TV FLASHBACK: TV Land adds 'Bewitched' -- and 'Raymond'!

[UPDATE: More good news! TV Land is adding Everybody Loves Raymond, too, starting March 18. After a four-day launch event, the family craziness of Ray, Debra, Frank, Marie and Robert will air weeknights at 9 ET.]

Is TV Land finally getting back to basics? Could the channel be remembering that it once staked out unique territory in celebrating our TV heritage, rather than running me-too reality shows?

One indication: Bewitched twitches back into the TV Land lineup on March 1. Episodes will air at 5 and 5:30 p.m. ET weekdays, running in order from ABC's 1964 pilot.

Samantha, Darrin, Endora, Tabitha, Gladys Kravitz, Larry Tate, Aunt Clara, Uncle Arthur -- hooray!

(And weekend marathons, too! Set the DVR on March 6, 2-8 p.m. ET; March 7, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. ET; and March 20-21, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. ET.)

I've been rewatching this classic witch-com on DVD lately. And the early black-and-white episodes, in particular, remain fresh and inspired, 45 years later.

Of course, that whole mid-'60s network era -- once derided as a sea of sitcom stupidity -- looks in retrospect like an amazing golden age for flights of fancy. Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mister Ed, Hogan's Heroes -- all seemingly insane, inane concepts, which turn out to have been enduringly funny and even, sometimes, utterly brilliant. (Green Acres now plays like some kind of delirious Dada masterpiece.)

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. Among the makers of those initial Bewitched episodes were I Love Lucy director William Asher (married at the time to series star Elizabeth Montgomery); smart writer-producer Danny Arnold, who'd go on to create one of TV's sharpest sitcoms ever, Barney Miller; and slick writer-producer Bernard Slade, who continued in sitcom whimsy with The Flying Nun (before hitting the jackpot with his '70s Broadway comedy Same Time, Next Year).

All eight seasons of Bewitched (1964-1972) are also available on DVD (here's the Amazon link), with some nice retrospective extras (including interviews with Asher, who's now 88).

Many Bewitched episodes are also available for viewing online. Hulu is streaming the first two seasons in their original black-and-white, while those early episodes can be seen colorized [see image at right] on Crackle (which runs them full-length and/or as 5-minute minisodes).