AudioFileZ I've never seen this TV show until now and I'm in my mid-fifties. Immediately I see the formula and I'm just minutes in. It's a simple one built upon class, wealth, and crime. A lovely couple living in a Manhattan high-rise with a cute dog. It's suppose to be glamorous to the everyday viewer. The man is private eye, or was one and still solves crime. The woman is a beautiful sophisticate with a bit of a rebel spirit. The dog is not only cute but smart. Add fashionable cars and some murder mystery and you've distilled MGM's Thin Man TV show down to it's DNA.I've already read it was a too-late attempt to get anything on TV that might raise MGM's faltering movie business. Why it didn't succeed may be the thin plots because the characters are good. Still, as proved by MGM's competitor Warner Brothers it wasn't rocket science. You just had to add either a wild west backdrop or a cool local bit of color. It would seem that the local color here was as thin as the plots. Peter Lawford may be a bit too stiff for the youthful Sherlock Holmes type he's attempting to channel too. I think the combination probably was too weak to compete with the Warner Brothers offerings with far more accessible and iconic characters, even the co-stars were often huge on the WB shows. Still worth a watch as a time capsule of how TV was transitioning into a more powerful media as movies were struggling to evolve from the golden era to a modern one.Phyllis Kirk as Mrs. Charles was really great I might add. She grabs the viewer with her beauty, impeccable taste, and spunk. I think the show could have worked with a more versatile lead, better locales inserted, and just some writing that was more imaginative in the Hitchcock mode.

bkoganbing After Dear Phoebe left the air after one season, Joseph P. Kennedy was behind a second television show for his son-in-law Peter Lawford. The famous Thin Man series was adapted to a half hour television format and Lawford played Nick with Phyllis Kirk as Nora. Of course Asta was around as well. No children however for the Charles as were introduced in the six film series for MGM.Lawford and Kirk were really up against it. William Powell had just retired and Myrna Loy was still active. People remembered the most famous screen couple ever created. Additionally and this is my own personal opinion, mysteries are no good in a half hour format, you need at least an hour to develop plot and alternative suspects.Still The Thin Man on television was entertaining and got by on the charm of its leads.

blanche-2 I was a child when "The Thin Man" was on television but for some reason, I remember it very clearly. I think I was completely captivated by the sheer sophistication of Nick and Nora Charles and the fact that they lived in an apartment in New York City. Growing up in a house and not in New York City, this was fascinating to me.What I remember most is how beautiful Phyllis Kirk was and what glorious clothes she wore. I wish I could see this series today to find out if it's as I remember it. Kirk and Lawford seemed a most glamorous couple, and I have a feeling their relationship colored my own ideas about an ideal marriage - rich and childless.This show was an attempt by MGM to get into TV and capitalize on one of their properties, and it didn't make it. Many years later, I had a chance to see the wonderful movies on which the series was based. I can't draw a comparison because I only remember the clothes and sophistication from the TV show. I guess that says something.

tjonasgreen In the early '60s before TV ad rates became astronomical and before small local stations joined large syndicated networks, the airwaves were full of old movies and TV series reruns because no one much cared about the ratings during off hours. Among the antique TV shows from the early and mid '50s that were endlessly repeated were (probably terrible) chestnuts like MY LITTLE MARGIE, OH, SUSANNAH!, PRIVATE SECRETARY, THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE, AMOS 'N' ANDY, THE LIFE OF RILEY, December BRIDE, TOPPER, I MARRIED JOAN, OUR MISS BROOKS, LOVE THAT BOB, and one that I remember especially fondly, THE THIN MAN starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk and with the sexy and incomparable Nita Talbot in a recurring role.I remember virtually nothing about it except the impressions it left me with: Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk seemed dry, pleasant and sophisticated and had a nice chemistry together. I knew nothing of Powell and Loy and the original series of films at the time, so Lawford and Kirk seemed delightful. And even in childhood, I LOVED Nita Talbot, who guested on lots of other series of the period. Tall, with a model's figure and bearing, she usually wore a Veronica Lake pageboy and had a wry, slinky beauty which suggested a cross between Lauren Bacall and Anne Francis. But her voice was honking and grating and she had a N.Y. accent as thick as a slice of corned beef. The incongruity was delicious and she was wonderful.The only plot I remember in the series was one in which it was implied that a murdered woman (I seem to remember her as a waitress) had been hacked to pieces and hidden in a trunk -- precisely the kind of grisly detail a child would remember.While I'm willing to believe this series was awful (certainly most or all of the others I listed must have been) I'd love to see several episodes again, and I'd love to know whatever happened to Nita Talbot.