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There’s Something About “Mary”, Part One

Published 24th May 2026

TV Comedy

On the 24th September 1978, a brand new Mary Tyler Moore variety series premiered on CBS. Simply titled Mary1, there was a full season order in place; many reports at the time suggested at least 22 shows, with an option for two more.

After three shows aired, the show was pulled from the airwaves for good.

This article is partly the tale of what happened to poor Mary. But more importantly: it’s also about the pitfalls of judging a series nearly five decades later, when the detritus surrounding a show can be extremely difficult to interpret correctly.

*   *   *

There was an extremely obvious format which Mary could have gone for: something akin to How to Survive the 70s from seven months earlier. Numerous guest stars, perhaps a different, fairly loose topic every week, job done. Instead, Mary seemed to go out of its way to make life difficult for itself.

Guest stars were mainly eschewed, aside from a brief appearance by Carl Reiner in the opening episode. Instead, they went for a repertory cast, some quite well known, others at the start of their career: James Hampton, Swoosie Kurtz, David Letterman, Michael Keaton, Judy Kahan, and – the most famous of the gang at the time – Dick Shawn. This, at least, had some precedence: surrounding Mary with a solid team was one of the things which made The Mary Tyler Moore Show such a success.

Mary herself described the series as the following at the time, which was widely quoted in the press:

“The show will be made up primarily of sketches which hopefully display wit and grown-up comedy. There will also be some music and dancing but most of the numbers will grown out of the preceding sketch. For instance, a disco sketch evolves into a disco number. It’s a new form for me and I just love it.”

Some clips from the first episode are on YouTube. Sadly, as it’s not the full show, it doesn’t really give a full sense of proceedings; oddly enough, it seems determined not to let us see much of the actual singing or dancing. But it does at least give some kind of idea of the kind of programme Mary was.

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  1. This is not Mary’s 1985 sitcom, also called Mary. ↩

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Compliance.

Published 8th May 2026

Internet / Other TV

In my day job, working in linear television, I have to deal quite a lot with compliance. On occasion, I even have had to issue my own official content warnings for various TV programmes.

It can, on occasion, be an exasperating experience. Of course, viewers need warning about certain kinds of content. But when a continuity announcement spends more time warning the viewer about potentially offensive content than setting up the actual programme, it can be a little annoying.

At times, I perhaps feel like “legacy” media needs to get with the times. Just a little.

*   *   *

Tonight, I posted a short Bluesky thread about Confessions of a Driving Instructor. As part of that thread, I posted an image of Lynda Bellingham with her left tit out.

Bluesky immediately labelled this as “explicit sexual images”. I am not exaggerating here. That is literally and actually the exact phrase they used. The BBC gets endlessly criticised for compliance culture… and yet Bluesky thinks an errant nipple is an “explicit sexual image”.

I have nothing to say, except: perhaps people should stop leaping on the BBC for every single damn silly thing, and consider what happens online. Just occasionally.

Brevity.

Published 6th May 2026

Internet

Sometimes it feels like the whole internet is a calculated exercise in talking at cross-purposes. Take for instance this post on Bluesky, by author Tom Cox:

“No other word has done more damage to the craft of writing in recent years than “content”. Even if you’re using the word “content” ironically, or as a cute little joke, don’t. When someone calls writing “content” they’re pissing on someone’s hard work & passion. “Content” is Technosatan’s henchword.”

I’ve never really had a problem with the word, because for me it has useful connotations that it doesn’t for others: as a technical term originating from 2000s discussions on web standards, where you’re distinguishing between CSS (visual design) and HTML (content). I just can’t bring myself to have visceral disgust for something that in my world, is rooted in something which helped people: something that made the web far more accessible to a much wider group of individuals.1

To me, the word just doesn’t have an automatic tinge of soulless corporate management-speak. I identify it as a technical term first. Yet I get it: a word which I associate with something helpful, is used these days by many in a fashion which is unhelpful. That’s so many internet arguments in a nutshell; different groups of people approaching a topic from different angles, and being grumpy that not everyone experienced it in exactly the same way.

So when I read this piece by Jeffrey Zeldman2, I am aware that this is probably just another pesky example of talking – thinking? – at cross-purposes. And yet something about it really did give me pause.

“What’s rare — what’s difficult — is knowing when you’ve said enough. Cutting the sentence that’s technically correct but doesn’t earn its place. Trusting the reader. Trusting the idea. Trusting the white space to do work.

Brevity was always a discipline. Now it’s a statement. When everything around you is excessive by default, choosing fewer words takes courage. It says: I thought about this. I edited. I respected your time more than I needed to show my work.”

I really don’t think this is wrong, per se. But I see a lot of advice for writers which focuses on brevity. It has a long and storied history. But I rarely see anybody giving the other side: that it can be incredibly easy to not quite write enough, and to not give your reader vital context.

It’s a problem I’ve run into constantly here on Dirty Feed, and with good reason: my knowledge of television is often deep rather than wide, which is the exact opposite of most people. So when I’m writing about some old show which I love, I’m often quite far into the weeds, because for me that’s where the interesting stuff is. If you know as much about the programme I’m writing about as I do, then you’ll join me with no problem. If you don’t, then you’re going to struggle.

But crucially: with the right bit of context at the beginning, I can sometimes drag more people along for the ride. I never used to have to do this when I wrote about Red Dwarf for Ganymede & Titan; when writing specifically for a fan audience, it’s just far less of a problem. But it gave me bad habits when trying to write about things here, and it took many years to get rid of them. It took a whole decade of writing Dirty Feed before I even started to get better at this.

Even now, I run into problems, on articles which you really would think were plenty long enough already. Take, for instance, this epic five-part series on The Young Ones and its infamous flash frames. In total, those pieces amount to over 15k words; surely I said everything I needed to say on the subject?

But I don’t think so. I think it’s missing a whole part, in fact. A part which gives some proper context to the history of flash frames when it comes to television in general, and comedy in particular. A part which talks about whether flash frames actually do influence audiences in any way, or whether that’s a load of old hooey. When I first published those pieces, one person in particular chastised me a little for not talking about that latter point; I was a bit grumpy at the time, but I think they were right.

15k words, and there needed to be more. I needed to pull back just a little and give more context for a wider audience, and I abjectly failed to do so. If I had, maybe those pieces might have been really successful, not just successful by the standards of this site.3

Brevity can be important. But it’s equally as easy to simply not write enough.

  1. It amuses me that many people who dislike the word “content” are the same people who get riled up about people not using alt text on Bluesky, given this context of accessibility. ↩

  2. Ironically, someone who was heavily involved in work on those web standards from twenty years ago, though this is an entirely different topic. ↩

  3. I may try to rectify this in an eBook of those pieces one day, if I can find the time. But even as I ponder this, I think about how vital some of the videos are in those pieces, and blanch at trying to adapt it for text. This is one huge reason why I’ve always struggled with putting together a book of my work here: I write for the internet, and everything the medium offers. ↩

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Keep ‘Em Peeled

Published 5th May 2026

Other TV

As long-time readers of this site will know, I have a fascination with television pilots. Let’s be specific about what I mean, here: a true pilot isn’t just the first episode of a TV show. It’s something made separately from the rest of the series, as a first attempt at an idea. I find those first attempts endlessly interesting.

These pilots make their way to an audience in many different ways. Sometimes, as with Hi-de-Hi!, they are literally transmitted as a one-off show, well before the rest of the series.1 Others, like Yes Minister, are broadcast as part of the first series of the programme, sometimes with a few extra edits before transmission. There are ones which were transmitted purely by mistake, as per Absolutely Fabulous. And sometimes, like Drop the Dead Donkey, they were never transmitted at all, and instead became available on DVD years down the line.

And then there’s the truly interesting ones, where the pilot of a show has never been officially shown or released. One such example is Colin’s Sandwich, which I have a copy of here, but have shamefully never got around to writing about.2 Sometimes, we don’t even know if these pilots still exist or not. I talk about one of the Knightmare pilots here, but it’s never leaked in all the years that the show has had an ongoing and active fandom, which makes me suspicious.

Tracking these things down – or at least attempting to – is half the fun. But once, just once, I didn’t have to make any effort in order to see an obscure pilot.

It was piped directly to me, unbidden.

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  1. The pilot of Hi-de-Hi aired on New Years Day 1980; it was then repeated on the 19th February 1981, just before the new series of six more episodes. ↩

  2. Friend of the site Billy Smart has written a little about the Colin’s Sandwich pilot here. ↩

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Letterbollocks

Published 28th April 2026

Film / Internet

For anybody who reads this1, it will not have escaped your attention that Dirty Feed has been pretty quiet over the last couple of months. Quieter than it’s been for nearly a decade, in fact.

The reasons for this are numerous. I have a brand new job which is taking up a lot of my mental energy. I’m currently learning how to drive, which is taking up even more of my mental energy. And yes, OK, I’m also in the middle of a really fucking difficult piece of writing, and it’s not going very well. My brain has rebelled and is sulking.

But I need to write somehow, even if it isn’t here. So recently I’ve been spending a lot of time reviewing films on Letterboxd, with my favourite recently being this piece on The Three Caballeros. It really is lovely to write about something other than TV comedy for a change, stretching muscles I keep forgetting I have.

The other joy of Letterboxd is that writing there is almost the exact opposite of Dirty Feed. Here, my pieces have got so complicated over the past couple of years that writing the necessary introduction and context has become an absolute pain. (Getting across the context for The Mary Tyler Moore Show for a UK audience is hard enough, let alone her obscure variety shows which never even made it across the pond.) With Letterboxd, the context is already there on the main page for each film, before I even start. It means I can concentrate on writing the good bit, rather than the bit I dutifully have to write in order for anybody to understand the good bit.

It is an utter delight.

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  1. I’m not linking to this piece on social media, so that means: people who subscribe to my RSS feed, people with email subscriptions, and people who manually visit the site occasionally to see if I’ve written anything. Hello. I love you all. ↩

A Piece of PIAS

Published 15th March 2026

Computing / Internet / Videogames

I don’t let the old Acorn/RISC OS fanboy in me out very much any more. At least, not in polite company. But I have to admit, when reading a blog post recently from somebody around my age1, which was complaining about how unsafe they felt buying computers from the US due to the Trump administration, a little voice popped into my head, unbidden.

“YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO BUY BRITISH IN THE 90S AND YOU DIDN’T, IT’S TOO LATE NOW!”

Ahem. Slightly unfair, of course – Acorn’s machines had plenty of US involvement, not least with partners like VLSI – but I still think there’s a reasonable point there when it comes to the software stack. And anyway, being slightly unfair is the whole point of being a fanboy.

Still, I should dial this rather unpleasant part of me back to something useful. So let’s travel a little further back in time to my BBC Master days. Specifically the release Play It Again Sam 6.

Play It Again Sam 6 advert

Play It Again Sam 6 advert, from the January 1989 issue of Acorn User

Play It Again Sam was that magic thing: a win for both company and consumer. Take four old games Superior Software had the rights to, package them up with minimal effort, charge the same amount as a single game would, and watch the money flow in. Crucially, if you already had two of the games, the releases were still a bargain. The 8-bit incarnation ended up running for 18 installments between and 1987 and 19932, and sometimes there was even a brand new game included.

So given that value for money, along with loving my BBC Master more than life itself, I owned every single release, yes? In fact, no. I think Play It Again Sam 6 was the only one I owned. And while I had a “healthy” collection of pirate games – including some games which appeared on various Play It Again Sam releases – I certainly didn’t own every game featured on them, legally or otherwise. Nowhere near.

I think maybe this is something that’s easy for us to forget as adults. (Or at least, the kind of adults who read this site.) Recently, I’ve been on a bit of a Jayne Mansfield kick, and have been tracking down as many films of hers as I can reasonably watch. This means obvious fare like The Girl Can’t Help It, through to less obvious films like The Challenge, and onto true obscurities like The Fat Spy.3 This has involved ordering some truly odd DVD releases. As my friend Darrell said: “When you’re onto the Spanish bootleg DVDs you know you’re in deep.”

But as a kid, I didn’t have the resources to do this kind of collecting. And no matter how much I might love any given thing, the very idea of owning every single release of something was just incomprehensible.4 Not only would I never own every single Play It Again Sam compilation, but of course I would never own every single Play It Again Sam compilation.

After all, I was never going to own every single Donald Duck VHS release either. I’d just wear out the single one I had.

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  1. Deliberately left unlinked, I ain’t interested in a fight. ↩

  2. Plenty of websites claim that Play It Again Sam 18 was released in 1992, but I don’t believe this is the case. The issue is blurred by the fact that Superior essentially stopped advertising its 8-bit range in the Acorn magazines the start of 1993; but until then, the latest compliation they were pushing was 17. Given that, the 1993 date feels most likely.

    There was also a Play It Again Sam 19 released in 1997, released by ProAction, but this is distinct from the original Superior Software compilations, in my opinion. ↩

  3. The Fat Spy currently holds the record for the worst film I have ever seen. ↩

  4. The closest I ever came was Blue Peter annuals, and a) you could get them cheaply at boot sales, and b) that was as much pushed by my parents as much as anything else. ↩

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Here’s the Thing:

Published 27th February 2026

Computing / Internet

Seth Godin, “Freelancer empathy”:

“When phone cameras got good enough, portrait photographers scolded people who took their own headshots.

And when the Mac got pretty good at typesetting, professional designers pointed out that people who can’t tell a font from a typeface and don’t care about kerning should avoid it.

Professional translators bring humanity and insight to transforming writing from one language to another, but many people continue to use Google Translate…

Here’s the thing: the translators take their own headshots. Web designers often use translation software. And life coaches build their own websites with Squarespace and put their own selfies on Linkedin. We all make our own decisions, and most of the time, we use tech to do it ourselves.”

Greg Storey has an issue with the above – not the message, but the writing itself:

“What happens when a prolific author integrates AI into their work so much that it turns up wholesale in their writing? Seth Godin – said prolific author – recently posted an argument for hiring freelancers instead of using technology on his blog. While I agree with his message I paused when I began the fourth paragraph which starts with a telltale sign of AI writing.

Here’s the thing: nobody writes like this, only the robots. Now, I’m sure there are folks out there who do but it is now so prevalent that it stands out like a statement on a back of a consumer product: Made by AI.”

In other words: using the phrase “Here’s the thing:” makes your product look like the output of AI.

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“A Failed Dancer”

Published 18th February 2026

TV Comedy

MARY RICHARDS: I think you had a dream. You dreamed that you started from nowhere, and you made it all the way to the top. Became rich, successful in every way, loved… and recently, you’ve begun to become aware that time is slipping away, and your life has turned out a little differently from the dream. In fact, compared to the dream, you think your life isn’t all that terrific. And it’s begun to bother you.

TED BAXTER: That’s amazing, Mary. How did you know that was my problem?

MARY RICHARDS: Ted, that’s everybody’s problem. I had a dream once. I dreamed of becoming a ballerina. Took so many classes, I practiced so hard. In the hopes one day I’d dance with the finest ballet company, and I’d win the cheers of audiences all over the world.

TED BAXTER: So you wanted to be a real famous dancer. And you wound up as the producer of a local news show.

MARY RICHARDS: That’s right.

TED BAXTER: Boy, you really blew it.

– The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Hail the Conquering Gordy”,
CBS TX: 5th February 1977

“I think I’ll always consider myself a failed dancer, not a successful actress.”

– Mary Tyler Moore, The Los Angeles Times, 20th December 1981

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An Utterly Worthless Experience

Published 13th February 2026

TV Comedy

I have to be honest: I’ve been feeling a little guilty over the past couple of weeks. When I fell in love with The Dick Van Dyke Show, I wrote something which tried to explain at least some of what I loved about it. With The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I leapt straight into stupid production minutiae. I feel like I’ve given poor Mary a bit of a bad rap.

So let’s try to redress things a little. I want to talk about one of my very favourite scenes in the show. No, it’s not from “Chuckles Bites the Dust”, which is clearly an amazing episode, but has been talked about far too much by this point. Instead, it’s the closing scene from “Mary and the Sexagenarian”, first broadcast by CBS on the 12th February 1977, and written by Glen and Les Charles.

The whole episode up to this point has been about the trials and tribulations of Mary dating a man 30 years older than her, a topic which could have been potentially queasy, but is dealt with in the show’s typical sensitive fashion. And then we get the final scene of the show. What have we learnt today?

And instead of answering that question, Mary Tyler Moore expertly skewers TV’s propensity for giving life lessons and issuing moral guidance.

LOU GRANT: You take two very different people. Different backgrounds.
MARY RICHARDS: Different outlooks.
LOU GRANT: Right, right. One more than 30 years older than the other. You bring them together. With all the odds against it. Even though the whole world ridicules it. It can still turn out to be… an utterly worthless experience.
MARY RICHARDS: Thank you.

There are so many reasons why I love this. Firstly, it was slightly surprising even to me to find a US sitcom from 1977 be quite so relentlessly cynical. This feels more like a gag from The Simpsons than anything else. Sorry Simpsons, Mary Tyler Moore already did it.1

Secondly, I adore Mary Tyler Moore’s performance in this scene. True, it’s a scene which is more about selling an abstract idea than an emotional beat. But the actors have to make that idea work within an emotional context, and they do a magnificent job. Mary looks so revolted and defeated as she leaves the office, and she never gets enough credit for just how good she is at those kind of scenes. The very opposite of “turning the world on with her smile”.

We dumb down Mary Tyler Moore into being merely a bright, smiling, all-American gal at our peril. When needed, she brought as much edge to that show as anyone.

But thirdly, and perhaps most importantly: the scene is a reminder to me that I truly love comedy with what I like to call “an evil, beating heart”. I sometimes worry that people misinterpret what I mean by this; that I’m specifically referring to, say, racist or homophobic gags, or at least material which goes into those kinds of areas. But that’s not what I mean at all.

Instead, it’s something a little more subtle: that I enjoy comedy which does not always have a pleasant meaning behind it. Here, it’s the idea that we can all go through painful experiences, and there truly is no real lesson we can learn from them. The pain has been for nothing.

It reminds me very much of one of my favourite jokes from Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em:

FRANK SPENCER: As my mother used to say – a trouble shared, is a trouble doubled.

A joke which, as friend of the site Mike Scott pointed out, is amusing because of the rhyming trouble/double; it just sounds funny. But what I love most about it is that it talks about a real truth which we would all prefer to ignore. Of course we should talk about our problems… and of course that has a bad side too. By sharing a problem, you literally are giving a piece of it to someone else.

And that’s life. Some troubles just have to be doubled. And sometimes, a relationship you had was an entire waste of time, and there’s nothing positive you can take from it. Sucks to be you.

But maybe comedy like this does have a message after all. It sucks to be all of us.

With thanks to Tanya Jones.

  1. The James L. Brooks connection is not lost on me. ↩

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