Newsday TV Book, February 6-12, 1983.

I hope everyone enjoyed the 1972 TV listings I had been displaying here, but I feel I've ignored other years long enough on this blog. Thus, here's a look at a Newsday TV Book from 1983. Not a great year for TV, as I recall. Flipping through this edition it seems I hardly watched anything in network prime-time. I mean, Dukes of Hazzard? Powers of Matthew Star? Little House: A New Beginning? Gimme a Break? Give ME a fuckin' break!

Okay, I watched Fall Guy and Newhart and Family Ties, and of course Hill Street Blues. None of which I've ever really felt compelled to revisit.  This particular week saw premieres of Condo with MacLean Stevenson and Luis Avalos from The Electric Company, and Amanda's with Bea Arthur. The latter was one of several American takes on Fawlty Towers. Read the Wiki here if you're interested in the story behind the show, and why wouldn't you be. Bea Arthur.

Alright, let's get to the thing. The Winds of War, an expensive and flavorless WWII mini-series courtesy of Dan Curtis, made its debut this week, and probably the best thing about it was this sick Viskupic cover.(Click pics to enlarge, you know.)

 

 In the TV Line, folks ask about cutie Kathleen Beller (later married to Thomas Dolby), LI's own Stray Cats, and whether Valerie Harper holed up on Shelter Island.

 

Harriet Van Horne, always entertainingly disdainful of innocuous pap, actually rah-ther likes this week's made-for-TV offerings.

Here's the ad for that Gary Coleman movie she was disarmed by. As you can see, he played a two-foot-tall gynecologist employed by Our Lady of Mercy. (I thought the role was a stretch. Ka-BOING!) If the Steve Martin special is even funnier than its title, well, I just don't know if I'd be able to handle it.

Here's a Tuesday close-up for Caddyshack on network TV, which I doubt I watched since I'd seen it two-hundred times on HBO. WOR Channel 9 took over for WABC channel 7 when the latter shit-canned The 4:30 Movie, and on this day at that time aired Horror at 37,000 Feet, which was about being forced to watch Take This Job and Shove it on a flight to Columbus.

The Audio Video Update guide features yet another freaky Viskupic scene.

The Apple IIe was a tremendous upgrade from the old model, adding more memory, an RF modulator, a denaturizer, a sloppy disk drive, and, for the first time, a question mark to the keyboard. (That last one alone was a big improvement!)

Here's a double-page spread for The Video Connection. It almost convinces you that Coleco Vision may not suck. (We Intellivision owners know better. Yes, that's present tense.)

I'm going to be charitable with this noseless, Nutcracker-shaped glamor gal and assume the X's in the corner represent kisses.

Ba Ba Baldy! Cinemax tests the outer limits of your taste with both Diner and Norman... Is That You? in the same day.

I loved spending an eclipse at the South Bay Motel, especially once they added mirrors to the amenities.

"Off Camera" breaks the news that Mike Douglas is bailing, and touts the TV movie One Cooks, the Other Doesn't. I remember watching it and mocking the dweeby kid character, who early on claims to be into punk rock but later totally creams his corduroys over Toto tickets. Pbbpht, scoffed super-cool, prematurely jaded, 13-year-old me.

I guess that's it. There are many more interesting computer/video ads in the guide section, but really, don't we have other things to do? (See, there's that question mark--man that's convenient!)