Posted on 04/19/2015 12:46:20 AM PDT by iowamark
CBS, which has aired colorized episodes of I Love Lucy during the Christmas holiday period, is expanding the scheduling strategy to May. That’s when broadcast networks celebrate the end-of-TV-season holes in their schedules because their regular series have completed their runs.
The network said today it will air two newly colorized episodes of its popular 1950s series from 8-9 PM Sunday, May 17. William Holden guest stars in “L.A. At Last!” (1955), and George Reeves — who was starring on TV’s Adventures Of Superman at the time — reprises his role as the Man of Steel in “Lucy and Superman” (1957). Superhero tie-in nicely played, CBS.
The I Love Lucy Superstars Special’s half-hour episodes are colorized “with a vintage look,” the network says, explaining it’s a nod to the Lucy and Superman era in which they were filmed. That’s cute but makes no sense, given that it was the era of black-and-white TV. CBS also promises the episodes will include additional footage not broadcast in 60 years.
Toplined by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, I Love Lucy aired on CBS from 1951-57. William Frawley and Vivian Vance also starred on the landmark series, which was primetime’s No. 1 for four of its six seasons and twice won the Emmy for Best Situation Comedy. Popular in syndication for more than half a century, it was voted “the best TV show of all time” in a 2012 viewer poll conducted by People magazine and ABC News.
Back in 2013, the Internet was abuzz with a report that grinchy old CBS was getting that warm, cuddly holiday feeling and would air back-to-back episodes of I Love Lucy, colorized and without commercial interruption, and call it The I Love Lucy Christmas Special. It featured two nostalgically colorized episodes as well, including he seldom-seen Christmas episode, and “Lucy’s Italian Movie” (aka “The Grape Stomping Episode”). The Christmas episode had not been included in the series’ long history of rebroadcasts, first on CBS Daytime and later in syndication.
Those two episodes made for a cheap holiday special, and CBS aired them on a Friday, when it had nothing to ILoveLucyTitleScreenlose. The I Love Lucy Christmas Special (1.4/5) wound up winning the night against reruns and holiday-special competition. That night also included NBC’s annual showing of the even older (1946) Frank Capra movie It’s A Wonderful Life (1.1/4), which rose 38% from its airing the previous year on December 1, a Saturday – proving, Deadline’s Dominic Patten noted at the time, “sometimes there is no school like the old school.”
Modern TV stinks so bad...
Ok, so settle back and think about how it was in 1995.
Would you have predicted that fake Amish series on the History Channel would suddenly interest people? Would you have predicted fake lumberjacks on the History Channel would interest people? Would you predict that a zombie series on AMC would be one of the top ten shows on TV? Would you predict that a five-year hit series on a meth dealer in New Mexico (of all places) would be considered one of the top shows of all time? Or my all-time question....what idiot could have said a soap opera over some noble house versus another noble house....namely Game of Thrones...would get so much notice and attention?
The big three have have a pothole and they really can’t produce anything of a creative quality anymore. If you ask their production leadership to bring in ten new shows for October....you can bet that one will be stopped within the first three shows...five shows will be gone at the end of twenty-five episodes, and only one will make it to eight years of production.
It’s bad enough that “My Five Wives” exists, and is the soap opera-like story of some Mormon guy and his women.
So, Lucy makes perfect sense. In fact, I’ll make this prediction. Some network will take one season of Lucy and hire six Hollywood actors/actresses to take the same scripts and do their version of the same show, and we will get a 90-minute rendition, with people voting on who did the best Lucy of the evening.
Lol
I have been out of phase with the rest of the planet on the question of this show for all of my life. Even as a six year old I couldn’t buy I Love Lucy as “funny”. I considered Lucy a moron even that far back.
Two words that you forgot: Finding Bigfoot
In the days of three networks, writers had to write shows that appealed to a mass audience. Now all you can hope for is a niche market.
How about this? What studio nowadays would have the guts to produce a show that portrays the woman as a ditz? Redheaded, no less.
They’d be run out of town.
If the networks are going to do that, why doesn’t NBC bring back the early colour videotape programs they made between 1958 and about 1961-62 on special occasions, particularly on Sunday evenings? I love watching the Dinah Shore Chevy shows or the Pontiac Star Parade or the Evenings with Fred Astaire made in 1958 and 1959. Even the so called nostalgia networks keep on mindlessly repeating “The Golden Girls”a and “Frasier”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp8eT8mFDlo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUTKl_z9474
Don’t forget nazi aliens or is it alien nazis?
I see dead people. The majority of Americans have no memory of who these Hollywood stars were.
You knew she was a communist at a young age?
CBS, Two Broke Girls(the skinny blond) and Big Bang (Penny)
**the episodes will include additional footage not broadcast in 60 years. ***
I assume it will be that last minute joke they did after the last advertizement. CBS always cut these out (and they were hilarious) to make more room for advertizements when they went into daytime broadcasts.
There were lots of domestic comedies back in the 1950s and early ‘60s in which the woman of the house was the comic factor while the husband had the sense.
Even LAVERINE AND SHIRLY later used every comic plot that had already been used by I LOVE LUCY.
You should see some of the older broadcasts of I MARRIED JOAN.
We’ve already had the bigfoot shows, the alien shows, the ghost shows, the vampire shows, the talking horse show, the dolphin as your buddy show, the bear in the Rockies show, the alien puppet show, and the lost in space shows. There’s just not much left.
Lucy drives me crazy, can’t watch it.
They could rerun Amos N Andy without having to colorize it. Black and White would work out just fine.
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