THIS and that...

FIOS finally got around to carrying the local CW affiliate's digital subchannel, THIS-TV, recently, and I must give it an enthusiastic thumb in the middle. Perhaps I shouldn't quibble about something that's already become one of my top 5 most-watched TV channels, but this MGM-run network does some things much better than others.

I appreciate the exposure THIS is giving some golden oldie TV shows. "Highway Patrol, "The Patty Duke Show," "Sea Hunt," and "Mr. Ed" are staples of the daily schedule, and though they're exiled to the wee hours of the morning, well, at least they're on. Besides, I think the graveyard shift for "Patrol," at least, ensures it is aired with what passes for "limited commercial interruption" in this era. THIS is kind enough to show--gasp--actual end credits for these shows, by the way, which makes identifying those guest stars quite doable even without firing up the computer and hitting the IMDB.

"Outer Limits" and "Bat Masterson" also show up, most often on the weekends, so that's a decent sampling of old-school TV.

Now, I wouldn't consider any of these A-list shows for me personally, but it's nice to have them around, and I haven't seen some of them in eons. I was most intrigued by "Highway Patrol" given the starring role by the legendary and awesome Broderick Crawford. I find that each half-hour could use a lot more Brod, even if he is half-toasted (or especially if he is). Still, it's a solid cop drama.

I was never a huge fan of "Outer Limits," but I can appreciate its sometimes rather deliberate pacing a bit more as an adult. "Bat Masterson" is an enjoyable oater with a fun lead performance by Gene Barry, though I saw a lot of those on Encore Westerns a few years ago.

Nothing against "Patty Duke" and Sea Hunt," but I find they are what they are, and that's fine. Nothing I need to see every day, but each show is a pleasant experience on an occasional basis. I can see viewers that grew up on these shows loving them.

The one THIS-TV offering that really surprises me is "Mr. Ed," which I haven't seen since Nick at Nite or TV Land dumped it years ago. Let me say something about Nick at Nite (the original version, the one that was actually good, natch): I experienced it at an odd time. I grew up on some of the more "sophisticated" television programs of days gone by, like "The Honeymooners" and "The Twilight Zone," and the more juvenile stuff for me was the likes of "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch." I put "sophisticated" in quotes so as not to infuriate the likes of folks like DVD Talk's Paul Mavis, who seemingly blows a gasket at the suggestion that any "traditional" family sitcom of the fifties or sixties is bland or simplistic. But I'm no snob; when I mention "Gilligan" and "Brady Bunch," I gotta tell you, I watched A LOT of the Sherwood Schwartz-coms when I was a kid.

My point is that I didn't see a lot of "Donna Reed," say, or "Patty Duke," until we got Nick at Nite in my area. By that time I had kind of moved on from that kind of show, which I found, well, a little bland, and gravitated towards other things, and it wasn't until the launch of TV Land that I developed a real interest in classic TV which I hadn't already experienced in reruns.

"Mr. Ed" was a show that I believe I lumped in with some others I dismissed not as "stupid," per se, but as gimmicky and not really worth seeing more than once or twice. Now that I see it on THIS, though, I find it surprisingly funny and, while not the sharpest piece of social commentary in the history of the medium, an often clever little sitcom that happens to feature a talking horse. The show uses the horse to delve into--well, OK, it delves into a lot of the same old stuff every other sitcom delves into, but to quote the theme song of another famous TV comedy, "There ain't nothing wrong with that."

(I think I unfairly cast aside "Ed," much as I did "Green Acres" and "Car 54," two smartly written shows that I didn't appreciate until years after I could have. However, I continue to maintain my lifelong indifference to "I Dream of Jeannie," "Bewitched," and "The Beverly Hillbillies.")

So THIS offers classic television, and I love it for that. I'm also impressed by the variety of movies shown on the channel. Yeah, they're all MGM films, but they come from various genres and decades. Any programming service unafraid to air a black and white movie impresses me.

Unfortunately, THIS takes out the scissors way too often, apparently hacking its movies as if it were just an everyday run-of-the-mill modern TV channel. I wasn't surprised to see "edited for content" disclaimers before some of its edgier movies, but I was taken aback a few weeks ago when I started my DVR'ed copy of the Weird Al vehicle "UHF." Not only was the movie "formatted for the screen" (Hey, letterboxing is just too much to ask, I suppose), but it was "edited for time."

Edited for time? Edited for time? I'm pretty sure this movie aired at midnight, mind you. What the deuce was so dadblamed important at 2:00 A.M. that we had to rush through "UHF" that late at night. I think the "Highway Patrol" fans would have understood if an episode didn't air at 4:00 that morning. Hell, I probably taped it, and I can assure you I wouldn't have cared.

So as an imperfect classic TV provider, THIS-TV fits the bill with its limited roster of solid but unspectacular series, and I'm glad to have it around. Hey, it's essentially free, and as I said it's already on my favorite channels list. Unfortunately, as a movie channel, THIS is just too imperfect to be of much value, though I'll keep an eye on it and hope to find some decent unbutchered flicks.