Was there ever anything better on TV than Serling's 'Twilight Zone?'

I'm not one of those people who believe that only the good die young, but there sure have been plenty of people who cashed in their chips in the prime of life.

Rod Serling was certainly one of those. Serling was one of the very best writers in the so-called Golden Age of Television, and his masterpiece -- "The Twilight Zone" -- should be on anyone's short list for the greatest television series ever. It ran from 1959-64, an era in which censorship was so restrictive that a performance of "Judgment at Nuremburg" couldn't mention the Nazis had used poison gas in concentration camps because the Gas Company was one of the sponsors.

Serling was brilliant, and he was able to slip the messages between the lines with shows that attacked racism, anti-semitism, jingoism and nearly any other -ism that mattered.

The show was never a big hit. It was an era of westerns and family sitcoms, and CBS never really knew quite what to do with the show.

In the fourth of its five seasons, the network actually changed it from its 30-minute format to an hour-long show. It didn't work, and the fifth season went back to half-hour shows.

In the end, I think Serling got tired of fighting with the network and gave up. He wrote several memorable screenplays, and he came back with another series -- Night Gallery -- later, but he had been suffering from heart trouble for a long time and died at age 50.

Of course Serling lives on through his work and the many people who loved it.

"Twilight Zone" itself was remade after his death, and four well-known directors made a movie version which really only showed how difficult it is to emulate Serling. The movie was essentially four episodes, two that were new and two that were remakes of original episodes.

Time Enough at Last

I didn't see many of the shows when they were on originally. I was 9 when the show started, and I was never a big TV watcher. But I've seen many of them in the 50 years or so since, and my plan is to see all 156 episodes now that I have the entire series on Blu-Ray.

In the last 15 years or so, I have heard a lot of people rave about new shows as if they were the best thing ever on television. I saw every episode of "The Sopranos," and it was very nice. I liked "Six Feet Under" and "The West Wing," and if I don't quite see the greatness of "Breaking Bad," I'll give it another try.

One thing people forget, though, is that it's a lot easier to write a series when you are essentially telling one story in chapters. Writing 156 different stories for an anthology as Serling did (he didn't actually write all, but most of them) is an entirely different proposition.

The other thing difficult to imagine is how many truly great actors appeared on the show. Many were already stars, but others -- like Robert Redford -- were on "Twilight Zone" before they ever appeared in films.

When we look back at the early days of television, back when we all liked Ike and Davy Crockett was the king of the wild frontier, a lot of the best shows have been lost to time. They weren't saved, or they were taped over. "I Love Lucy" was a wonderful show, but the fact that it's still so well-loved has a lot to do with the fact that all the episodes still exist.

Walking Distance

By 1959, when "Twilight Zone" came on, shows were being saved. They were also being cross-marketed. I read paperback books the summers when I was 10 and 11 that were anthologies of "Twilight Zone" episodes.

The wonderful fifth episode of the show starred Gig Young and was called "Walking Distance." It was the story of a man whose life had gotten too fast for him. Through a fluke that is never explained, he walks into his home town in 1959 and finds himself in 1934, the summer he was 11 years old.

He would love to stay and be a kid again, but he knows he can't.

None of us can, but that doesn't mean we can't watch -- and dream.