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borg’s Best of 2021–The Best on TV

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Filed under: Backstage Pass, Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, Movies, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment

December 14, 2021

Today we’re continuing our annual year-end round-up with the Best TV Series of 2021. If you missed it, check out our review of the best Kick-Ass Heroines of 2021 here. We watch a lot of television, and probably love a good series even more than a great movie. We preview hundreds of series, but outside big franchise content you want to know about, we only review what we recommend–the best genre content we’re watching. The theory? If we like it, we think you may like it. The best shows have a compelling story, great characters, tremendous action, a sharp use of humor, and all kinds of well-executed genre elements that satisfy and leave viewers feeling inspired. It’s even better if we see richly detailed sets and costumes. And the very best series get usually get canceled at the end of their first season because network execs will never figure out what we genre fans love.

Without further ado, this year’s Best in Television:

Best Borg Series, Best TV Borg – Cowboy Bebop (Netflix). Mustafa Shakir’s Jet Black expanded on the anime series to create a space pilot and bounty hunter as cool and real as anyone from the Star Wars universe. His cyborg implants made him incredibly powerful–necessary in his dealings on behalf of Spike and his family.

Best Sci-Fi TV Series, Best Western TV Series, Best Space Fantasy Series, Best Retro Fix, Best TV Soundtrack, Best TV Costumes – Cowboy Bebop (Netflix). Only one science fiction series really knocked our socks off this year. The stylish look and music, and the fun of the crew of the spaceship Bebop made us want to speed through this series. For viewers looking for the next Firefly, this is it. For fans looking for the best futurism, space realism, and the next Altered Carbon, this is it. Its writing, direction, cast, and overall production values made the series this year’s series to talk about. Runner-up for Best Sci-fi TV Series: Blade Runner: Black Lotus (Adult Swim), great sci-fi, faithful to the source material. Honorable mention for Best Sci-fi TV Series: Resident Alien (Syfy) Alan Tudyk’s fish-out-of-water story and his alien story pulled us back to the roots of classic sci-fi with humor and drama as a bonus.

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Tags: 2021 borg Hall of Fame, Adrienne Barbeau, Aleyse Shannon, Alice in Borderland, All Creatures Great and Small, Amazon Studios, Ashley Forshaw, Awkwafina, BBC, Ben Miller, BritBox, Callum Woodhouse, CBS, Cowboy Bebop, Disney Plus, Evan Peters, Fantasy Island, Field of Dreams, Field of Dreams 2021, Ghosts, Ghosts series, Glitch, Grace, Hannah Ware, Hawkeye, IMDb TV, Jet Black, John Simm, Kevin Costner, L.A.'s Finest, Leverage: Redemption, Loki, Lori Tan Chinn, Mark Bonnar, Mustafa Shakir, Netflix, Nicola Walker, Nora from Queens, Owen Wilson, PBS, Professor T, Rebecca Webb, Resident Alien, Richard E. Grant, Robert Duncan McNeill, Rose McIver, Shetland, Shetland season 6 finale, Sinner TV series, Sophia Di Martino, Star Wars Visions, SurrealEstate, Syfy, The Last Tycoon, The One, The Rockford Files, The Watch, Tim Rozon, Truth Seekers, Unforgotten, William Shatner, William Shatner became oldest person in space

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Peacock channel arrives on Fire Stick–It’s time to get caught up on The Rockford Files… for free

Filed under: Retro Fix, TV — Leave a comment

August 2, 2021

The streaming channel Peacock arrived in a free, ad-supported edition this summer, and it’s pretty much like having a full cable TV line-up for only the one-time price of an Amazon Fire Stick. The Fire Stick is typically available here at Amazon for between $30 and $50, depending on the options you want, and it’s a great portal to a variety of streaming platforms, from Netflix to YouTube and Disney Plus to HBO Max, as well as all the series and movies on Amazon Prime and the streaming platforms already available via that service, like BritBox. Named for NBC’s classic trademark logo, the Peacock channel is bigger than it sounds, incorporating the giant NBC network of historic programming, content from channels like Bravo, USA, Syfy, History, Nickelodeon, Fox, The CW, MSNBC, lots of XXXII Olympiad 2020 sports coverage, and more. On Peacock you get a variety of movies and series, much more than is supported on other TV network-based streaming providers. Like 46 seasons of Saturday Night Live, plus great fan-favorites like Psych, Monk, Parks and Recreation, six seasons of Vikings, Heroes, Eureka, Charmed, Sliders, and Battlestar Galactica, several seasons of the different flavors of Law and Order, classics like The Carol Burnett Show and Good Times, Cheers, and Columbo. But what should you watch first?

We suggest bingeing the first season of Stephen J. Cannell’s 1970s detective series, The Rockford Files.

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Masquerade for Murder–Max Allan Collins is back with the latest Mickey Spillane tale

Filed under: Comics & Books — Leave a comment

March 31, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

Max Allan Collins is back with another nugget of gold from the files of Mickey Spillane. It’s this month’s first published release of Masquerade for Murder, a Mike Hammer story from the 1980s. Like a few other novels released by Collins I’ve reviewed here at borg, this is the latest published posthumously with the late Mickey Spillane. As Collins discusses in a foreword to the novel, this story came from a story synopsis left behind with many others with express instructions by Spillane for Collins to finish and introduce to the public. Coming from more than four decades across the life of the famous detective, Collins has seamlessly taken over the Hammer stories as if Spillane never really left.

As soon as Hammer takes his next job, his client’s son is clipped right in front of him, a hit-and-run by a red Ferrari. Soon the bodies begin piling up. They all have in common the firm where the son works. And the cause of death is incomprehensible to Hammer and the police: people are found dead whose chests were smashed in as if by a battering ram. Who is behind this, why are they doing it, and how the heck are they inflicting so much damage? Masquerade for Murder is Collins at his best, vintage Hammer, and indistinguishable from classic Mickey Spillane.

Few characters and genres are as easy to sink into as Mike Hammer crime novels. Hammer in the 1980s is a combination of all the great detectives from the then-recent past, some Thomas Magnum, some Jim Rockford, some Columbo, and some Lennie Briscoe from Law & Order to come years later. Of course, Hammer was a major influence behind them all.

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Tags: Columbo, Gary Sandy, Magnum p.i., Masquerade for Murder, Masquerade for Murder book review, Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, The Rockford Files, Titan Books

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Retro fix–Shirt shop lets you sport your most obscure blasts from the past

Filed under: Con Culture, Retro Fix — Leave a comment

June 22, 2019

The Crazy Top Shop was my early 1980s experience with heat-press printed T-shirts. At Southridge Mall you could show off your fandom with slogans or images from your favorite shows. Who can forget the smell of the melting glue as the clerk ironed your selection onto your favorite baseball jersey? I remember getting one shirt with the Three Stooges, one with The Fonz, and one with Yoda right after seeing The Empire Strikes Back.

An online shop is now offering shirts for all sorts of fans with some great throwbacks to pop culture’s past. From mash-ups, humor, and obscure references, many we haven’t seen elsewhere, Retropolis has an incredible variety of printed logos. We’re betting everyone can find something on the store’s website, where it currently is offering more than 900 retro-themed shirt styles. What’s it going to take to get you nostalgic, and what kind of nostalgia defines you–enough to display it for everyone to see on your shirt? Do you like classic television shows? How about toys and toy companies from the distant past? What about forgotten advertising campaigns and the earliest pop culture slogans? Retropolis may not have everything, but it has plenty. How about a shirt with a vintage comic book logo, like the old Charlton Comics brand, that crazy Hey Kids! Comics, or the memorable Comics Code Authority stamp?

How about a shirt with an image of that yellow plastic 45 RPM record adapter? How about T-shirts regularly seen worn by characters inside TV and film, like Three’s Company, John Ritter’s Captain Avenger from Hero At Large, the jersey from Teen Wolf, Snoopy’s Joe Cool shirt, Mork and Mindy, or Pigs in Space? And a few hundred of the catalog listings are for shirts sporting famous and not-so famous superhero logos. From Super Grover to the Flash, several 1966 Batman characters, and even Captain Carrot, if you can think of something, it’s probably there.

You can also find several mash-ups, allowing you to show off your own twisted sense of humor, like an unforgettable Marvel Star Wars comics character colliding with a Carl Weathers movie for an Action Jaxxon logo. We also spotted Atomic Blondie, Cap’n Crunch on a Big Wheel, Fonzie’s Jump the Shark episode from Happy Days meets Jaws, and other shirts featuring Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots, Monster Cereals, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Planet of the Apes.

Along with the superhero shirts, we spotted four big categories to choose from. Like fake pop culture. We saw Amalgamated Ice Cream (Batman), ACME (Looney Tunes), Arnold’s (Happy Days), Athlead (The Office), Advanced Idea Mechanics (Marvel), Chop Suey Palace (A Christmas Story), Camp Crystal Lake (Friday the 13th), Child Detection Agency (Monsters, Inc.), Cocktails and Dreams (Cocktail), Frostbite Falls (Rocky & Bullwinkle), Fox Force Five (Pulp Fiction), Hill Valley Police (Back to the Future), Rockford Agency (Rockford Files), and Wimpy Burgers (Popeye).

You still haven’t found something you must have yet?

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Tags: 1960s Batman, 1976 Bicentennial logo, 1980s, 1980s nostalgia, 1980s shopping mall stores, A Christmas Story, and Toys 'R' Us, Aurora Plastics Corp., Azrak-Hamway, Big Jim, Big Wheels, Blacula, Burger Chef, Calgon, Camelot Music, Captain Carrot, Car Wash, Charmin, Chiffon, Comics Code, Commander Salamander, Connect Four, Desilu, Dolly Madison, Dr. Pepper, Dragnet, Dynamite magazine, Emergency!, Flash, Freaky Friday, Friday the 13th, Frito Bandito, Frogger, GI Joe Adventure Team, Gnip Gnop, Goofy Grape, Happy Days, Headache, Hee-Haw, Hero At Large, I Spy, Jabberjaw, Jaxxon, Joe Cool, Joy, K-Tel, Kenner, Kojak, Kresge's, Kwik Shop, Land of the Giants, Logan's Run, Looney Tunes, Love American Style, MacDonald's, MacMillan Toys, Magic 8 Ball, MARX, MEGO, Milton the Toaster for Pop Tarts, Misfits of Science, Mister Donut, Mod Squad, Monster Cereals, Monster vitamins, Montgomery Ward, Mork and Mindy, Mounds, Mr. Muscle, Mr. Steak, NBC peacock, Norm Prescott/Lou Scheimer Productions, Pac Man, Pigs in Space, Pizza Man, Pizzazz, Planet of the Apes, Police Woman, Pong, Pop-o-Matic, PrestoMagix, Quake, Quisp, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rankin Bass, Reggie!, Remco, Remote Control, Retropolis, Retropolis shirt store, RIF--Reading is Fundamental, Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, Rollerball, S&H Green Stamps, Sam Goody, Sanford & Son, Screen Gems, screen-printed shirts, Sea Monkeys, Showbiz Pizza, Six Million Dollar Man, Sony & Cher, Soylent Green, Space Invaders, Speed Racer, Star Wars Marvel Comics, Starting Lineup, Super Grover, Teen Wolf, The Love Bug, The Rockford Files, They Live, Three's Company, Topps Baseball Cards, Tower Records, Vertigo. WKRP, Viewmaster, Welcome Back Kotter, Whitman, Winnie the Pooh, Woolco, Woolworth's

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Retro watch–Television channels go retro for classic TV fun

Filed under: Retro Fix, TV — 1 Comment

July 10, 2016

More than fifty years ago Newton Minow, the first FCC commissioner, called television a vast wasteland. The prospect of 500 channels available and nothing to watch was forecast back in the 1970s and today it sometimes seems like it’s a truism more often than not. But if you get tired of new programming–and make no mistake plenty of great television shows are airing this year–a few recently added channels to your local line-up may remind fans of classic TV why they jumped onboard in the first place.

Three channels: MeTV, COZI TV and LAFF, are a destination for those who just want to pop in now and then for a dose of the past. Even pay channel Starz has begun broadcasting classic television series. No doubt much of the programming may not hold up to current audiences. Clothes, hairstyles, and stale, formulaic half-hour and hour plots may not keep your 21st century attention. Yet many shows seem to hold up quite well. As time goes on two of my favorites, Simon & Simon and Magnum, P.I., seem to drift farther and farther away, yet the comedy of Night Court and Cybill remains laugh-out-loud funny.

Classic TV gold, like The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, may be a bit much in big doses. Only a diehard fan would stream these beginning to end. Yet, try popping in once in a while and it’s like visiting an old friend. M*A*S*H and The A-Team hold up quite well. In particular, the formula established by The A-Team, no doubt based on decades of series that came before it, can be found continuing on to this day in series like Leverage and Burn Notice. Even series like Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels can be fun, if you don’t take their 1970s approach to TV too seriously. And you may find yourself engrossed in Quantum Leap all over again.

So what’s playing, where, and when?

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