Best 1960s TV Series ?

The Pris0ner

 

The Twilight Zone (best show ever)
Car 54, Where Are You?
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Andy Griffith Show (seasons 1-5)
The Munsters
The Prisoner

 

Depends where you lived. The seventies was a golden era for British comedy:

Fawlty Towers
Dad's Army
Porridge
Man about the House
Last of the Summer Wine
The Goodies

And drama...

Too many to list!

 

Fave 60s show (t'was but a nipper at the time)

Toss-up between 'Thunderbirds' and 'Stingray' for me:

 

We really don't have much around today that's as great as Supermarionation was! Heck, there are hardly any puppets on the tube anymore! I loved anything like that; puppets, marionettes, stop-motion, muppets, Krofft shows. We never had it so good as in the '60s and '70s!

 

What did you think of Team America and Jackboots On Whitehall?

 

Team America is strangely off target in many ways but well done I suppose for what it is, it seemed to make money also. Whitehall is really really not well done though, the whole thing is on youtube if anyone can make it through the entire thing. I much more like the modern La Riviere helmed mini-productions Nebula-75, and the one done within an episode of Endeavour.

 

Jackboots should have had a better title, Team America very funny. Never heard of Nebula -75..I’ll check it out.

 

From the 'The Dolls Of St Dominic's' strip in 1969.

What price a clockwork Ilya now I wonder....?

 

Worthy of consideration-

Burke's Law
Four episodes by Harlan Ellison

Outer Limits
Ellison again. Scared the hell out of me as a kid and made me think at the same time.

Secret Agent/Danger Man
Cool lead character, cool theme song.



Robert Martellaro

 

Get Smart

Max: (falls into deep pool) "99, Did I Pass the Control Swimming Test"?
99: "No, Max"

Max: "okkkkkkkkk"

 

Along the lines of Outer Limits, I also liked One Step Beyond.

 

CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?

 

There are only 2 shows from the 60's where I have seen every episode at least 20 times (probably more).
The Monkees
Star Trek

Darryl

 

The Andy Griffith Show (b/w episodes only), Burke's Law, 12 O'Clock High (again, only the b/w seasons), The Rat Patrol, Mission: Impossible (sans the 1st season, the one w/o Peter Graves), Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

 

And Rising Damp and Reggie Perrin

 

There were some fun sf/fantasy tinged late '60s shows I've gotten to see on DVD sets, maybe unknown in America... The Champions were three almost super-hero characters, two young men and one woman, who get recruited into an international espionage and security sort of framework. The Strange Report has the older man, younger man, young woman mix involved in unusual cases not suitable for existing agencies... Anneke Wills, ex-Doctor Who companion, is the the young woman. Adam Adamant Lives is about a turn-of-the-century crime-fighter returning from hibernation to the then present era of the swinging-sixties, with a mod young woman, and after the first few adventures, another bloke for added muscle. Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) is a detective agency wherein the first episode one of the pair of detectives is killed but returns to help his partner as a ghost, young woman character being his widowed wife. This last one did air in the U.S. once as My Partner The Ghost.

In comedy I found sets for The Rag Trade (with Reg Varney of On The Buses fame), George And The Dragon (Sid James), The Dustbinmen (Trevor Bannister later with Are You Being Served), From A Bird's Eye View (co-starring American Pat Finley known from the Mary Tyler Moore Show as one of the stewardesses), and The Liver Birds, to be mostly lighter fun with that '60s feel. Rising Damp is firmly a '70s series.

 

Thunderbirds! Fun stuff.

 

Shows I never missed: The Monkees and...



A Japanese show that garnered a sizeable fanbase in Oz. Don't know if it was ever screened in the US or Canada.

 

Wow, never heard of Samurai... was it dubbed into English? I have the complete Johnny Sokko And His Giant Flying Robot though...

 

Johnny Sokko was great. Ever watch Ultraman?

 

I've seen a tiny tip of that huge berg here and there, enough where I kind of understood a parody comic of it titled Ultra Klutz. I've tried to find Kamen Black Rider and liked what I saw, a bit soap operaish actually though. Do you think Joey Ramone might've been a fan?

Joey with Kamen Rider.

 

I cannot deny the sheer brilliance of THE PRISONER. I've spent a great amount of time in the intervening decades in the study of this particular series and its short little run of 17 episodes. My first taste of the series was in the the summer of 68 when it replaced JACKIE GLEASON, and I only saw it in black & white. Seeing the gorgeous color later on was quite an eye-opener.

And back in the 60s, I was quite swept up in the adventures of Dr. Richard Kimble in THE FUGITIVE. I came to appreciate that series sometime in the second or third season, but thanks to ABC daytime reruns, I caught up on the earlier episodes before the big finale. The ups and down of this show on DVD are legendary and I was there every step of the way.

STAR TREK is legendary - and still very much a part of pop culture to this day, and a more colorful visual experience you'll never get anywhere else. It was designed to sell color TVs and by golly, I'm sure it did.

And I have to give honorable mentions to series like TWILIGHT ZONE, THE OUTER LIMITS, ONE STEP BEYOND and my favorite of all sitcoms ever, THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW.

But if we're talking favorite and not "best", I have to go with a series that captured my imagination and whose cancellation gave me scars that have yet to heal - THE TIME TUNNEL.


Though it was an Irwin Allen show and he famously wanted nothing but adventure, "running and jumping", the concept of the series opened my mind to the possibilities of time travel. And that set still dazzles after all these years.

 

I always love the fact that Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor nailed the theme song on the first take.