by James Wallace Harris, 9/20/25
For years, my wife and I have been watching old TV shows at night. We just finished fifteen seasons of ER. It’s our ritual to watch a couple of hours of TV together. However, I asked Susan if we could watch movies for a few months, and she agreed. Susan prefers TV shows.
I’ve always been a big fan of Turner Classic Movies (TCM). I’ve loved old movies since I was a kid, when I would stay up watching movies all night in the summertime. Stations back then would play old movies overnight. That was in the 1960s, and they would show films from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The kind that TCM shows today.
Since I retired, I discovered I can’t watch TV by myself. My mind gets restless. But if I have someone to watch with me, my mind can relax. I can’t explain that. I’ve been craving old movies due to that affliction, so I’m thankful that Susan has agreed to watch old movies with me.
Sadly, watching TCM films hasn’t been as fun as I hoped. Has something happened to me? Last night we watched The Lady Eve (1941) with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda – classic screwball comedy. When I was young, I would have rated this film A+. Now, it was just a C. Susan gave it the same grade. Our friends Mike and Betsy had seen this flick a few days ago, and they were also disappointed. The TCM host gushed about The Lady Eve, and IMDB gives it a 7.7 out of 10 score. That doesn’t sound high, but it is. Anything over a 7 is generally something good.
Mike and Betsy felt the film jumped the shark when the Stanwyck character passes herself off as a different woman to Fonda’s character, and he believed her. That didn’t bother Susan and me.
I enjoyed all the innuendos and double entendres. The movie is a goofy take on sex and love. And I’m a sucker for good character actors, and this film had many of my favorites (Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, and Eric Blore).
I remember being completely enchanted by The Lady Eve thirty years ago, so why did I have to force myself to watch it last night? I think the answer is binge-watching television. We’ve been altered by streaming TV.
We just finished watching 331 episodes of ER. Every episode was more entertaining to me than The Lady Eve, even the ones I found somewhat disappointing. Susan and I generally watched two episodes a night, but sometimes we’d sneak another one or two episodes in during the day. We were addicted. I always craved 8:00 pm because I wanted to see another two episodes.
Old movies, or even new movies, just don’t have the addictive quality of a great television show. That’s why Susan prefers TV. And maybe I do too. I think preference began when we could binge-watch an entire TV show from pilot to finale.
I’ve always thought movies were artistically superior to television shows. And maybe they often are. But I don’t get attached to the characters like I do with Mrs. Maisel, Perry Mason, or Beaver Cleaver.
Great movies often have more to say. Great films used to have better acting and higher-quality production. That’s not always true anymore.
Ace in the Hole (1951) had impressive character development. It had a tight plot. The cinematography was excellent. The ending was very satisfying. And it had a lot of delicious moral ambiguity. It’s an A+ picture. It even makes a good episode of Perry Mason look mediocre. Why then is watching Perry, Della, and Paul more addictive? And why was the newer HBO Perry Mason even more intensely addictive? The answer, I believe, is the newer Perry Mason, which combined a TV characterization with movie-level production values.
What if the characters Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve came back every week? Is that why we loved The Thin Man and Tarzan movies so much? Are movies less satisfying than television because the story ends? And is that why so many films today at the theaters are franchises?
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
I find the same myself re series over movies. Watched several episodes of House per day earlier in the year and enjoyed it hugely—but am currently struggling to watch anything. Waiting for the next series of Slow Horses, and will pick up the latest one of Foundation at the same time (want to reread the trilogy again first).
As to old movies in particular, I’ve watched three really old movies over the last few years, Metropolis, Battleship Potemkin, and Buster Keaton’s The General. All really good.
I’ve seen Metropolis and The General several times, but have never seen Battleship Potemkin. I’ll give it a try.
It takes a while to get going, so be warned.
Last night, I finished watching The Persuaders for probably the sixth or seventh time. That’s a series that’s more than half a century old. But this time, it was a special occasion because Corinne watched the entire series with me. She enjoyed it, and generally the stuff I enjoy and the stuff she enjoys are mutually exclusive. In theory, I prefer to watch old movies, but I’m getting to the point where movies are just too long.
Funny, how we’re all different. I don’t care for old movies as the acting seems stiff and unnatural. But then today they go overboard with special effects and more action than intellect.
The exception I find are a lot of British shows, especially the ones on PBS, BritBox and Acorn TV. I find the acting superior and the people look real, and there is much more character development and subtlety.
seems like i remember you following a sitcom titled THE GOOD GUYS back in the twelfth grade; bob denver, joyce van patten, and herb edelman. sort of a sixties take on THE HONEYMOONERS. it only ran a for a couple of seasons, which was a drag, inasmuch as it was funnier than THE BEVERLEY HILLBILLIES or PETTICOAT JUNCTION, both of which wore out their welcome with me pretty quickly.