Tweet "Broadway" series on PBS

Others I've spoken with also overlooked this, & I missed last week's premier episode. But last night I turned on, accidentally, the 2nd episode, covering 1920's productions, songwriters, stars, and was immensely impressed by the excellence of it: such as the influence (unknown to me) of Shuffle Along, teenage photos of Marilyn Miller, & much, much more. No doubt all this could be found in books...but I'm afraid I don't have quite the time to read them all. (Twenty years ago I scrutinized the PBS schedule as obsessively as I now study TCM's schedule, but recent years of interminable soap operas, Celtic Women, etc. have dulled my attention.)

It is excellent and it's from 2004. Neither of the two PBS stations here in Chicago are running it's national feed Sundays at 10pm ET, but I have the PBS dvd set. What kills me is PBS not presenting theatre anymore. For instance, the 2006 Tony for best revival was for The Pajama Game with Kelly O'Hara and Harry Connick, Jr. That was a limited run of 127 performances. How tough would have been to broadcast a basic video record of it. I bet there is one and maybe clips of it will turn up in a future documentary.

It is excellent and it's from 2004.

I'm accustomed to being far behind the times, a day late & a dollar short, but Good Lord...2004? Well, at least now I have hope of finding the DVDs second hand on ebay.

There's at least one virtue to being behind the times: just found a 2nd hand three-DVD set of Broadway on Amazon for $23; would guess the PBS "new" price is twice that, or more.