In today's news, we've heard that Glen A Larson has died.
There are two sorts of people who will shrug a "so what" to that.
People who weren't raised on a diet of 80s television.
And people who were raised on a diet of 80s television but never bothered to read the credits.
I sympathise with the former and hold no truck with the latter. I've always had a bit of a problem with people who end up enjoying a program but have no idea why. Surely if you enjoy one program by Glen A Larson, you might seek out another in the expectation of enjoying that. (I didn't do that at the time of course but it's where I got the idea from).
At the time, his was a name that came up over and over again. Not to recognise the route to an enjoyment means the enjoyment is just an enjoyment in itself. Pure hedonism. Something I simply cannot accept (!).
If you had sought out more of his work, you wouldn't have gone far wrong, because they were essentially all the same.
No, that's too easy a jibe, and I don't really believe it.
Battlestar Galactica, and The Fall Guy. The same? You crazy cat!
You stay and watch the credits when you don't want the program to end. But time after time after time (I cannot tell you how often) one name kept appearing: Glen A Larson.
Forgive me, Donald P Belisario.
Don't shoot me, Steven J Cannell.
(What is it with these middle initials that American screenwriters wear with such a badge of honour?. And don't get me wrong, I was partial to a bit of Hardcastle & McCormack and very partial to a bit of The A Team).
But don't lose any sleep over that, Glenn Gordon Caron. Because the softer overtones of Remington Steele and Moonlighting engaged me periodically.
And, while I'm dancing round it, take a hike Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.
And I'd like to add at this point, I could happily down tools whenever Bruce Boxleitner showed up. Which seemed to be pretty much all the time.
But when something really delivered, the name at the beginning and the name at the end was most frequently Glen A Larson.
It was a more innocent time when creatives hid sex acts and prostitutes inside the titles of what were essentially children shows… BJ and the Bear, TJ Hooker. It was a time before that sort of thing brought down Presidents and the world was a more innocent place that would never change. At least most of the radio DJs thought so.
I didn't really watch Battlestar Galactica. It all looked a bit well… ITV to me.
But I did watch Buck Rogers in the 25th Century every Saturday night with my corned beef sandwiches. I did do the impressions of Twiki at school. It was compulsory. I did wander around occasionally pretending to be Dr Theopolus.
His were series that held a grip and not least because of their opening narratives.
The year is 1987, and NASA launches the last of America's deep space probes. In a freak mishap, Ranger 3 and its pilot, Captain William "Buck" Rogers, are blown out of their trajectory into an orbit which freezes his life support systems, and returns Buck Rogers to Earth, 500 years later.
Holy crap! Mum..bring the sandwiches in!
Add a few impressive visuals and some pretty thrilling theme music, and all you needed was plenty of HP, all the crisps you could negotiate and all the orange squash you could dilute.
Strangely, it's perhaps the rarely remembered that I remember most.
Automan was cancelled after a dozen episodes but when the BBC buys it and puts on at peaktime in your formative years, an impact is made that is never forgotten. When it ties in with every computer game you're trying to get your ZX Spectrum to play, it ties in with life. Of course "tie-ins"in so many guises are a major marketing ploy.
But I didn't feel exploited. I felt entertained.
It's amazing now how many ideas seem derivative. Automan of course is 'Tron', a popular movie released a year earlier in 1982.
Tales of the Gold Monkey, which I never warmed to, and Bring 'Em Back Alive (which had Bruce Boxleitner in) were clearly Indiana Jones rip-offs, sorry, tributes. For me, they didn't really hit the spot.
And of course, why not recycle your own ideas or sets? If you have a pricey series like Battlestar Galactica, use the same props for a bit of Buck Rogers. It all adds to the mix. It didn't hurt that the BBC raised its children on a diet of the old 1930s RKO cereals featuring Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers (and Buster Crabbe as both), which for all their excruciatingly dated effects still engage me 50 years after their heyday. That must be story and performance I think. I think thoses tale could still engage me now. It's no wonder that 3-D technology has failed to take off in the 21st century as 'story' is the same if you watch it on a 3 inch phone. As long as you're comfy in your watching, the medium doesn't enhance the story in itself.
It is just standing on the shoulders of giants.
Of course as a youngster you don't see the formula. And you absolutely do not care.
They are giving you more of exactly what you want. They are doing exactly the right thing.
It's not for me to criticise it 30 years later. But then I'm not the sort of customer who would. I am not one of those people who say, we don't need a sequel to a movie I really enjoyed, not one of those who argue that the original movie would be ruined. I say give us more and let us make our own mind up. And I'll tell you when to stop. Never!
You can't ruin something that is already in the can. We are hungry viewers looking to connect or reconnect with something. We're not Schrödinger. Or his cat.
The strain this US onslaught put our own Doctor Who of course is well documented. A tale you might say as old as Time. But also one with a vindication, redemption and a happy ending.
That the US offerings even appeared on daytime, when the BBC had little or nothing to offer, sealed their destiny in our affections and inflections.
I think I must have watched my fair share of Knight Rider though I don't have any particular affection for it. I didn't like Quincy. (I didn't even realise he had ME). And I was always across a bit creeped out by Magnum. I still am. I didn't really understand the relationships. A burly soft-spoken man in flamboyant clothes with a ridiculous moustache. I couldn't really connect with it. I still have my suspicions about him.
And now Wikipedia tells us that all these formative experiences were delivered by a fully paid-up member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint. A Mormon, if you will. And Glenn A Larson apparently wove themes from Mormon theology into his work. Who wouldn't?
I know this type of television influenced my morality on life, more strongly than perhaps I would care to admit. But the messages always seemed sound, didn't they. The good guy should win. People should be nice when they can and tough when they can't. And you should do your best. The good guys tell the truth and the bad guys lie.
I don't feel as though I've been brainwashed necessarily but I'm probably not qualified to comment, other than to say it's probably a good wash. A wash I'm happy with. A wash that washes. And at low temperatures too.
I'm hardwired with these differences now so I cannot choose easily to break that coding. But I don't want to. My idealism is well-documented.
No wonder they say.. get 'em young.
I lost count of the times that I sung along to Lee Majors singing 'The Unknown Stuntman' in The Fall Guy. I know for a fact I transcribed the lyrics to all the verses and I could sing it to you now, but why bother when you have YouTube.
Of course it wasn't just Majors' casting but that of Heather Thomas that sealed the show as a hit. It even survived the appointment of surely the most correctly forgotten and least talented actor to ever hit the screen in any TV series anywhere in the world ever (Douglas Barr as third wheel Howie Mundsen). I would ask you to write in and tell me different. But I know you can't, not correctly anyway. You see, I know my stuff.
When a series runs for 26 episodes for say five or six years, and those years to you are "formative", you can understand why the impact is made.
Now I read wider recognition that some of the recycled ideas in his productions were known as Glen A "Larceny".
But I enjoyed my morning holiday diet of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries on the BBC. Does it matter to me that 'BJ and The Bear' was clearly Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose, that The Fall Guy was a bandwagon reaction to the Burt Reynolds movies. That Battlestar Galactica followed Star Wars, and Alias Smith and Jones was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Well, no. Not to me. And not to the kids who watched the shows either when they were released or in the many years following that they were extensively repeated.
The only thing I don't understand with the shows is that they would have needed a strong adult audience for their ratings to impress the television networks and I can tell you there were never popular with the adults in my house.
The fact is I can forgive him just about anything, because he made probably my favourite show of all time (also cancelled after one season), the little-known "Sword of Justice", featuring Dack Rambo, and still not available on DVD, (for those of you hipsters who remember DVD).
It seems to me now as though this series that followed a wrongly imprisoned thief was, well, let's call it a "development" (rather than a rip-off) of the first major show he worked on as a producer "It Takes a Thief". But surely the thief turned good plot will date via Cary Grant and probably a lot further beyond. There are only so many plots types of character. It is casting brings them alive.
His stories were told most successfully by appointing a charismatic actor. It's clear looking back that the script didn't matter so much. It can't have done in those volumes. But it makes sense to find a Lee Majors that could that can hold a character or two for five or six years each, or a William Shatner that can inject life into an already tired 80s cop show. It's a major element of how to connect with an audience.
It's how they arrive in your teatime.
And they are best announced with a killer theme tune. (Over to you, Mike Post).
Television is the dominant artform of our generation. While the movie buffs cry and argue over whether or not something should or shouldn't have a sequel, we needed somebody like Glen A Larson to knock out another a couple of dozen episodes a year while they were all thinking about it.
That's showbiz. He was my kind of GAL.
