit ears, 998 on Time Warner. (Check your local listings) THE LIEUTENANT is a drama about a marine at Camp Pendleton in the early 60s. Reruns have not been broadcast for over 50 years! It's the 1st series produced by Gene Roddenberry before he did STAR TREK. Most of the TREK actors appear in episodes of THE LIEUTENANT. I just watched one episode tonight as Nichelle Nicols (Uhura) played a waitress! The star Gary Lockwood was in the 2nd STAR TREK pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before") and also later in the classic 1968 movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. With other guest stars like DENNIS HOPPER and ROBERT DUVALL. They will be showing 4 episodes every Wednesday. As older shows were longer- instead of cutting them or speeding them up- they are showing each in a 1:15 min time slot. More ads- but fine by me to see an uncut show!

GET-TV is really becoming a GO TO channel with their great movies and resurrecting long unseen TV. Like their Monday night VARIETY SHOW triple features of THE JUDY GARLAND SHOW, THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW and various other old shows like SONNY AND CHER, THE ANDY WILLIAMS SHOW and the recent KRAFT MUSIC HALL: WOODY ALLEN LOOKS AT 1967. Which featured a parody of the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway BONNIE AND CLYDE with Liza Minelli as Bonnie and Woody as Clyde. It was GREAT to see.

Kinda a coincidence, I had to flip a coin to decide whether to watch THE LIEUTENANT tonight (or record it) and going to my local CINEMARK to see a double feature of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (with Gary Lockwood!) on the big screen. Not every day you have dueling Gary Lockwood appearances to decide on!

 

And I forgot to add... the KRAFT MUSIC HALL: WOODY ALLEN LOOKS AT 1967 also had ARETHA FRANKLIN singing "Respect" which had some great choreography.

 

Really surprised they aren't advertising this all over the place as HISTORIC "Star Trek" related broadcasts. I think all STAR TREK fans would want to see this. Tonights 4 episodes of THE LIEUTENANT were just dripping with future STAR TREK regulars. The 1st was a repeat featuring NICHELLE NICHOLS. 2nd episode tonight was a HOOT! Co-starring LEONARD NIMOY as a swingin' 60s "Daddy-O"/"Baby" vernacular movie director and MAJEL BARRETT was his secretary! Spock and Nurse Chapel(!) both CHAIN-SMOKING the whole time!!!! 3rd ep featured KHAN himself, RICARDO MONTALBAN as a very KHAN-esque unbalanced character. And the 4th episode featured WALTER KOENIG. (Checkov.) Can't wait to see more of this Gene Roddenberry produced series.

 

The Woody Allen special was a very nice surprise. Only a couple segments had been up on YouTube (the quality sometimes lacking) so it was great to see ALMOST the whole thing (there were some clear edits unfortunately).

 

Well here's a sad situation... As of May, GET-TV has changed it's format and discontinued THE LIEUTENANT! They have relegated movies to (mostly) overnight and added many hours of mostly mediocre 1980s TV shows (RIPTIDE, AIRWOLF) and a few seldom seen 60s sitcoms (THE JIMMY STEWART SHOW, NANNY AND THE PROFESSOR and THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR.) Happily, the VARIETY SHOWS (THE JUDY GARLAND SHOW, MERV, etc.) are remaining. With THE LIEUTENANT- I had hoped they would continue to add seldom seen TV shows with historic backgrounds (Like the LIEUTENANT with it's Gene Roddenberry/STAR TREK roots.) in blocks where they would be seen uncut. I hope they return THE LIEUTENANT at a later date. And as for movies, they are currently touting in ads an upcoming early CARY GRANT film ("When You're in Love") that is restored and being shown for the first time in a "Never before seen master print." So perhaps GET will continue to be a "rabbit ears" TCM- of sorts. But those awful 80s TV shows have got to go!

 

Thanks for the heads up, drmark7.

I have vague memories of watching "The Lieutenant" when I was a young child. My main memory was that I really enjoyed it. I have wished that I could watch it again to see what I found so entertaining so many years ago. It made enough of an impression on me to be curious, from time to time, about this show.

I didn't know about the Gene Roddenberry connection (or who Gene Roddenberry was, nor any of the stars) back when I was watching it as a child.

When I read your post, I was not receiving Get TV. I played around with my antenna and was finally able to receive it. But by then it was gone.

Hopefully it will return.

 

As an alternative, the complete series was released on two DVD sets by Warner:

The Lieutenant - The Complete Series, Part 1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Y1YJJU/

The Lieutenant - The Complete Series, Part 2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Y1YKU8/

Note that these are said to be DVD-Rs, however, with some of the Warner Archive sets, the initial run is on pressed discs, and subsequent runs are on recordable discs. Not sure if that's the case with these sets.