The second best anthology series?
I'm going to say Night Gallery. Jack Laird's involvement gave it its own identity. The episode format is a little off-putting, but you'll be rewarded for your effort.
shareThe Outer Limits. Especially when Conrad Hall was DP.
Black Mirror and Tales From The Crypt also deserve to be in the running
If Black Mirror continues for a few more series at high quality it has a chance to surpass the Twilight Zone
shareI agree. Rod Serling would have loved "Black Mirror." And episodes like "San Junipero" will be discussed in the years to come the way the likes of "Walking Distance" are currently discussed now.
shareThe big edge that Serling has is that he was so prolific... hard to make so many great shows. Agree that Black Mirror will be discussed, might even be more in a prophetic way like 2001.
shareI like that Mr. Brooker confines each season to only a handful of episodes. Brits are good at emphasizing quality over quantity. Just look at "The Office" or "The Prisoner": can you imagine if instead of confining themselves to under twenty episodes they went on for a hundred, or two hundred, as it's often the case here in the states. I'd hate for Mr. Booker to spread himself thin the way Mr. Serling sometimes did with the network demanding thirty six episodes a season. "Black Mirror" certainly doesn't need anything in its canon as bloody awful as "Sounds and Silences" or "Cavender is Coming."
shareI think Americans have learned a few tricks from the British which is why our cable series have been so much better, restricting shows from 8 to 12 episodes per year but in the case of the American Office which was terrible the last few seasons, I still think over 188 episodes you will find more net entertainment value than in the 14 UK episodes. Imagine if Fawlty Towers had fifty episodes instead of 12! It's not like Cleese's movie career ever did much.
I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle... the British might be too stingy with their talents the Americans too wasteful. I'm glad there are 62 episodes of Breaking Bad or 86 hours of The Sopranos vs. 15 Sherlock episodes or 18 for Luther.
I agree: The American Office, at its best, rivals, maybe exceeds, what was accomplished on the original.
As much as I adore "The Sopranos" I always think: "Gee, this is great, but 'Goodfellas' managed to tell roughly the same story in under two and a half hours." We're dealing with different mediums I know but that still doesn't excuse the possibility that a good twenty -- possibly thirty -- episodes could be eliminated without much missed. Was all the time devoted to Vito on the lam once his sexual preferences became common knowledge really necessary? What did we glean from "The Test Dream", an episode transpiring almost entirely in Tony's noodle, other than Chase should leave the surrealism to David Lynch? How germane were the many subplots dealing with AJ and Meadow? Getting a sense of Tony's two families is important but there's still a limit as to how much of Tony's brood's "Dawson's Creek"- esque angst I can stomach. "Breaking Bad"'s 62 episodes is about the maximum that should be permitted for a show ("The Wire", another benchmark, had only 60). There's still plenty on "Breaking Bad" I could relegate to the cutting-room floor but where it's at now is fine.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, although it is NOT "second" to TZ; just an equally great
anthology series.
"Night Gallery" is cheesy and mostly awful. Serling hated being part of it.
"The Case of Mr. Pelham" from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" would have made a corker of a "Twilight Zone." I imagine Mr. Serling studied it and stories like it prior to launching the "Zone."
shareSerling ripped off "The Case of Mr. Pellham" when he penned "Mirror Image" with Vera Miles. But Serling ripped off everyone from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde.
shareHe borrowed from the best which is what all artists do.
share"Borrowing" is one thing; plagiarizing is quite another.
share Plagiarism rumors have dogged both Wilde and Shakespeare over the years as well.
While "Mr. Pelham" and "Mirror Image" have similarities I wouldn't say Mr. Serling plagiarized the former.They're both about doppelgangers. That's it. Mr. Pelham" was hardly the first story to explore the concept of doppelgangers. Why not say the author of "Mr. Pelham" ripped off "The Double" by Dostoyevsky? They're both about doppelgangers too. Only Dostoyevsky was first. Except he wasn't since doppelgangers have been with us for a very, very long time.
Cute. And like most Serling-can-do-no-wrongers, you fail to acknowledge that Serling's rip-offs were blatant pieces of plagiarism. And there's HUGE difference between the originality of Wilde and
Shakespeare. And Serling was known for stealing ideas and scripts
from struggling young TV writers. And, yes, whether you choose to
admit it or not, "Mirror Image" IS a genuine rip-off of the superior
"The Case of Mr. Pellham."
I found on the Ray Bradbury message board this quote from author William F. Nolan in the book "Rod Serling, the Dreams and Nightmares of Life in The Twilight Zone." Nolan remembers Serling stating "... that he reads so much science fiction and was under so much pressure to turn out scripts that he hardly questioned where an idea came from when it popped into his head -- and even if he did question he could never trace it to the original through the devastating clutter of his mind." Serling was an ambitious fella and he spread himself a bit thin no question. (Jesus Christ the guy wrote in Season One twenty-eight of the thirty-six episodes!) He scrambled for scripts and in his scramble he might have been a bit careless. But, always in his show, when he's introducing the episode coming up, he never fails to mention the episode's author -- except when it's him, in which case he says nothing. I do appreciate that gesture on his part.
Incidentally, I have never been, nor will ever be, a Serling-can-do-no-wronger. I've sat through his crap like "The Might Casey", "Mr. Bevis", "A Thing About Machines", "The Bard", "Sounds and Silences", "The Mind and The Matter", "Mr. Dingle The Strong", "Cavender is Coming" .... I could go on. The guy wasn't perfect and neither was his immortal brainchild. Did he knowingly purloin from other writers? Personally, I don't know. I do know, however, that I adore "Eye of The Beholder", "Walking Distance", and "The After Hours" and if Serling didn't write them then I hope one day their true makers get the credit they deserve.
And I do agree with you that "Pelham" is better than "Mirror", if only because "Mirror" leaves a sour taste in one's mouth with that absolutely awful, completely unnecessary, special effect of Grinstead in pursuit of someone with an eerily familiar visage that concludes "Mirror."
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