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Once upon a time, it was mutual for people to ask one another, “What’s on TV tonight?” Of course, the question doesn’t even make much sense anymore. In fact, today the question would be, “What isn’t on TV?”
Cable television took hold in the 1970s and 1980s and has become almost universal since then. Even a basic cable programming package has 80 or 100 channels of news, entertainment, sports, movies, buying goods and even music. The broadcast networks have had to push the envelope on new programming just to counter the appeal of cable programming that is not subject to the same community standards. This has led to numerous shows that are inventive and well-done, as well as others that track the tastes of a fickle viewership and never seem to get it rather right.
Yet, there is still something for everyone on TV, and lots of ways to receive pleasure from the show with today’s home theater instrumentation and large-format screens. And the TV schedule is no longer an impediment to seeing a show that comes on, say, while you are getting ready to work the late shift. With digital video recorders (DVRs) as low as $59 or so, folks may afford to break loose from the TV schedule by recording the programs they would normally miss.
“Watching TV” doesn’t even have rather the same meaning as it did for the duration of the heyday of broadcasting in the 1950s and 1960s. It does not so much refer to choosing and observing a program that is on at a sure time and a sure channel, as it refers to choosing what film, DVD, video, cable news feed or (yes) even broadcast channel you care to display on your monitor.
Once again, it is totally unlikely to ignore the influence and the affect of the Internet on TV programming, It is now not only possible, but cheap and easy to send movies, TV shows, Web internet sites or live broadcast channels from one’s computer to the TV screen, or even multiple screens around the house. The buzzword in media these days, “convergence,” refers to the interactivity of computers, the Internet, display screens, live TV, recorded programs, DVDs, media files, music and all the rest of what we call “entertainment.” Everything’s on TV now!
Come meet Mark Twain. OK, true, the humorist has been dead for more years than we care to remember, and not a heap of of us around today were alive to listen what he sounded like. But Hal Holbrook is so spectacular in his one-man performance that you could swear you were listening to Twain himself. The gravelly voice, the lined face, the slow shuffle, and cigar-induced throat clearings seem so natural that you’ll have difficultness recognizing Holbrook underneath the white suit, the gray hair, and the handlebar mustache.
Mark Twain Tonight! begun as a Broadway show in the 1960s and was filmed as a CBS particular in 1967. Yet you’d never know it, because the humor, which is more than a century old, is still laugh-out-loud funny today. Twain–I mean, Holbrook–gives a monologue that is rambling, intelligent, and humorous as he culls together commentary from a potpourri of Twain sources. From dachshund hounds, politics, and patriotism to cigar smoking, memory loss, and religion, this 90-minute video leaps from subject to subject as we’re pleasantly occupied by material that’s as fresh today as it was when it was written in the 1800s. –Jenny Brown
ReviewBy the time Hal Holbrook made his big-screen debut in 1966′s The Group, a lot of humans were curious to see what he genuinely looked like. This is because the now-veteran actor had expended more than a dozen years beneath white hair and latex touring as Mark Twain in a one-man show that remains an institution. Always a busy big-screen actor in subordinate roles, Holbrook is in all probability best known as Twain (an Emmy and a Tony all but cemented that status), but he likewise played Abraham Lincoln in a series of TV specials and in the miniseries North and South, John Adams in the miniseries George Washington and World War II Gen. George C. Marshall in the Emmy-winning Los Alamos drama Day One. His other work on the little screen has been ubiquitous all over the decades, from The Ed Sullivan Show in the ’50s to Disneyland in the early ’70s to The West Wing and The Sopranos. A Holbrook reputation may align with the forces of good (the kindly advisor type in Wall Street) or evil (he headed the conglomerate of shady lawyers in The Firm). But in terms of career benchmarks, the must-sees include Mark Twain Tonight! (1967, Kultur, unrated, $30): An American classic preserved. –Mike Clark, USA Today
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Most helpful client reviews
71 of 71 persons found the following review helpful.
 Hal Holbrook-Mark Twain Tonight
By Mark Marcus
Having seen Hal Holbrook carry out live in Mark Twain Tonight, I was delighted to aquire the DVD of his 1967 television broadcast performance. I have long believed, and this DVD confirms that Mark Twain Tonight is without apparent effort one of the greatest treasures of the American stage in the last half of the 20th Century. That Mr. Holbrook has performed Mark Twain each year since 1954, in over 2000 shows, is not one thing short of miraculous. This 90 minute performance brings the wisdom, humor and humanity of one of the most morally perceptive men of the 19th century to life. His words proceed to be as hilarious, poignant and relevent in the 21st century as they were in his own time.
40 of 40 persons found the following review helpful.
Thirty Years in the Making
By Fred Halwe
In 1967, I was a twenty-ish high school English teacher who sat down one evening, out of a sense of professional obligation, to watch a TV production of a lot of guy named Hal Holbrook doing a one-man show called MARK TWAIN TONIGHT. It blew me away (though we didn’t talk like that in 1967). Ever since, I’ve had a blank videotape sitting atop my TV, waiting to pirate a copy of the sure re-broadcast, whenever the industry moguls ran out of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND reruns. Of course, it never happened! Instead, I remunerated cash cash for the 33-rpm record, and scratched my way to this or that band for partly appreciative teen English students. As always, the trick to life is to keep living. Today I blew the dust off my 30 year-old videotape and set it aside. My review is thirty years in the making. All you young English teachers, take note: on a scale of one-to-five stars, this performance of Mr. Holbrook is a six. Maybe seven!
30 of 30 humans found the following review helpful.
Holbrook’s Mark Twain
By A
If there has ever been a polished performance, this is it! I’ve been fortunate to see Holbrook do this show live on three occasions. He actually catches the essence of Twain’s marvellous story- telling, which sets the tone for later artists such as Gene Shepard and Garrison Keillor. Hal Holbrook changed his show at each performance, and this video features him at the peak of his craft. From ghost stories to humorous anecdotes to shaggy dog yarns and tall tales, this video has them all. You’ll want to watch it numerous times.
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