Monday, October 8, 2018

Of Recent Vintage: Mysteries & Scandals (1998)

It wasn't all that long ago that E! had a compact documentary program that covered the seamier side of Hollywood.

Mysteries & Scandals, hosted & narrated by former NY Daily News gossip columnist A. J. Benza, ran for three seasons. It could've continued, but low ratings doomed the show in 2000-01.

It made a perfect complement for the hour-long E! True Hollywood Story, the network's answer to Biography, which had been revived on A & E. However,  because it was a half-hour show, and the fact that E! aired it so frequently during the week, a programming practice networks use to this day to even worse extremes, viewers would be burned out rather quickly.

Here, Benza takes a look at the tragic end of Our Gang's Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.



Rating: A.

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