I'm in the minority here, clearly, but I've never been a fan of The Prisoner. Even as a kid, I found the whole thing to be mostly an opportunity for Patrick McGoohan to wallow in pretention.
As for my "ADD addled internet generation" students, they are neither more nor less intelligent and discerning than that first group I taught in 1985 or those who came after them. Before you scorn them for not obsessing over your favorite old TV shows, remember that these younger people are the ones who have made steampunk a thing (and I wouldn't credit TWWW with giving birth to it, that honor goes to Jules Verne). They have their own TV shows, movies, and such that they follow.
Before we get into "But all the new stuff sucks! Look at the drek like Twilight that is popular!" consider this: My generation obsessed over the original Dark Shadows TV show. Ask anybody in their 50's or so and you'll hear a lot of stories about running straight home from school so as not to miss a minute of an episode. But if you go to Netflix today and watch it, Dark Shadows was crap. Slow moving, badly acted, poorly produced crap. It is, in fact, nearly unwatchable. All the shows I mentioned earlier have a golden glow around them for people who watched them new...I think it has more to do with being young that that the shows were actually that good.
WWW - I said predicted, not invented. And, just for the record, I have no inherent like of steampunk. In fact, I pretty much avoid it at all costs.
ADD addled - you said (and I followed your lead here) - "heard of" not "liked" as a mark of quality - I did not mention "intelligent" or "discerning", just the fallacy of using "what they've heard of" as a mark of quality. The fact that they've never heard of FINNEGAN'S WAKE affects it's quality not one whit. No "obsessing", either - get your panties out of bunch, already. With the turnover of cram-data sieving into their (our) noggin gullets, "their own TV shows and movies" are likely already being disliked by the next generation micro-segment behind them. Somewhere, some 16 years old is SEETHING with disinterest at CABIN IN THE WOODS. And so it goes (it just gets faster!)
I think it has more to do with being young that that the shows were actually that good
this is, of course, one of the standard definitions of "nostalgia understood as sickness", as the Greeks had it. Anyone who likes things when they are young and grows old has to grapple with it - but it's not a binary argument of good/bad and learning to find out why and in what context things were liked from *even before you were born* is a first step (constantly to be reinforced by thinking and new exposure and more context) and goes a long way towards building the critical skills required to get a real grasp on various art forms as a whole. That's why they show "boring" old silent movies in film school and have students read *boring* old classics in lit classes - because 1/2 of the kids will be bored and walk away but it was never meant to be, and 1/4 will parrot "yes.. this... quality..." (and try to figure out how to use this new name drop to get themselves laid) but that last 1/4 will have the scales fall from their eyes and realize just how beautiful it is... all of it... even the stuff they don't like *personally* (but begin to see the larger context of critical context). Thus, the reason to watch old things.
As for DARK SHADOWS - well, the recent and quite lengthy critical roundtable (including people who weren't born before it went off the air and not just senile old fans) in one of the few genre magazine left out there that has consistent quality writing - VIDEO WATCHDOG #169 (
http://www.videowatchdog.com/home/home.html) - might disagree (extremely interesting section in there about how Dan Curtis succeeded in folding in a version of Henry James TURN OF THE SCREW into a story arc during the run of the show). For me, just slightly too young to have known it as something that disappeared right before I would have paid attention (like ASTRO BOY) in retrospect it's an interesting example of how "Women's Gothic" and horror overlapped in the 1970s, the first real attempt at the romantic vampire anti-hero (which succeeded, and then moved to greater popularity under Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Anne Rice), and a wonderful artifact of the last vestiges of the grueling, New York City-acting community-based (nearly) live, (nearly) daily local television production - and it was loved by millions (despite those snickering NPR reports).
But it was a soap opera and, even with that consideration in place, YMMV (I'm no big fan of the soap opera template - even less nowadays that's it's snuck into all major television structure plotting from comic books and then through BUFFY/SUPERNATURAL et. al., to become the way almost all, if not all, genre shows are structured.
My recent re-re-re watch of THE PRISONER was a success, predicated as it was on the using the "No. 6 fails" lens this time. Fascinating how the wonderful acting and writing of the last few episodes transmutes into something quite different when this approach is taken.
Yeah, I think that was an unfortunate piece of agism/snobbishness from Shawn. I'm probably younger than the students you taught in 1985, and I don't think that the students I teach these days (most of whom are exactly half my age) are any less discerning than I was.
Please note above - but I'll cop to being a "snob" ... you'll become one too, in time... and "old" as well... just you wait and see....
