TV and Burgers

Back in the day, before it was so popular to turn old TV shows into movies, it was fairly common to have a popular movie turned into a weekly TV series.  This rarely worked, but there are some notable exceptions such as M*A*S*H and Alice.  But for every one of those there are dozens that littered the TV landscape.  The problem was that most of those cinematic features did not really translate well to a television audience.  No one was really interested in watching Animal House get watered down to a weekly series called Delta House.  Some shows took the film’s original premise, tweaked it a bit, ignored the film’s ending and started over.  Such was the case with the 1977 series Logan’s Run. A little background for those who have forgotten:  Logan’s Run was a 1976 science fiction film about a dystopian society in the 23 rd century.  The people live in a “perfect world of total pleasure” with only one catch.  No one is allowe...

Back in the 1970’s the made for TV movie was much more prevalent on the networks than it is today.  Sure, we still get those occasional Jesse Stone films, but unlike the 70’s we no longer have entire nights devoted to movies of the week.  Often times these movies were pilots for series.  Such was the case with James at 15.    On September 5, 1977 the made for TV movie, James at 15, was first broadcast on NBC.  As it turned out it was the number one show of that week with an astounding 42% share of the viewing audience.  Almost immediately, NBC green-lit the series and it premiered on October 20 th 1977 where it quickly became one of my favorites.   If you don’t remember the show or if you never saw it to begin with let me tell you the plot.   James (Lance Kerwin) was a 15 year old boy that was transplanted across the country from Oregon to Massachusetts after his father took a teaching position.   James had a difficu...