The Brady Bunch open house, cultural snobbery FTW, and Thunderbirds is 60!
It was a delight to open my inbox this morning to find
writing about a recent visit to The Brady Bunch house in his Substack.There’s a fundraising event taking place in November, which will open the doors of the house to the public. You may recall that the house was renovated a few years back in a not-very-good HGTV series to make the inside of the house match the exterior.
This family was rich enough to have a live-in housekeeper. The dad was an architect. This was their dream house. And they shoved three kids to a room? He attached stones to drywall in the entrance to make it look like a faux castle? The backyard was Astroturf and had a small wooden stage, which seemed like the kind of thing stage parents in the Valley build to force their kids to perform.
And it was so plain. This was a family so white that, even though they lived in Southern California, they hired a white maid.
This was a monument to a sad time. A time when stagflation was so bad that a man hit on Alice by giving her free meat.
I’m not sure how I can get myself to the US for November, but I reckon I can raise the funds if I can win a local TV talent contest…
Cultural snobbery as a superpower
I appreciated the rallying cry of The Guardian writer Rachel Aroesti who asks why, in an era of AI slop and other diminished cultural consumption that we don’t better celebrate cultural snobbery?
But what if cultural snobbery, so effectively cast off over the past decade, wasn’t a waste of time? What if it did actually uphold certain standards? What if – faced with a future dominated by social media advertainment and AI-generated content – it’s our only hope?
You could argue that culture has been on an intellectual downward spiral since the Victorian era, when mass-market literature lowered the collective brow. Ever since, we’ve adapted to art in increasingly populist, democratic and easily digestible forms – cinema, pop music, television, the internet – much of it reflective of new technologies. Over time, suspicion about specific mediums became synonymous with elitism and a fear of change – yet there were always hierarchies within these modern forms, often directed along lines of race, gender and sexuality with the output (and tastes) of the straight, white male generally receiving the least derision
Her article at The Guardian is worth a read, even if she does dwell too long on Netflix comedy Too Much, which is frankly beneath us all.
One big condition
Surely the condition would be related to being recognised by anyone under the age of 45…
60 years of Thunderbirds
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the first episode of Thunderbirds. I have very fond memories of waking up as a five year-old at my Nanna’s house and watching the show at the crack of dawn (sometimes earlier) on Saturday mornings. I couldn’t really understand what I was watching (I didn’t understand that they were puppets), but I was enthralled.
Radio Times has a look back at the show:
Thunderbirds stood apart from much of children’s television that followed. “I maintain that kids don’t really want to see kids on screen,” Jamie says. “This obsession with ‘kidifying’ children’s TV characters just needs to stop. Thunderbirds proves it’s not needed – as does Doctor Who. When I was young, I couldn’t wait to watch things that were too old for me. It’s about not over-engineering things to tick boxes, but instead making what you genuinely care about. That’s what Dad did. He cared deeply about the morals and the inspirational qualities of his hero brother – and those values ended up on screen.”
That integrity extended to the show’s extraordinary craftsmanship. From its lavish model work to its ambitious ‘Supermarionation’ puppetry, Thunderbirds was an astonishing technical leap forward from Gerry’s previous works.
ITV has a playlist on YouTube where it is adding remastered episodes of Thunderbirds. It currently has 26 of the 32-episode run of the series.
News Desk
There’s not a lot of detail on it yet, but a second The Simpsons movie is set to hit cinemas in 2027, marking 20 years since the original was released. Read: THR
Awkward creator Lauren Iungerich’s new show Poser has been picked up by Netflix. It’s the first show she has sole creator credit on since Awkward. Read: Deadline
Old-school single cam comedy Mid-Century Modern has been canned after a single season at Hulu. Read: THR
Bill Murray will go golfing with pals in Ireland in new Paramount+/BBC travelogue Off Course. Read: Deadline
Following its racist bacon stunt, Sky News has axed Freya Fires Up. Not a surprise. Read: Mediaweek
TV Insider has a good list of 17 failed Dick Wolf shows.
With 13 million views in 10 days, Superman (2025) is the most-watched film on HBO Max since Barbie. Read: Variety
Trailer Park
Jay Kelly debuts Dec 5 on Netflix.
Famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager Ron.
Disney Twisted Wonderland: The Animation debuts Oct 29 on Disney+.
Your favorite Disney villains, reimagined in ways you’ve never dared to dream.
Down Cemetery Road debuts on Apple TV+ Oct 29.
When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a girl disappears in the aftermath, neighbor Sarah Trafford (Ruth Wilson) becomes obsessed with finding her and enlists the help of private investigator Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson). Zoë and Sarah suddenly find themselves in a complex conspiracy that reveals people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.
The Manipulated debuts on Disney+ Nov 5.
Good News debuts Oct 17 on Netflix.
When hijackers seize a Japanese flight and demand to fly to Pyongyang, a mysterious mastermind hatches a zany scheme to reroute the plane to Seoul.
Solar Opposites returns Oct 13 for season 6 on Hulu.
That’s the newsletter for today.
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