A friend recently introduced me to Remember WENN, a dramedy television series that aired from 1996 to 1998
on the cable channel American Movie Classics. Set at the fictional Pittsburgh radio station WENN in the early 1940s,
the show depicts dramatic and comic events in the personal and professional lives of the station's staff.

I love this show. It has a great cast and fun situations.

I am only seven episodes into it, and I am greatly miffed that the show is not available on DVD. I have been watching
episodes on Google Videos (just type in WENN 1.#, 2.#) for the shows.

Episode 1:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 317063529#

I don't thing we got American Movie Classics back in the 1990s. Pity. There are plenty of fan sites clamoring for
DVDs, but, for some reason, AMC will not release it.

Anybody here ever see this series?

The Molly Ringwall episode (season 1, episode 5) was quite well done.
She plays a blind woman.

Done with the first season (13 episodes). Excellent cliff hanger.
This show works for me on so many levels: touching, funny,
and even gives me nostalgia for a time when I never lived.

Hard to believe that radio's golden age only lasted a couple of decades.

Does Television have a golden age? Or was it always crap?

I don't watch tv. I don't like 99% of what's on it. Besides, this is the Golden age of the Net!

But, the Internet is the only place you watch Remember WENN now.
That is, unless you have some some of space ship that you can climb into and fly faster
that the speed of the original broadcast signal and watch it out in the depths of space.

Naw... that's just crazy talk.

I did watch that when it first aired. Not consistently, tho. I do have a nostalgia for that time period - actually from late Depression through the war years. The clothing, the hair, the sound, the hard times and good times. It was a very alive period. Things mattered and one person could make a difference.

Perhaps I'm just a sucker for the word play and the overly sentimental speeches.
It does seem to me now—after having watched two seasons in about two days—
that they've drawn story plots from a lot of period movies but have made them their
own. That makes the stories familiar, but still unique.

I think Season 2 was more predictable than the first, but then, I also watched it all
in just two days, so I probably picked up on the smaller details more readily than
one who would have been watching it from week to week.

Still quite, good, and I still like the running gags, like Mr. Foley never talking. You
start to think ahead during each episode how they're going to slip it in this time.

I watched episode 1, and it was indeed good.

I shall now watch episode 2.

I will be finishing up season 3 sometime today. A few interesting turns and swerves.

I thought this post was about that news agency that iMDB used to report
what was happening in Hollywood.

News from WENN

I've watched several more episodes (most of season one). Some of the stories are a bit farfetched.

Heh. I guess.
I think that's part of the appeal for me. The series is about people doing radio programs,
but their stories are also radio program stories: lots of twists and turns and surprises.
In the running storyline, I've been left wondering who I wanted to cheer for, and, then,
I begin to change my mind from episode to episode.


Season 3 just ended (for me) with another nice cliff hanger.

Speaking of farfetched, episode 4.1 may have been one of the most.
Still a good ride.

Well, I am hesitant to watch the rest of the episodes, now.
I just know that the 4th season is the last one.

Also, the first season ran 13 episodes, then 13 more in season 2,
but 17 episodes in season 3. Season 4 has 13 again, and that seems
back to normal again, but I fear that the series ends abruptly and unfinished.
I have no idea if it does or not.

The second episode of the 4th season could have been a good last episode.

Sadly, season 4 ends, as I expected, with cliff hanging and unresolved plots.

This series worked best, I feel, at its beginnings and endings. The writers, I
think, really put their best efforts into their main ongoing subplots, and knew
how to string these ideas along and together for the final episodes.

However, unlike the first three seasons, which continued to shine even in
the middle, I think the middle of season 4 plodded. There were still a couple
of genuine laugh-out-loud moments in there, but either I was growing a little
tired of it, or everyone else was, or maybe a little of both. A lot of the
sharpness had faded. A 5th season may have returned to form, or not.
Hard to say.

I didn't want to look too much into the actual actors/actresses until I was done with
the series—I was afraid, and rightly so, that I would discover things I didn't want to
know, like how many episodes each player was in.

Now, after giving the players a quick check on IMDB, I find that few of them went
on to do much of anything: just a few bit parts here and there on other shows, and
not many of those. Remember WENN, for all of them, seems to be their big thing.
That's kind of depressing. Even more so, I think, since there is no DVD release.

After reading some posts in the Remember WENN Yahoo! Forum, I see that AMC manadated
some changes for season 4, specifically that episodes were not to continue story elements
from show to show.

Well, I think I begin to see why I thought those middle episodes were feeling kind of flat. They
really had become more self-contained episodes. The sense of building on wasn't there as
much. AMC wanted the show dumbed down; apparently made more accessible for average
or casual viewers. Meh. Idiots. I am pleased that creator/writer Rupert Holmes managed to
slip in as much as he did.

A 5th season was scheduled, but AMC changed ownership/or control, and the series was
cancelled prematurely. There was no love for WENN at AMC. Seems to continue to be no
love either, perhaps explaining why there has not been a DVD release.

Could be worse. Could be Firefly.