NBC Universal released a new cable/satellite channel about two months ago. It is called "Chiller" and is dedicated to horror films and TV shows. I love it. Best new channel to come along since Sci-Fi.

NBC Universal also released "Sleuth" a few months before Chiller, and Sleuth shows solely movies and TV shows from the crime genre. I watch both channels, but Chiller is the bomb!

I have always wanted to see Rod Serling's "Night Gallery" TV show, but have never seen it in syndication until now. I like it as much as Twlight Zone. Chiller shows a couple episodes of Night Gallery a day. They also show a lot of Hitchcock presents and other similar shows. I have Tivoed quite a few old horror movies that I had not heard of or seen before which turned out to be quite good. You will find a lot of Stephen King films and other horror films based on short stories. For example, movies like Stephen King's "Cat's Eye" which is a film with three different plots. I also saw a movie called "Nightmares" from 1983 which is similar to that and has four different segments that are unrelated. I just like stuff like that.

Chiller debuted on DirecTV channel 257 (that's what I have). I am not sure if Dish Network or the cable companies have access to it yet or not, but I imagine they will.

There is always the possibility that either Sleuth or Chiller will one day show UM reruns, since NBC owns both networks (does NBC still have rights to UM, or did Lifetime totally buy it out?)

You're lucky. I would love to get Chiller as Night Gallery and Alfred Hitchcock Presents are in my top 10 favorite shows, but I have Dish Network and it hasn't carried the network, at least no yet. Also, as I've stated before, it doesn't have LRW which means no UM.

Darn you DishNetwork!!!

While Night Gallery is awesome, I like the Twlilight Zone better. The instructor I had for a creative thinking for business college course used to work with Rod Serling. He worked for the Ad Council and Rod would occasionally do spots. Serling wasn't a tall man, so he would wear elevator shoes to make himself appear taller.

does NBC still have rights to UM, or did Lifetime totally buy it out?

If anything, I only know for sure that UM was never an NBC-produced show. NBC might have maintained certain rights in connection with UM, but it never officially owned the series.

Time Warner Digital Cable doesn't get this channel, which really saddens me. :( The line-up looks great! We get Sleuth though.

I try to catch Friday the 13th the Series on Chiller. I didn't even know I had it until about a week ago. It's great so far, I can watch Night Gallery when I can't sleep.

While Night Gallery is awesome, I like the Twlilight Zone better.

No doubt about it. That is my favorite television program of all time. My band is completely themed around the show and we even use a different sample as an intro to every song we have ever recorded.

The Twilight Zone is one of my favorite shows of all time. It is definitely a legend. I used to Tivo it on Sci-Fi, but I have seen all of them so I don't do that anymore.

TZ was my #1 favorite show until I decided to give "The Outer Limits" original series a try. For some reason, I had never seen TOL before until Sci-Fi played it for a short while (they have since dropped it). Intrigued by the few episodes I saw on Sci-Fi, I went out and bought the entire DVD set and I loved almost every episode of it. I am amazed that TOL gets overshadowed by TZ so much. I think, in many ways, it is superior to TZ. It sucks that TOL only aired for 2 seasons! My favorite episode would probably be "The Sixth Finger." Pure work of TV genius.

I read that one of the reasons that TOL did not last that long is because the creator and ABC had differences in where the show should go. ABC wanted the show to always feature a "monster," so the writers had to find a way to insert some cheesey monster in each episode. Often times this was not necessary in order for the plot to work, but the writers often forced a monster which did appear contrived (it wasn't their fault). ABC totally screwed up by doing this, and it ultimately led to one of the best shows ever being cancelled. This goes to show why executives should not micromanage. Let the damn writers do their job!

Rod Serling deserves his place in TV history, and it cannot be denied that TOL did take a lot of cues from his style, but Serling also copied a lot of things from Hitchcock, so nothing is truly original.

If you like more fantasy/horror/psychological thrillers, TZ is the best. I happen to like sci-fi oriented plots more and I think TOL blew away most of TZ's sci-fi plots.

I've always considered TZ to be more of an anthology type series more so than science fiction. If comparing TZ and OL as sci-fi series then OL would be the clear winner but in terms of writing and overall story telling, TZ wins hands down.

...but Serling also copied a lot of things from Hitchcock

I am a fan of both of those gentlemen, but how exactly does a writer copy something from a director? I'm not trying to start trouble, I am just curious as to what you meant by that is all. :)

Serling took cues from Hitchcock's style in "Hitchcock Presents". That's what I mean. Serling even referred to himself in a Night Gallery episode as a "underweight Hitchcock" or something like that. I saw the episode the other day.

It is true that Serling did wrote some of the stories for TZ and Night Gallery, but most of them were written AND directed by other people. I think Serling wrote about half of the TZ episodes and about 1/3 of the Night Gallery stories. I saw a Night Gallery episode the other night about a man (Leslie Nielsen) who accepted a bet to spend the night in a haunted house. It turned out that all of the hauntings were faked by the guy who he made the bet with. Anyway, I was watching Hitchcock presents today and there was an episode where a man made a bet he would spend the night in a haunted house. The plot was the same: the house's hauntings had been staged by the guy he bet with. Since Hitchcock presents was done about 15 years before the Night Gallery episode, I think that whoever wrote the NG episode must have known about the Hitchcock presents episode.

Now, to address Zoneboy, he is obviously a bit biased towards TZ. ;) That's fine with me because everyone has their preferences. TZ is great, but I just found many of the OL story lines to be better written and more intriguing. "The Sixth Finger" is the bomb, I don't see how anyone can deny this. The Pilot episode was also quite spectacular, among others. I need to go and buy the DVD set again. I sold mine a few years ago on e-bay.

It is true that TZ was more "fantasy/horror," while TOL focused exclusively on sci-fi themes. In a way it is like comparing apples to oranges, but when the two shows go head to head with the sci-fi theme, I think TOL wins hands down. I also liked the music of TOL better (the cinematic music during the show, not the intro music). The music of TOL had a creepier feel to it. The TZ theme song, however, is in a league of its own.

Also, you must take into account how talented the writers for TOL were. Joseph Stefano was instrumental in the first season of the show, and he, as you might know, is the same guy who wrote "Psycho" for Hitchcock. Also, Harlan Ellison wrote several of the episodes of TOL and actually won a court case after the movie "The Terminator" came out because he felt the movie's plot had copied two of his episodes of TOL. My point is that both shows had equally good writers and memorable episodes.

Rod Serling deserves his place in TV history, and it cannot be denied that TOL did take a lot of cues from his style, but Serling also copied a lot of things from Hitchcock, so nothing is truly original.

There is no doubt about it. Rod Serling may have been dead for more than three decades, but his legacy will live on forever.

Here's an interesting piece of trivia: Rod Serling was not the first choice for the hosting job on The Twilight Zone. CBS originally wanted Orson Welles to host the show, but the producers ruled him out because they felt that he asked for too much money.

Rod Serling wrote 92 of the 156 TZ episodes that were produced and although he did contribute to NG, The Producers gave him almost no creative control over it. I haven't seen OL in several years and in fact, I would estimate that I've only seen about half of the 49 (?) episodes. I do remember liking the series very much but I need to get the dvd set and watch them again. I also agree with the statement that both shows had equally good writers and memorable episodes.

If you want to compare the new versions of each show, I think TOL was ten times better (the fact it lasted much longer seems to attest to this).

If you want to compare the new versions of each show...

Now who in the hell would want to do that!? :lol:

Heh, Dislimb. I admit neither new series was anywhere close to the original. No argument here.

I always thought Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Twilight Zone were similar shoes in the vein that both were anthology series that were famous for their twists at the last minute. You could think you were watching something the entire time, only to find out in the last minute, you've been watching something totally different.

Love chiller. Freddy's Nightmares is as terrible as I remember it being and I can't not watch.

What's even more irritating is that only a small fraction of the Night Gallery episode are available on dvd. The first season is avaialbe, but it's only six epsiodes, plus some extras they threw in. They released that in 2004, and there's been nothing since. They have released two seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but the second season came out more than a year after the first. They finally released the first season of another great anthology series, Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories from the mid-80's in July of 2006, after years of fasle starts. All were put out by Universal, which has caused me to coin the phrase "slower than a Universal Pictures release.":lol:

A couple people do have night gallery the complete serie on dvd at the trading post here on SO, but I'm afraid I have not much in my possession to trade for it.