Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Spin Around the Web

• We’re probably all familiar with the film adaptations of Eric Ambler’s espionage novels. A few examples: Journey into Fear went to celluloid in 1943, A Coffin for Dimitrios became The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Epitaph for a Spy was filmed as Hotel Reserve (1944), and The Light of Day became 1964’s Topkapi. But for Mystery*File, Tise Vahimagi looks back at the treatment of Ambler’s work on television. Not only did Ambler do some work for Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962), but as has been noted previously on this page, he also created the 1960-1962 TV series Checkmate, which starred Doug McClure, Anthony George, and Sebastian Cabot as San Francisco sleuths. You’ll find all of Vahimagi’s excellent post here.

• Since I made such a big deal last year of Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday, I opted to not mention his 101st. However, the HMSS Weblog exercised no such restraint. On Thursday, it posted a video that I’d never seen before in which Fleming himself explains the origin of James Bond’s moniker.

• This week in Beat to a Pulp: Kieran Shea’s “Maintenance.”

• Nostalgia alert: Before she did her purr-fect turn as Catwoman on Batman, Julie Newmar was My Living Doll.

• It looks as if Murdoch Mysteries, the Canadian-made historical detective series that debuted “north of the border” in January 2008, is finally going to be seen on U.S. television screens. American Public Television is offering the show--which is based on Maureen Jennings’s popular series of Detective William Murdoch books--to public stations nationwide with a series start date of June 30. Watch your local TV schedules for more information. For a taste of Murdoch Mysteries, just click here.

• Corey Wilde interviews author Dave Zeltserman (Pariah) in his blog, The Drowning Machine.

And a happy 100th birthday to bandleader Benny Goodman.

1 comment:

Iden Pierce Ford said...

These are the PBS markets confirmed so far from a discussion I had with APT on Friday:
so far for the initial roll out they have Illinois, manhattan New York, upstate New York (Waterdown), Alaska, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Idaho, Maine, signed on to air the series with more to come by the end of June and with the promise of more over the next few months.
They;d like to pick up season two if they can do a good job and they get results.
Manhattan is a big market for sure. They were very nice at APT and explained to me the whole workings of the syndication. Hopefully the show will do well and it takes off from there. It's up to each individual PBS station as to whether they want to air the program or not.