Rant #1,625: 50 Years

My parents' celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary is over as they plow ahead to No. 61.

In the entertainment world, Baby Boomers like myself look to 2016 as the 50th anniversary of some of our favorite TV series of all time.

All took advantage of the then relatively new color format that was increasingly being used on TV, some more than others, but the wide use of color on television opened the door for a lot of new things, and at least three of the four series that I am going to talk about went whole hog with color, while one simply sashayed into color when the time was right.

First off, we have "Batman," and if ever there was a show designed for color, this was it.

With its comic book sensibility, this series could not have come before 1966, although color was used on TV in limited supply in the pre-1966 years, on such shows as "Bonanza." (And on another comic book-inspired TV staple, "The Adventures of Superman," many years before.)

But 1966 was the year that the networks began to use color on all of their shows, many changing over to that format on the run.

"Batman" began in color, ended in color, and brought us the mid-1960s version of the Caped Crusader and his sidekick, Robin, the Boy Wonder.

It also brought to TV a stable of bad guys not seen before, or certainly not seen in a live-action TV series like this (the Dick Tracy cartoon had its share of colorful bad guys too, but heck, "Batman" was live action!).

You had the Joker, the Riddler, sultry Catwoman, the Penguin ... the list went on and on, and although Adam West and Burt Ward were the stars of the show, the true stars of this half hour action series were the villains, whether you are talking about Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Julie Newmar, Burgess Meredith or any of the other guest villains.

The use of color, wild camera angles, and purposely stilted dialogue caught on with fans, and it was the perfect show to usher in the color era.

Another show that captivated Baby Boomers--but did not originally use color--was "Dark Shadows."

This gothic horror soap opera really did not hit its stride until a supposed few-episode character hit the storyline, the tortured vampire, Barnabas Collins.

Nobody had ever seen a vampire portrayed like this, and to have him on the show five days a week boosted the soap opera's popularity, allowed it to move into color after starting out as a standard black and white soap opera, and cemented its popularity with Baby Boomers.

In fact, it is the first network soap opera to have had a wide audience of younger viewers, and that can all be traced to Jonathan Frid, who portrayed the vampire with such an understated, yet at the same time over-the-top excellence that he was featured alongside Davy Jones and other teenybopper stars of the time in the pages of teen magazines like Tiget Beat, and no one batted an eye at his inclusion.

"The Monkees," like Batman, was made for color TV.

The show acknowledged the rise of Baby Boomer culture into the wide audience medium, and it, too, used color to expand its popularity, perfectly highlighting not only the images, but the music, of the first long hairs to star in a network TV show.

The idea had been kicking around for a few years, originally to be centered around a folk group, and then, when the Beatles hit it big in America, to use an actual rock group to ply their supposed adventures on a weekly basis.

But then the idea struck to create a new band from scratch for the TV series, and an extensive search went out for four 20-somethings to fill the four slots.

And truly, the rest is history. Davy Jones--who the show was originally centered on--Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork, and (today's birthday boy) Micky Dolenz were chosen, and surprisingly, they not only hit it big on TV, but on the music charts too, and at one time, during the year of the "Summer of Love" in 1967, they actually sold more records worldwide than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined.

Now we move on to the granddaddy of all cult series--and yes, "Batman," "Dark Shadows," "The Monkees" and this show are all cult series, never garnering huge ratings but developing solid fan bases that stick by these shows to this day--and that is, of course, "Star Trek."

Sure, the original series has spawned several others, a movie franchise, and is pretty much the template for how science fiction is handled on TV to this day, but back then, it was just another series looking for an audience.

Starring such grade-B actors--if even that high--such as William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, Gene Rodenberry's vision of the Enterprise and its crew, and the adventures it would have around the galaxy, could have simply been a newer, hipper version of a Western, but he infused it with ideas that really hadn't been seen on TV, or not to the extent that it was until this show came on the air.

Certainly picking up where Rod Serling and his "Twilight Zone" left off, "Star Trek" went into galaxies--subjects and themes--that were taboo on TV at the time--including racism, a hot topic even today--and it got away with it, because like Serling's show, it was science fiction, giving the show a little more leeway with the censors.

And with the diverse cast, it really could go whole hog with these hot-button topics, as underlying themes of the main plots.

Again, this show benefited by the use of color, making the show more real to 1966 viewers, even though "Star Trek" was set several centuries into the future.

Four shows, four Baby Boomer favorites, that continue to live on in one way or another as they celebrate their 50th anniversaries.

"The Monkees," "Dark Shadows" and "Star Trek" are so popular, even 50 years later, that each can have their own convention of fans, to be held at various times this year, where like-minded people of all generations can get together to celebrate these anniversaries.

For whatever reason, "Batman" went through many legal challenges as it was finally released on DVD and Blu-ray last year, and that was reason to rejoice, seeing the series using these formats.

Ironically, the four series all intersected one another at one time, beyond the fact that they all debuted in 1966.

As I previously mentioned, "Dark Shadows'" Jonathan Frid appeared in the same fan magazines as the Monkees' Davy Jones. Jones and his look were the template for the Chekhov character on "Star Trek." Burgess Meredith, the Penguin on "Batman," made a guest appearance on "The Monkees" as the criminal himself.

Heck, even the fan bases pretty much intersect; if you were a fan of one of these shows, you were probably a fan of all of them!

I could go on and on and on, but 1966 was perhaps the greatest year for cult TV series ever, and a Baby Boomers' dream year, for sure.

I was all of nine years old in 1966, and years later, interviewing Monkee Mike Nesmith, he interrupted my questions and asked me my age.

He said to me, "You were nine years old in 1966 ... we were made for YOU!"

He was right; not only "The Monkees," but all of the shows in question were made for us kids.

And we have paid them all back by never forgetting any of them, remaining big fans to this day, as we have moved through adulthood.

Fifty years is a long time, but the way these series are going, there will be many more generations of fans who will love these shows as much as we did when they premiered.

And that is a good thing.