Posted by: @stargazer

There are several broadcast TV networks airing old shows like these, like Antenna TV and Me TV.

My son watches the Three Stooges every week on MeTV. I can't say it's my thing personally, but he thinks it's hilarious.

Posted by: @starkat

Scarecrow and Mrs. King was an 80s show I think. Maybe late 70s. She was a housewife and he was a spy. 

'80s. I've seen it twice in the last three years, it's such a fun spy show. I love the part that I think is in season 3 where Amanda gives Francine a box of chocolate and when Lee asks why she did it, Amanda replies "once on the lips forever on the hips".  

Posted by: @narnian78

@snowangel

I remember all of these shows, although the spy thriller that I really liked that hasn’t been mentioned here before was Mission: Impossible. Get Smart was fine comedy, but Mission: Impossible had the best plots, and I loved the exotic locations in other parts of the world.  Peter Graves was a much better actor than Tom Cruise, and Martin Landau mastered the art of disguise. Barbara Bain was strikingly beautiful as Cinnamon. The Man from Uncle was a bit bland for me, although I do like other black and white shows.  I used to like The Wild Wild West, although combining the western and spy thriller doesn’t seem to appeal very much to my sense of realism and believability .

I've never seen Mission Impossible, I'll have to look into it...there are several seasons in the library catalog. My favorite seasons of The Man From U.N.C.L.E and The Wild Wild West are the black and white ones. I love the crispness of the black and white plus most of the sets look way better in black and white. We're still on the first season of Lost In Space, I expect we won't enjoy the color seasons nearly as much as the black and white one.

Oh, boy, @fantasia, that kinda dangerous. We have the whole Three Stooges collection, and a few years back we had to take a break from watching them with any regularity because the younger siblings were acting like the Stooges.   The Three Stooges are quite funny, however I think they're best enjoyed in small amounts.  

The local library is getting Lawman (1958-1962), I've never seen it, but I am always looking for another western show to enjoy.  

SnowAngel

I have been watching the Dr. Who serial The Key to Time with Tom Baker as the Doctor.  I love Tom Baker's wonderful acting and the old fashioned quality of the stories.  This story arc of seven adventures was first broadcast in 1978.  Mary Tamm was the first Romana, the Doctor’s intelligent companion.  She was as good as Lalla Ward, who later portrayed her character.  This was vintage television which resembled old style theater productions.  The sets were like old stages since they were on a very limited budget.  And of course the monsters were actors in costumes.  It took some imagination to believe they were real, which children watching the programs from behind the sofa liked.   Science fiction and fantasy looked so different at that time.  The story was much more important than having expensive special effects.  And maybe that’s the way it should be. 🙂

Someone else had a hold on the first three discs of the first season of Lawman, so we watched discs 4-5 (episodes 25-39) first and now we're actually watching the first episodes. I've never watched the first season of a TV show backwards, it's been interesting. Anyway in spite of watching the season this way, we've enjoyed season one of Lawman. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it. 

SnowAngel

@snowangel

I have never seen Lawman. I wonder what the show is about. 

@narnian78, Lawman is a western show about a marshal and his deputy set in Laramie, Wyoming in the late 1870s/early 1880s. It stars John Russell as the marshal and Peter Brown as the deputy.

We finished the first season of Lawman, and will be picking up the second season from the library this weekend. 

SnowAngel

@snowangel

Thanks.  I don’t believe I have ever seen it.  

I'm not sure I am a true fan of vintage television.  I have fond memories of watching ThunderBird reruns as a child but my husband absolutely hated it so I don't bring it up around him.  I only watched it at my grandparents' house so I don't even remember that much about it.  I also have fond memories of watching Little House on the Prarie with them.  I don't think I would go out of my way to get the DVDs though.  There is certainly a different look and feel to older shows and I have a hard time warming up to it.  I don't know how many of the old greats I was even exposed to.  I did like the original Star Trek but was always a much, much bigger fan of "Next Generation".   I did love The Brady Bunch.  I laughed at little at it along with laughing with it htough.

One vintage show I truly enjoy is "I Love Lucy".  Her comedic timing is so superb.  Yet, I remember watching a feature on her and the person being interviewed was saying comedy hadn't come naturally to her so she really studied the greats like Red Skeleton to learn their tricks.  She was a very good student, I'd say.  Over the years I had been buying the seasons for my parents as Christmas gifts.  Wish we lived closer so we could borrow them and introduce them to the kids.  I think they'd like them.

The "vintage" shows we watch at home are from the 80s and even early 90s.  We're collecting the seasons of Perfect Strangers.  But the seasons are so incredibly expensive so it's taking a while.  We do have some of The Three Stooges on DVD and my husband has a "best of" DVD of Twilight.  He introduced me to it.  Some neat stuff on there.  Lots of Shatner. haha

Posted by: @stargazer

Trek had its campy episodes ("The Apple," "The Way to Eden")

Don't forget about "Spock's Brain"! And I thought that "The Alternative Factor" was especially weird and campy, and not in a good way. Those episodes aside though, my family and I are big Star Trek fans (through Enterprise, that is; Deep Space Nine is probably my personal favorite). The Original Series holds a special place in my heart, camp and all. In relation to vintage space shows, although I did not watch Doctor Who, I did end up seeing all of the original Battlestar Galactica.

I also grew up watching a lot Westerns, mostly because of my parents. I've seen varying amounts of The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, The Rifleman, Cheyenne, Wells Fargo, Wagon Train, and The Roy Rogers Show. Also several John Wayne movies (El Dorado, Stagecoach, Island in the Sky).

Gilligan's Island was also a popular one in our house, as were MacGyver (still one of my favorite vintage shows), Magnum, P.I., and CHiPs when I was older. I've also seen varying amounts of of Mork and Mindy, Little House on the Prairie, Emergency, The Twilight Zone, Land of the Lost, Lassie, Murder, She Wrote, and Adam-12, as well as a few skits by Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball. I was never super invested in Andy Griffith, though I feel that I might have missed out since it's such a staple of vintage TV.

Honestly, I think that I might like vintage TV more than modern TV. There's just a certain charm for me that I don't find in shows produced today.

--Wanderer

Still working our way through Lawman currently in the third season. In between library DVDs we mixed in a few episodes of Have Gun - Will Travel season one, courtesy of my older brother who decided he didn't have a place for/want the season. I am worried I might have to buy the rest of seasons since the library doesn't have all of them and that would be tough for me.  

We also have Maverick season four in the queue to watch courtesy of the library.

SnowAngel

Fans of vintage TV sitcoms may enjoy watching the new Marvel mini-series WandaVision. I won't spoil it here but it's full of nods to old classics.

MeTV features a "three hour tour" of Gilligan's Island each Sunday afternoon, and sometimes I have it on in the background. It's amazing how many people get to their island and manage to leave, without the castaways being rescued. 😉

@wanderer

I loved Land of the Lost too.  The show was created on a low budget, but the stories were really interesting.  It was a lot like the old classic Dr. Who in the way it was made on videotape, something which is no longer used in modern science fiction.  I wished they had more money at time for both of the shows, but they were limited to a small budget. The shows were better than one might think with the time travel stories written by well known science fiction authors. Voyagers was also like the older science fiction.  It ran for only twenty episodes, but it was highly regarded by the critics. Quantum Leap was another show in that fantasy time travel genre, and it is still loved today as a series of high quality.

We finished Lawman a few weeks and really enjoyed the whole series. And we watched part of seasons 4 and 5 of Maverick, didn't really care for the Beau episodes. We did enjoy the episodes with Peter Breck as Doc Holliday.  

Switched gears and got Mannix season 2 via interlibrary loan. We've watched 12 episodes so far and enjoyed it, I've even gotten Scarlet to watch it.  

The siblings are watching Sgt. Bilko - The Phil Silvers Show season 2 also from the library. I think this might be one I will have look for the DVDs for, they are enjoying it that much.

SnowAngel

I am watching the Dickens dramas again. These were shown on Masterpiece Theatre in 1999 and the early 2000’s. The programs include Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield.  I watched the 1977 version of Hard Times last night and was amazed at its accuracy to the book. These older TV dramas were often better in their faithfulness to the novels. The acting was also very good and made up for the limited budget that the television producers had to work with.  It was quality television made with a only a little money and limited technology.

@narnian78 Were they BBC productions? They were always known for sticking very faithfully to the original books and for doing a lot with a limited budget. (Which was fine for shows that didn't require much in the way of special effects, but it showed through a lot in their fantasy or sci-fi productions like, well, The Chronicles of Narnia and Doctor Who. ) These days the quality of their productions is a lot better (well, usually), but the faithfulness to the books isn't necessarily there.