DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
DESK SET
December 22, 2015  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

This Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn comedy was released in 1957, and concerns a subject that ought to be especially interesting to TV enthusiasts in general and Mad Men fans in particular. It looks behind the scenes at a television network, and the unsettling but unavoidable decision to bring new-fangled computer technology into the network’s research department. This takes place, in Desk Set, just before the era we saw on Mad Men, and you can remember how unsettling the introduction of computers was to at least one member of that firm. (And if you don’t remember, I don’t want to describe it.) In Desk Set, Tracy plays the engineer plotting to introduce the computerized system, and Hepburn plays the research department head who feels threatened by its, and his, encroachment.

 
 
 
 
 
Leave a Comment: (No HTML, 1000 chars max)
 
 Name (required)
 
 Email (required) (will not be published)
 
OOMYX
Type in the verification word shown on the image.