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SHANNON (half-hour series syndicated by Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures, 1961)

Scrapped my original review, mainly because gosh-darn-it I just couldn't help myself getting into this overlong diatribe about how the late-fifties to the late-sixties  (stead of '50-'59 and everything after was kitty litter) were the real Golden Age of Television! Now, that's something which I've probably gotten into not only on this blog but elsewhere for years on end, and I just didn't want to once again bore you outta your obviously jaded skulls with my impassioned if (as some would say) incoherent schpiel regarding my not-so-obscure views. But the fact still remains that the '57 to '67 span of tee-vee broadcasting was most definitely tee-vee's real GA, years when you'd have even more trouble crowbarring me away from my boob tube the same way you'd find it extremely difficult to pry Chuck Eddy's mouth away from Robert Christgau's rectum. And frankly, although anyone who'd beg to disagree might not be a subversive, he might as well be and don't let any guidance counselor or lesbian gym teacher tell you different!

SHANNON is but one of the many television series from this true Golden Age that gets me all hot and bothered, especially with that early-sixties look/feel and hard-edged style which never could be replicated even if often imitated for years on end (clever, huh?). And yeah, I know that during the late-fifties/early-mid-sixties we were being bombarded with private eye/cop shows and most of 'em were pretty engaging, but even if some would say that SHANNON was cut from the same patented cop show cloth it obviously was quite different than the competition. George Nader played the lead in this syndicated series, an insurance investigator whose cases take him on some pretty strange twists and turns that were bound to get him into just as much hotcha water as anything Phillip Marlowe or Philo Kvetch could hope to come up against. Film vet Regis Toomey played Shannon's boss at the "Transport and Bonding Surety Company", and not only that but Shannon's brand new 1961 Buick Special was equipped with everything from hidden cameras to a dictating machine and even a special compartment to keep a gun handy! Y'know, additions that I thought would have been standard on cars here in 2011 which only goes to show you how ahead of its time SHANNON really was and perhaps remains!

Plots naturally follow the usual suspicious claims and fraud ripoff attempts, things that would probably bring a yawn to the real life investigator but in this case usually lead to an average of three murders and an episode-capping killing in self-defense or suicide. Yeah, like Beaver once said, you can't beat Wednesday Night on tee-vee because that's when the most killings are, and although SHANNON might have aired on a different night in your market you're bound to get just enough fatal carnage to soothe your savage boobies. Of course, in between the slaughter there's always the boppings on heads and of course the sticky intrusions into the lives of people who usually start out having a grave animosity towards Our Hero, but by the end of the show seem to iron out all of their initial loathing perhaps due to the fat insurance check they're about to receive!

Nader plays it typically cool to the point where you think he was a hypnotist, and does a good job of portraying that essence of pre-touchyfeely manhood that permeated seventies television which only goes to show you how good of an actor the guy was, ifyaknowaddamean. Toomey's naturally great as well which would figure since the guy had been a longtime veteran with enough b-movie footage shot to reach around my waistline twice even. And really, I gotta say that a show like this succeeds a whole lot more'n the variety of MANNIXes that I grew up watching because well, it was shot in black and white, and even though our abode didn't get a color set until 1980 even then you could just feel the multicolor technology fighting it out with early-sixties intensity mano-a-mano.

Hey, if I were an up and running slob during those years you could bet that I would have been glued front and center in front of the box watching programs like SHANNON 'stead of hanging around at the pool hall like I shoulda, though at least for me there would have been one hitch. Y'see, where I live SHANNON was being run on channel 27 Monday nights at seven, yet on channel 33  THE JIM BACKUS SHOW,  another downright early-sixties winner featuring the future GILLIGAN'S ISLAND co-star as the editor of a small newspaper, was being aired directly opposite! Both of 'em were hi-quality examples of great early-sixties programming that seemed to get washed away once the late-sixties got their multicolored claws in gear. I mean, if you wanna talk about quandaries look no further!

(Big heapin' hunkin' thanks to Bill Shute for burning #'4 and 5 of his set...now where are the rest???)