Twilight Zone and old TV shows

Twilight Zone is on MeTV every week night at 11:30pm.


Kolchak: The Night Stalker was also on MeTV on Saturday nights but has been replaced recently with the Adventures of Superman. I tried watching Kolchak a couple of times but could not get into it.

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Kolchak: The Night Stalker

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Watched this with my son when he was little and he loved it. I think it was on Netflix then.

At my age, I believe I've seen every TZ episode at least 3-4 times.

Darren McGavin was great in Kolchak and another one I liked to watch.

I wasn't much of an "Outer Limits" fan but did like the "Thriller" episodes hosted by Boris Karloff.

My brothers and I were such nerds growing up, we even had the Twilight Zone book with information about all episodes, so we could read along as we watched.

TZ & OL fans should check out these old radio shows:



Dimension X

Dimension X ran on NBC 1950-1. The show was later retooled as X Minus 1 in 1955-8. They dramatized stories from the pulp SF "golden age" of the 1940s by writers like Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein etc.

While there are plenty of rocketmen and space travel stories, the most interesting episodes IMHO are those that prefigure the classic "The Twilight Zone" situation -- ordinary people caught up in fantastic situations. Stephen King once commented that Richard Matheson took horror out of the gothic mansion and let it happen anywhere, even the minimart down the street. That's what these shows helped do for SF -- although Twilight Zone would get the credit. I wonder how often Rod Serling listened to them.

Dimension X

Kaleidoscope - Bradbury

To The Future - Bradbury

Mars Is Heaven - Bradbury

Dwellers In Silence - Bradbury

Dr. Grimshaw's Sanitorium - I can't believe they got away with this ending in 1950.

X Minus 1



Zero Hour - Bradbury (notice a pattern here?). The ending is a masterpiece.

The Last Martian - Fredric Brown. This was later filmed as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring Steve McQueen. IMHO this radio version is superior.

Hostess - Asimov

Cold Equations

Venus Is A Man's World - not all that great an episode, but a fascinatingly prescient satire on feminism (from 1957!)

X Minus 1 also did two stories by a very young, little-known writer named Philip K Dick, "Colony" and "The Defenders". They're nothing special, although "The Defenders" is not a bad cold war allegory -- apparently a frequently-used device in SF of this period, at least judging by these two series.

The Old Time Radio thread

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If you’re looking to fill up your smartphone, tablet or laptop with great content, there’s a lot more than just music, videos, ebooks, and games. Without costing a dime, there are many tens of thousands of “old time radio” shows – from the golden age of radio – available for streaming or downloading.

You might be asking yourself “Why would a future-looking technology journalist want to fill up his phone with radio dramas popularized in the ‘40s and ‘50s?” Yes, I see the irony. But you’d be pleasantly surprised at how entertaining these are – and they’ve kept me sane while commuting in a car or resting my eyes on a plane. Or, in many instances, I'm playing a game on my phone or tablet while listening to these shows at the same time.

These bite-sized old-time radio (“OTR”) shows are typically 20- to 40-minutes in length. We’re not talking audiobooks here, which are typically narrated by one person, but rather, these are well-acted radio plays, often with music and sound effects. Because you're using your imagination to "see" the characters, environments and actions, these shows feel wonderfully intimate and personal.

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Does the radio show site have Amos & Andy ?