About the Book
The buzzword of 1960s popular culture was NEW! NEW! NEW! The 1960s was an extraordinarily creative time for television, as well as the arts, fashion, and music. This book looks at the three most influential and original American television series from that period, The Man from UNCLE, Batman, and The Monkees. It examines the origins, development, and influence on surrounding media of these three pop culture phenomenons, then and today, and provides the most detailed study to date of every single episode of these three series, their feature film versions, and spin-off The Girl from UNCLE, each one a total original that displays 1960s media styles, fashions, and obsessions in all their inspirational glory. This is the story of the secret agent craze, the super-hero fad, and the first boy band-three media phenomena that still influence popular culture today.
About the Author: Jon Abbott was born in London, England in June, 1956. Thanks to Huckleberry Hound and Supercar, Jon Abbott has been writing professionally about popular culture for around thirty years, during which time he has written over four hundred articles on American film and television for over two dozen different trade, specialist, and populist publications in the U.K. These have included City Limits, Television Weekly, TV Comic, Video Today, Starburst, Stills, Media Week, Adult Movies on Video, What Video, What Satellite, TV Zone, Time Out, The Face, The DarkSide, Video Buyer, Video World, Cult Times, Comedy Review, SFX, Home Entertainment, Infinity, and Dreamwatch. He has a wide range of interests in 20th century film, television, and music, including gangster films ranging from Cagney through to Corman and Scorsese, classic cartoons, 1950s sci-fi movies, 1960s TV and comics, and 1970s cinema. He is particularly fond of the work of Laurel and Hardy, Phil Silvers, Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, Termite Terrace, Tamla Motown, the Beatles, Hanna-Barbera, Irwin Allen, Gerry Anderson, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Elvis Presley, Clint Eastwood, Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, and Stephen J. Cannell. He's also a fan of Tom and Jerry, Republic Serials, The Untouchables, The Outer Limits, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Man from UNCLE, the Daleks, the Adam West Batman, the Emma Peel Avengers, The Invaders, the original Star Trek, Godzilla and Gamera films, pulp magazine covers and pop art, cheesy, sleazy sex films ( and good ones), shameful Italian comedies, Chinese gangster films (especially with Chow Yun Fat), Fawlty Towers, Frasier, and The Sweeney. Despite the above, he doesn't live in the past, because he's bought the best of it into the future with him, and he prefers his i-pad, i-pod, DVDs, and big screen TV to vinyl, censorship, and two-channel television.
