It's actually not. (The "milk" comes from using lactose in the brewing.) Makes for a richer and somewhat sweeter stout than Guinness.

It was. Alice was the movie puree'd into a bland sitcom. ODaaT could be "strident" as someone put it here (meaning, I guess, that it went after real-life issues, sometimes at high volume) - but yeah, it was a lot closer in spirit to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore than the "real" TV version was.

True, but one at least definitely bettered its source material (All in the Family had a lot more depth usually than 'Til Death Us Do Part) and the other frequently equalled it (Sanford and Son never quite hit the heartbreaking points that Steptoe and Son did, but it did include some of the US black mileau and issues…

Lear developed the show and exec-produced it; the show was co-created by former B-movie actor Whitney Blake and her husband Allan Manings.

Rusty (like Wapner) was the real thing - longtime Sheriff's Deputy who'd been the bailiff for Wapner's courtroom.

IIRC, the ads for the first TV broadcast of THE COLOR PURPLE billed Oprah Winfrey over Whoopi Goldberg (Both in the text and the photo.)

Wasn't uncommon. The original is apparently public domain, and every single $4.99 VHS of it from any of two dozen cheapo companies headlined Nicholson as the star.

One that belongs on the list is Paramount's DVD repackaging of the original TRUE GRIT to look almost identical to the darker remake.

The title, some character names and the name of the town are the same, but otherwise there's no real comparison. The TV series was OK for what it was (a basic cop show with the mild twist of a Black detective in a small Deep South town), but it had none of the power and punch of the film.

(And like Mike, I love what Steiger packs into the "Yeah! Oh YEAH!!" delivery.)

It's played up a bit more in the novel than the film, but Gillespie is almost as much an outsider in the town as Tibbs - he's a Texan they hired when they couldn't find anyone local who was up to the Chief's job.

I still love the largely-unknown THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN, with Anthony Quinn as the first Eastern Bloc Pope (predating JPII by a decade or more), going from a Soviet gulag to the Vatican and then to Christ's Vicar on Earth - just by being a mostly good and entirely practical man.

The early BBC licensing in the US was pretty desultory; everything was licensed to Time-Life Television, which tended to either sit on the shows (as with Monty Python's Flying Circus) or "improve" them (as with the first US broadcasts of Doctor Who in syndication, with several minutes cut from each episode for…

One additional driver was that the BBC had a habit of hiring their actors on contracts with very low up-front money and very high residuals, creating a disincentive to re-run anything.

Garland did a taped segment in the marathon that West hosted (in fact, I think that was the same one Vaughn guested in, too.)

The relaunched Pogo got a lot better when two of Walt Kelly's kids took it over, but it had lost so many papers at that point that it didn't last much longer.

Nah. Dirk is still irrevocably modeled in my mind on one of my USAF Sergeants - big, physically and socially awkward, and never seen outside a long leather coat when off-duty.

No mention of THE HILL or THE OFFENCE. Two of Lumet's cheaper works…but still some of his best. (Both star Sean Connery and will twist your guts to watch in various ways.)

My 13-year-old sister thought he was really cute. (So did I, frankly.)

It wasn't "rules" so much as contract terms for actors, writers and producers (that would make Hollywood accountants blush): the BBC and most of the independents generally offered very low money up-front with huge residuals for rebroadcast. So, no re-runs, no payouts.