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.