Night Gallery
|
|
Night Gallery was Rod Serling's follow-up to The Twilight Zone in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Serling functioned primarily as the on-air host of Night Gallery and did not have the same control of content and tone as he did on Twilight Zone.
Serling appeared in an art gallery setting and introduced the program by showing and discussing a painting of a scene from that night's story.
Night Gallery regularly presented stories from classic fantasy, including H. P. Lovecraft, as well as original works.
The series was introduced with a pilot TV-film aired in 1969 which featured the directoral debut of Steven Spielberg and one of the last acting performances by Joan Crawford.
"Night Gallery" was nominated for an Emmy Award for its first-season episode "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" as the Outstanding Single Program on U.S. television in 1971.
The series attracted criticism for its use of comedic blackout sketches between segments in later episodes, and by the end Serling had all but disowned the show.
In order to pump up the number of episodes available for syndication, the 60-minute episodes were divided into 30-minute episodes, with many segments extended using newly shot scenes and stock footage to fill up the time. Meanwhile, episodes of a short-lived supernatural series from 1972, The Sixth Sense, were also incorporated into the syndicated version of the series with Serling providing newly-filmed introductions to those episodes.
In recent years, the original, uncut version of the series has been shown on the Starz movie networks, thus fans can now see the episodes in their original format for the first time in 30 years. A DVD release of the first season is scheduled for later in 2004.