This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This being the last Thursday of the month, it's time for another TV edition. This time out, that theme is gangsters. I have to admit this one was a bit difficult for me. Especially because I had a feeling I had already used one of the things I'd thought of, the Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action:
As it turns out, I did use it for a TV edition on time travel, which I think is technically incorrect since they're not on 1920s Earth, but on a planet that imitated 1920s Earth. But in any case, I have used it so I had to come up with three other things. Eventually I did, with a bit of cheating regarding the word "gang":
Crime Story (1986-1988). Dennis Farina plays a cop investigating gangsters first in early 1960s Chicago, and then in Las Vegas. I didn't actually watch it, but remembered it for its opening theme which used the Del Shannon song "Runaway". I thought I wouldn't be able to find it on Youtube because of that, but the second season intro was there.
The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault (1986). When a Chicago Hotel that Al Capone had owned in the 1920s was renovated in the 1980s, construction crews disvocered some secret passageways that led people to think there might be more there. Geraldo Rivera hosted a live TV special to open what was guessed to be Capone's vault, but the "vault" turned out to have nothing but debris.
3-2-1 Contact (1980-1988). Science-oriented show for kids around 10-12 years old that included at the end of many episodes a dopey detective show called "The Bloodhound Gang" featuring a team of junior detectives solving cases that would make the Nancy Drew seem like high art. (Since they call themselves a gang, that technically makes them gangsters of a sort.) If you're around the age I am, you probably saw episodes of the show in school because of the educational content. Oh, and there's that terrible opening theme. I make no apologies for the earworm.
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3 comments:
I love that campy episode of Star Trek and how Spock dislikes Kirk’s driving. Crime Story is one that got away from My radar and one I would like to see because I like Dennis Farina, who died too young. That last one is, thankfully, one I haven’t seen..are you sure it wasn’t made in Canada somewhere? 😁
I like the direction you went here. These are very different picks.
Degrassi Junior High and Red Green were terrible imports from Canada to appear on PBS, but 3-2-1 Contact was the Children's Television Workshop, the same people who brought us Sesame Street.
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