Halloween Month rolls along with this look at a very old British series of telefilms that presented some classic horror tales during Christmas Season. The tales themselves were NOT set around Christmas, so they make for nice Halloween Season viewing, too.
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS – I’m only covering the original 1971-1978 run of these horror stories. The series was revived decades later but – especially for American viewers – the original run of (at the longest) 50-minute installments truly counts as Forgotten Television.
THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (Dec 24th, 1971) – Dr. Black (Clive Swift), a scholar cataloguing the book collection at Barchester Cathedral, comes across the diary of a former Archdeacon who murdered his predecessor so he could rise to the position. The killer was then haunted by ghostly figures in the form of the carvings on the cathedral’s choir stalls. Also starring Robert Hardy, Thelma Barlow and Will Leighton. Continue reading
THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967) – This spinoff series from (What else?) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. starred Stefanie Powers as superspy April Dancer. Like Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, April worked for the United Network Command for Law & Enforcement. Her series lasted just one season of 29 hour-long episodes. 
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. – THE MOONGLOW AFFAIR: Airing on February 25th, 1966, this backdoor pilot for The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. had Mary Ann Mobley as new agent April Dancer. She replaced the incapacitated Solo and Kuryakin to stop the establishment of a lunar presence by the evil organization T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity). 
A YEAR AT THE TOP (1977) – What a cast! PAUL SHAFFER, GREG EVIGAN, Gabriel Dell (from the Dead End Kids/ Bowery Boys/ East Side Kids/ Little Tough Guys), Priscilla Morrill (Lou Grant’s wife Edie), Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas, Julie Cobb (Lee J. Cobb’s daughter) and Nedra Volz in her usual “sassy old lady” role. 
Even worse, Greg Evigan turned down a role on Welcome Back, Kotter to star in this TV Turkey. But at least B.J. and the Bear lurked in his 1970s future. I’ll let you readers decide if that’s good or bad. 
SALTY (1974-1975) – From some of the team behind Flipper came this short-lived series about a trained seal named Salty. The program was based on the 1973 film Salty, which featured Clint Howard in the role now played by Johnny Doran. 
THE BARON (1966-1967) – This ITC/ABC venture starred rugged he-man Steve Forrest as wealthy Texan John Mannering, who works for British Intelligence under the codename the Baron. Mannering’s assistant was Cordelia Winfield, played by the British actress Sue Lloyd. 
Mannering’s cover in London was an antique dealer and jet-set playboy. He drove around in a Jensen C-V8 that had the personalized license plate BAR 1. The Baron was originally a character from novels but John Mannering bore little resemblance to his printed page counterpart.
CITY OF ANGELS (1976) – Wayne Rogers starred as 1930s private investigator Jake Axminster, a hardboiled detective plying his trade in corruption-filled Los Angeles, hence the ironic title. Sadly, this series was no more successful than the decade’s earlier attempts at launching a 1930s crime show – Banyon and Manhunter. 
Jake and Marsha shared all 13 episodes with crooked L.A. police detective Lt. Murray Quint (Clifton James), while Axminster’s lawyer, Michael Brimm (Philip Sterling) appeared in 10 episodes. Mystery novelist Max Allan Collins (The Road to Perdition) called City of Angels “the best private eye series ever.”
BIRD OF THE IRON FEATHER (1970) – This African American drama was produced for Chicago’s educational station WTTW. The storied black radio and television pioneer Richard Durham created and wrote this soap opera/ soul drama that originally was to air every weekday like network soap operas did. 
WTTW was approved for a $600,000 grant to produce one hundred 30-minute episodes of a series dramatizing the contemporary experiences of black Chicagoans. The title Bird of the Iron Feather was a reference to the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech in which he described African Americans as “birds of iron feathers unable to fly to freedom.”
BARBARY COAST (1975-1976) – William Shatner was the main draw for this series set in 1800s San Francisco and its Barbary Coast section famed for gambling, crime, gunfights, brawls, partying and dance hall girls. Shatner starred as Jeff Cable, hero of the Union Army during the Civil War, now serving as a special government agent like Robert Conrad’s character in The Wild, Wild West. 
BARBARY COAST (May 4th, 1975) – This 2-hour telefilm was directed by the one and only Bill Bixby, who also made a cameo appearance. Jeff Cable (Shatner), West Point Graduate and Civil War hero fresh off fighting the Democrat Party’s hate group the Ku Klux Klan for President Ulysses S. Grant, arrives in San Francisco. Cable’s new mission is to shut down the Crusaders, an organization of Klan members who moved west and started their plot to become California’s version of the KKK. 
ESPIONAGE (1963-1964) – This British spycraft anthology series was produced for ITV in Great Britain. Assorted time periods were used for the stories, but most center around the Cold War and World War Two. The series ran for 24 one-hour episodes.
PARTNERS IN CRIME (1984) – To note the passing of Loni Anderson here’s a Forgotten Television look at the detective series in which she co-starred with Lynda Carter. Both ladies had been married at one time to a private detective named Raymond Dashiell Caulfield. 
Loni played Sydney Kovack, a streetwise woman who grew up in San Francisco pulling minor hustles here and there with her con-man father. Ultimately, she went straight and became a professional cellist and bass player. 
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