“I’m going down the pub!”

From 1965 to 1975, British TV audiences made Till Death Us Do Part—a taboo-breaking program about a working-class family whose patriarch (played by Warren Mitchell) wasn’t shy about making his uncomfortably racist views loud and clear—one of the BBC’s most popular situation comedies.  Created by Johnny Speight, who based much of the show on his own upbringing (a situation he…

Adventures in Blu-ray: Willie Dynamite (1974)

If the 2005 film Hustle & Flow taught us anything, it’s that “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”—the tune in the movie that won an Academy Award as Best Original Song. William Andrew Short (Roscoe Orman)—known to friends and the ladies in his employ as “Willie Dynamite”—is a testament to this; he’s the Avis…

Children should be seen…and heard, to be honest

The success of importing the BBC’s Monty Python’s Flying Circus to public television stations in the mid-70s led to a “British Invasion” of sitcoms and comedy shows that, sadly, have been abandoned because these same stations are apparently unable to see offerings beyond the overexposed Are You Being Served?  I rag on AYBS a lot, but it’s mostly due to its saturation in the…

Classic GOAT

Things had been a mite quiet over at The Classic TV Blog Association—that august organization of bloggers what like to write about vintage TV a lot—until Rick at The Classic Film and TV Café came up with an interesting idea in mid-December of last year.  He proposed that each CTVBA member nominate a total of…

Just Folk(s)

Well, here we go ringing in a new year at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear...and just as I did at the beginning of 2018, I’m once again apologizing for allowing weeds to run rampant around the blog.  I can blame no one for this lapse in blogtiquette but myself; it seems that once the Yuletide season…