"Robert Forester?" Hey, the guy's only made 100 movies and was nominated for an Oscar. No reason to know his name.

You just named, like, less than ten shows out of the zillion pre-2000 shows that exist. Thanks for helping me make my point.

Has it changed that much? I don't really think it has.

Good grief, the snobbery runs deep with this author. First off:

God, what a world where a formerly obscure, definitely sick piece of Italian exploitation like this is streaming in a zillion households for anyone of all stripes to watch at any time.

Funny you say that. I was watching the new season of LONGMIRE yesterday and noticed a scene that I thought was Emmy-worthy. Knowing that it stood no chance of even being considered as a good show, much less something to be mentioned in Emmy terms.

Larson had very little to do with MAGNUM. It was Bellisario's show.

GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. If only for the song and the box around Robert Culp's name.

Right. Roy Huggins was very clear about that from the beginning. And why not? It worked perfectly in 1957. It would work perfectly today too if there were any TV leading men who could pull it off.

Or THE MENTALIST. Check out two of The AV Club's headlines:

A lot of the 'Nam vets seen in TV dramas were guest-shot psychopaths, but often they were depicted, as Magnum and Simon and the RIPTIDE guys were, as normal men, just as you indicate. They had war experience and drew upon it in their work, but they weren't defined by it.

The RIPTIDE guys were 'Nam vets too.

"When has a movie with an excellent cast ever been bad?"

CBS brought JAKE AND THE FATMAN over to Hawaii for a couple of years after MAGNUM left the air, likely just to keep its Hawaiian unit productive.

That theme didn't last the entire first season…only six or seven episodes. Bellisario figured it out really quickly.

I don't know whether to be charmed by the naivete or offended that The AV Club seems incapable of writing about classic television without an air of condescension. It did so with MOONLIGHTING last week and now with MAGNUM, P.I. I assure the author that anyone who remembers MAGNUM, P.I. remembers perfectly well that it…

One of many things I find interesting about Garner is that he had tremendous on-screen chemistry with everyone (though I haven't seen SUNSET…he hated Bruce Willis, and if Garner hated Willis, Willis is probably a dick). Part of it is being a good actor, part of it (I think) is being a good guy who makes actors feel…

McRaney mentions William Conrad, who was a lead in radio, then a character actor in TV and film, then a lead in TV. He never went back to character roles after CANNON technically, though he always played leads in CANNON, NERO WOLFE, JAKE AND THE FATMAN and later TV movies and pilots as a character actor would.

I'm glad Will mentioned McRaney's horror films for Joy N. Houck, which I've been wanting to see for 30 years. AFAIK, no one has asked McRaney about them.

I've spent way too much time watching old TV shows and looking up locations on Google Maps. ROCKFORD is great for this. So is ADAM-12. It's fun to see how much the neighborhoods have — or have not — changed over the years.