Looking for classic Christmas television? Kliph Nesteroff’s Classic Showbiz Television blog may be the best online filters for television on the web. He seems to tirelessly comb social video sites for archival classics that suggest an insane—almost encyclopedic knowledge—of the history of television. And he has been working overtime this holiday season, linking out to all kinds of classic TV Christmas specials. Here are a few of my favorite episodes (taken from a seemingly endless archive spanning three decades) dealing with this joyous season: The Twilight Zone, The Brady Bunch, The Jeffersons, I Love Lucy, All in the Family, Happy Days, Taxi, Sanford and Son, and WKRP in Cincinnati.
And, as an added bonus, here’s the first part of the WKRP in Cincinnati Xmas episode from 1979, the first two minutes feature some classic Dr. Johnny Fever:
And while Kliph Nesteroff was smart enough to avoid this one, I’ll follow the lead of The B-Movie Catechism blog and link out to one of the worst Xmas specials ever made, The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978). I blocked this out as a child because it was such a traumatic experience to watch this while still imbued with limitless sense of wonder instilled by the film proper. Nonetheless, I was recently reminded of this insanely bad moment in Star Wars history —the sitcom logic of which foreshadows the film episodes 1, 2, and 3 in many ways. So here’s you pre-1999 Star Wars medicine.
And, if it’s a film your looking for this Xmas, then look no further.
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