Saturday, March 4, 2017

Daytime Heroes: The CBS Children's Mystery Theatre (1980)

In a continuing effort to emulate ABC's award-winning Afterschool Special, CBS tried out a series of periodic mysteries for kids, aimed mostly at teenagers.

Unfortunately, the CBS Children's Mystery Theatre, to my knowledge, didn't play in my home market. The local affiliate opted for syndicated programming instead. Only 5 episodes were produced over the course of three seasons (1980-3), which illustrates the struggles between divisions of the network's programming department.

This is strictly for your perusal, so there won't be a rating. Right now, let's take a look at 1982's "The Zertigo Diamond Caper", starring Adam Rich (Eight is Enough), David Groh (ex-Rhoda), Jane Elliot (General Hospital), and Jeffrey Tambor (ex-The Ropers):



Jeffrey Brennan comes off as a junior version of Marvel's Daredevil, don't you think?

2 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

Children's programming on the Big Three during the afternoons certainly died in the 80's.

hobbyfan said...

NBC & CBS, yes, but ABC's Afterschool Special lingered into the 90's with an altered format.