Patti Smith never played Alice, but I’m watching POV broadcast of Patti Smith: Dream of Life so I thought I’d see if you’re still paying attention.

Sometime in the recent past I watched a 1983 Masterpiece Theatre production of Alice in Wonderland that I found surprisingly dull. Shame, too, since it featured Nathan Lane, Donald O’Conner, Richard Burton and Kate Burton (as Alice) so I thought that it wouldn’t be completely awful. It wasn’t. It was just plain awful. Too moribund for the screen, too complicated for the stage. This seemed to be the fatal flaw of a number of Masterpiece Theatre productions from the early 80s. I don’t know why, although I feel like I knew what the leading theories were but have now forgotten. I could look into it, but Patti is more interesting than PBS history to me today.

Not that PBS history isn’t interesting. I recommend David Stewart’s PBS Companion : A History of Public Television to get your started.