My family had a distinct lack of cable until around 1990, so I was never able to watch these two HBO shows that sounded really appealing to me. With both series on DVD in some form, I am wondering if they are worth checking out.

THE HITCHHIKER is pretty bad, but I watched occasionally because it had nudity (Shannon Tweed!) in it. THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER did do at least a few good episodes, but I never watched it regularly. I do recall William Shatner doing good work in one of them.

Don't spend much time delving into HITCHHIKER, but there should be a few BRADBURY gems to discover.

I only saw the initial three HITCHHIKER episodes when Nicholas Campbell played the titular narrator and then had a number of years pass before I caught up with any of the other episodes. Those initial three seemed less concerned with functioning as a well-conceived horror or suspense story and more with just an excuse to work in some skin for the cable market. The episode with August Schellenburg and Pam Bowman comes to mind. The later episodes with Page Fletcher as the Hitchhiker were more polished but still nothing to get excited about. They did at least feature an interesting array of guest actors, and probably the episode I liked best featured Gary Busey as an evangelist.

As for the BRADBURY shows I haven't seen that many, but the first half-dozen were entertaining and generally well produced. What was the Shatner episode - "The Playground"? He was good in that. I also recalled liking "The Crowd" and "The Town Where No One Got Off", with Jeff Goldblum.

I remember watching the first few episodes of "The Hitchhiker" when I was a prepubescent teenager, staying up late and sneaking it in behind my folk's backs.

They weren't good but they were, ah, good, if you know what I mean. At least, they seemed that way at the time.

doug

In the UK, around about the time it would have been transmitted in the US, there were a couple of videos released (three episodes apiece) of Hitchhiker. I remember quite enjoying them at the time so I picked up the US dvds recently and was left distinctly underwhelmed by them.

I also thought that David Ogden Stiers did a great job in the episode "The Pedestrian". I enjoyed The Ray Bradbury Theater, they were well done and followed the stories.

I enjoyed a lot of episodes of Ray Bradbury Theatre, but it was a little hit and miss in places simply because, in my opinion at least, what makes Bradbury so great (he's my favourite author, just so you all know where I stand) is the beauty of his writing. He could write a story about a guy tying his shoelace and make it seem like the most wonderful event you've ever witnessed.

However, the problem with that is that it's almost impossible to replicate that effect in other media, which is where previous attempts to adapt his work for film/TV have gone awry. It's no surprise therefore that I think the best adaptations of Bradbury that I've seen, or rather heard in this case, were a series of his stories adapted for radio several years back. I'm sure I taped a couple, I must go and look them out now I'm in the mood again.

That said, I will admit that the RBT episode that adapted THE TOYNBEE CONVECTOR (and starred James Whitmore) remains one of my favourite 30 minutes of television, ever.