THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1971-1973) – The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes was not just a collection of stories by mystery writers who were contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle but also a television series which adapted such mysteries. Just as Holmes’ tales were set during the Victorian and Edwardian Eras so, too, were the stories of these detectives. The series lasted two seasons of 13 episodes each and presented the best non-Holmes London-by-Gaslight Detectives.
Episode One: A MESSAGE FROM THE DEEP SEA (September 20th, 1971)
Detective: Doctor John Evelyn Thorndyke, created by R Austin Freeman. The first Doctor Thorndyke story was published in 1907.
Review: In my opinion this is the best episode of Season One. Thorndyke, like Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, was miles ahead of the contemporary police in terms of Crime Scene Investigation. In both the Holmes AND Thorndyke mysteries there is a quasi-science fiction feel as those great fictional detectives use scientific methods disdained at the time but which are now commonplace in the solving of crimes.
The episode introduces us to Dr John Evelyn Thorndyke (John Neville), a forensic physician/ Police Surgeon of the era, as he is teaching a classroom of students. (Kind of a Quincy opening feel.) He is assisted by Dr Jervis (James Cossins), Thorndyke’s version of Dr Watson.
A former student of Thorndyke’s shows up requesting his former teacher’s help in his first big murder case as an Assistant Police Surgeon. Our star and his man Jervis accompany their former student to a brothel on Harrow Street, where a prostitute has been murdered in her bed by having her throat slashed. Continue reading
Thank you to the Bernie Bros who reminded me of this. Joe Biden is STILL being called everything from senile to demented to a sexual assailant (#DROPOUTBIDEN is trending over the latest evidence). “Hidin’ Biden” has resorted to trying to bluff his way through softball appearances ONLY with fawning Democrats in the media. 
Senile Joe’s cognitive problems are such that even with the most delicate of handling he continues to gibber on camera. To quote one of his recent disordered babblings (link below):
THE MONSTER OF LAKE LA METRIE (1899) – This short story was written by Wardon Allan Curtis and was first published in the August of 1899 issue of Pearson’s Magazine. 
The pair of researchers begin to theorize that the lake reaches down to the Earth’s “hollow interior.” (Yes, it’s one of THOSE notions again.) They suspect that plant and animal species long extinct on the surface are still alive deep within the planet and occasionally wash up in the lake’s waters. 
Comic book legend Dan Fraga shook the industry recently when he joined up with the daring, iconoclastic creative titans led by Ethan Van Sciver, Jon Malin and others. Those “outlaws” – as I always call them – have broken away from the stale, corporate, suffocatingly conformist confines of the Big Two publishers to pursue their own creative vision. 
With assorted events in the news these days I keep being reminded of an old quote. You know the source. 
TOOMORROW (1970) – What is one part Monkees episode, one part Frankie & Annette Beach Movie, one part Help!, one part Donny & Marie in Goin’ Coconuts, one part KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park and one part Beyond the Valley of the Dolls? The answer is Toomorrow, the infamous Don Kirshner/ Val Guest cult movie with a then-unknown Olivia Newton-John in a starring role. 
We’re told that Vic’s Tonalizer is what gives Toomorrow its special “sound.” How special is that sound? So special that its unique vibrations can revive the stagnant culture of an alien race that’s facing decay and collapse. It seems the aliens’ own musical output has grown stale because they have long since progressed beyond the troublesome “emotions” and “heart” that Toomorrow’s members pour into their songs. 
The Democrats, the party of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, the Japanese Internment and so much more, continue to treat African-Americans as if they are still slaves on the Democrats’ plantations. Last week Georgia State Democrat Representative Vernon Jones (left) endorsed de facto Third Party President Donald Trump instead of the Democrats’ probable candidate Joe Biden. 
“Jones told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he was not switching parties but praised Trump’s policies on certain issues.
“A generation of African American families have been devastated by draconian policies that Joe Biden supported and voted for when he served in the U.S. Senate,” Jones said in a statement to CBS 46. “A change was needed and President Trump took action.” 
In resigning his office today Jones stated “Turn the lights off, I have left the plantation.” (NOTE FOR OVERSEAS READERS: “Leaving the plantation” imagery is often used by heroic African-Americans who quit the Democrat party over its racism and its fascist attacks against those people of color who refuse to obey that political party.)
Alexandre Dumas pere is synonymous with swashbuckling historical adventures like The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask.
GEORGES (1843) – Published just one year before The Three Musketeers, this novel is not only a rollicking adventure full of action, romance and double-crosses but it deals with racial issues in such a way that you would have thought it would have been adapted for film four or five decades ago. The title character uses his sword to fight slavery! 
2:00 PM – I LOVE LUCY (drama) – A Cuban-American entertainer named Ricky Ricardo compassionately deals with his mentally unstable wife Lucy even when her illness threatens to ruin his career in show business. 
3:00 PM – BONANZA (psychological horror) – Ben Cartwright – a seemingly respectable Nevada rancher – mates, then kills, having one son each with a succession of wives whom he subsequently murders. Only his Chinese manservant Hop Sing suspects the horrors lurking at the Ponderosa Ranch. 
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