All right, everybody, ready for a trip down TV's memory lane? You know the landmarks. Milton Berle and the Men of Texaco. Lucille Ball and the vat of grapes. Edward R. Murrow lashing out at Joe McCarthy on See It Now, and Walter Cronkite interrupting a soap opera to report the death of John F. Kennedy. Carlton Fisk coaxing his home run into fair territory in the 1975 World Series, and the U.S. hockey team striking gold in the 1980 Olympics ("Do you believe in miracles?"). J.R. Ewing getting plugged on Dallas, Archie Bunker shouting insults at Meathead, and Richard Nixon saying goodbye to politics -- twice.
Sixty years after crude signals began emerging from America's first regularly transmitting station, in Schenectady, N.Y., TV has stopped to take its longest, most comprehensive look at itself. Television, a series of eight hour-long documentaries exploring the medium's history, originated as a 13- part program on Britain's Granada Television. It has been adapted and Americanized under the aegis of two PBS stations, Los Angeles' KCET and New York City's WNET. Roughly two-thirds of the material in the U.S. version is new, including clips, interviews with key figures from TV's past and narration by former NBC Newsman Edwin Newman.
The aim is nothing less than a definitive survey of the nation's most pervasive and powerful communications medium. It is a venture rich with possibilities and fraught with pitfalls. TV has traded so wantonly in its past -- from documentary retrospectives on the so-called Golden Age to those proliferating "reunions" of old series -- that each new look backward has a tougher job justifying its existence. Dusting off the old kinescopes again is not enough. "All too often," Newman comments at one point, "television is an eye but not a brain." Unfortunately, the same is true of this briskly watchable but ultimately disappointing series.
To be sure, there are marvelous moments, lots of them. Executive Producer Jack Sameth and Writer/Co-Producer Michael Winship have done an impressive job of excavation. Along with the familiar highlights are dozens of more obscure nuggets: the antiquated newscasts of John Cameron Swayze and Douglas Edwards, when stories were illustrated with childlike drawings or photos held up to the camera by the anchorman; Ronald Reagan doing a Mortimer Snerd impression as the mystery guest on What's My Line?, Vladimir Zworykin, one of TV's technological pioneers, being interviewed by former Radio Announcer Ben Grauer in a 1948 oddity called The Story of Television. "Ben," says Zworykin, in heavily accented English, "it is like fever. When the television bug bites you, you never can stop working on it."