Nostalgia Tripping

Sometimes watching nostalgia channels on Roku is like being trapped in some kind of time warp.  Lately I've been spending a fair amount of time watching a collection of channels, all under the same umbrella ownership, each one nominally themed, (ie action, mystery, fantasy science fiction etc), but all drawing upon the same pool of old (mainly) public domain TV shows and movies.  The overlap in content is considerable, to the extent that you can switch between channels and catch different episodes of the same TV show, but from different seasons.  Which can be quite disconcerting when there have been cast changes between series - you know that you are watching the same thing, but are left wondering where half the familiar characters have gone, (or even why the fashions have changed and characters who were kids just now have suddenly turned into teenagers).  Catching episodes of the Doris Day Show across multiple channels is something that I've found particularly disturbing, as I'd forgotten that, over its five season run, it underwent some quite radical format and cast changes.  Especially as one channel seems to be showing episodes from close to the show's start, while the next is showing them from the last two series, usually within minutes of each other.  When the Doris Day Show starts, she's playing a widow living on her father's California ranch with her two young sons and commuting into San Francisco to her job as a secretary at a magazine publisher.  By season three, she's moved to San Francisco, still with her sons, but with season four, the sons have vanished (and are never mentioned again) as has any memory of her late husband, (she's now styled 'Miss' rather than 'Mrs').  The rest of the staff at the publishers have changed and, most radically of all, she's changed from secretary to staff writer.  It can all be very confusing.

Sometimes, though, old and new episodes from a series get jumbled together on a single channel.  On the mystery themed channel, for instance, you sometimes get episodes from the 1966-70 colour revival of Dragnet, followed by black and white episodes from the original. (I think I prefer the later version, with Jack Webb's Joe Friday looking more than slightly bemused to find himself in the middle of the 'swinging sixties' and having to deal with hippies and other long haired 'degenerates').  Perhaps even more confusingly, another channel shows episodes from not one, but two, completely different, nineties Tarzan TV series:  one minute you are watching long haired eco warrior Wolf Larsen swinging through the modern day jungle, the next you are confronted by Joe Lara, back in thirties period, fighting various fantastical threats in Tarzan: The Epic Adventures.  Both versions have their merits.  The Wolf Larsen version is a French-Canadian-Mexican attempt to update the concept, with Tarzan trying protect his jungle environment from those trying to exploit it and Jane as a French environmentalist.  It seems to be modelled, to some extent, on the old Ron Ely TV series and employs a fairly light tone.  The Joe Lara series which succeeded it was an attempt to return Tarzan to his more fantastical literary roots and reconnect the whole Burroughs' universe.  Indeed, in this series he even crosses over with a couple of other Burroughs properties: not only does he journey to the earth's core in one episode, but in another he travels to Venus to help out Carson Napier.  Although innovative, the Lara series was relatively short lived.  Anyway, to get back to the point, while these nostalgia fests can get confusing, with the jumping around between series and variants, they can also be quite mesmerising.  I can't deny that it has taken quite an effort to prise my eyes away from this collection of channels, as I obsessively hop between them in search of new episodes and series.  But I think that I've kicked the addiction.  For now, that is...