Monday 19 June 2017

saturday matinรฉe

The always entertaining Poseidon’s Underworld takes a nostalgic look at a typical Saturday morning television line-up, including the Sid & Marty Krofft production that I probably thankfully have no memory of (I recall having an aversion to any programming that was not animated) called Far Out Space Nuts.
Starring Bob Denver and Chuck McCann as low-level, jump-suited NASA employees accidentally launched into space and faced a series of misadventures with extra-terrestrial friends and foes, it struck me as influencing the premise of Mystery Science Theater 3000, although apparently with a much larger budget and much less funny.
We’re also reminded how young children were encouraged to binge-watch the whole of the morning with a space opera leitmotif to indulge in—with Space Nuts followed by Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors playing lost astronauts, accompanied by a chimera called a dorse, who seems to inform modern meme-culture.
These aired circa 1975 but bled over in syndication for years to follow.  Be sure to check out Poseidon’s Underworld for the entire revue —including Shazam!, which I do recall and whose invocation was the initialism of the gods and heroes that helped out our super-hero: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury! We think Billy Batson could have benefited from some better role-models, like Athena perhaps—and though compartmentalised, segregated by programming for boys and programming for girls were also on offer.