1988 to 1991 there was a series that had me hooked, Midnight Caller, starring one of my favourite tv actors, Gary Cole – pre American Gothic and Brady Bunch movie.
The trailer below just doesn’t do it justice…
I recently went back through a couple of old video cassettes and Midnight Caller was on one of them – YES!
It had good solid performances, good to brilliant writing (some weeks were better than others) and the cynical, sarcastic and philosophical worldview of “Jack Killion” (played by Cole) made me stick around… and the best thing… a very cool soundtrack!
It’s representation of radio was okay, not perfect, not too creative, but interesting enough for a young fan of radio to stick around and watch it week after week.
The best thing for me was that it showed the power of radio – and that was something that was lacking on the small screen at the time (remember WKRP CINCINATTI had finished by then).
What radio could do, what it couldn’t (when the action moved away from the station), the power of story telling and connecting with people – yes, I was a fan.
So I re-watched episode 1 and 2 on VHS and it was a HUGE trip back in time – I looked for the series on DVD and can’t track it down.
There was a Hong Kong ‘B’ movie of the similar name (Night Caller) – which was very average, and then there is the better not mentioned Mel Gibson movie ‘ON THE LINE’ (sigh) which feels like an episode from Night Caller badly ramped up. Just missing the mark.
If you can find an old episode – re-watch it – you’ll enjoy the nostalgia hit like I did.
