Never bet against the mutts of the TV world | MARK HUGHES COBB

Couldn't sleep post-gym the other night, so I half-awake started utterly bonkers Peacock show "Mrs. Davis," and yes, this is one rare time I'd say it's worth adding a new charge, just for one show.

In case you couldn't tell from the name, Peacock is the streaming service spun from NBC, if you're old enough to remember networks. Yes, children, gather 'round and suffer Wizened Ones chattering endlessly about the days of aerials and cables, the utterly sound physics of gift-wrapping tinfoil around coathangers bent to precisely correct theremin-adjusted levels so far-away places such as Mt. Gomery and the Beaches of Panama could fuzz through, shaking in and out like go-go-dancer fringe under strobe lights, a glittering objet d' art rarely seen in Dothan, unless perhaps at the Best People on Earth (Elks) Club on "teen night."

Let us talk of days when the all-powerful Nielsen Mob decided fates of shows, which rolled out in fall, heralded in a paperback-sized Guide of Television as the New Season, 'lest of course it felleth in that stretch of the 1970s whence came what scribes recall as the Summer Replacement Variety Show, aka Dudes with Lush Hair and Guitars (see Glen Campbell, Bobby Goldsboro, Jerry Reed, Mac Davis, the Hudson Brothers and Johnny Cash).

Such ventures could also build around teams both semi-natural — Tony Orlando and Dawn, The Keane Brothers, Manhattan Transfer, Melba Moore and Clifton Davis, Dean Martin and Bobby Darin — and WTAF (Weird Television Almost Forgotten) such as "The Shields and Yarnell Show," starring, and no I'm not kidding, mimes, once married, and yes, to each other, until they appeared at a courthouse leaning into no apparent wind, pushing against invisible differences, and making hangman's noose motions toward one another, or "Joey and Dad," centered on chanteuse Joey Heatherton and her pop, Ray Heatherton.

Aww. Sweet, right?

Umm. About that.

After breaking through as ensemble/understudy in the original Broadway run of "The Sound of Music," Joey became known mainly for kitten-ish, soft-focus sex appeal, the kind of go-go churn unseen in the Peanut Capital, except by adjustment of wire-hanger receptors. She cut pop songs, hoofed loads of TV and stage work, single-handedly revived the feather-boa industry, and appeared in roles you've mostly not heard of, except perhaps her bit as a religious fanatic in John Waters' 1990 "Cry-Baby," or starring as Xaviera Hollander in 1977's "The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington."

Joey built her stage persona dancing and singing on variety shows, in USO tours and Vegas acts. Her style was described — by one priggish critic — as "sleazy eroticism." Now there's your album title!

She posed naked on occasion, including for Playboy at 53, and you know what, good on her, assuming those were all conscious, grown-up choices. She suffered serious personal trials later in life, but is still alive, and, I sincerely hope, kicking, with any luck in the direction of that puritanical critic.

What made the pairing a tad odd was that Ray Heatherton, while he'd sung with choirs, bands, and on Broadway, achieved his fame as a kid's entertainer, known as the Merry Mailman, based on a character he'd created cutting songs in the 1930s. In the 1950s, he hosted a variety show by that name on WOR-TV, New York. Ray fell victim to Cold War paranoia, the Red Scare, and though later cleared, suffered from that tint of scandal. He bounced back, and in the '60s, revived his alter ego for WPIX's "The Merry Mailman's Funhouse."

In the just-four-episodes of "Joey and Dad" — summer replacement for "Cher," sans Sonny — Ray roamed through his attic — That's how it's described; I've zero memory — and talked of his daughter's life, as they sang and played host to the Captain and Tennille, Pat Paulsen (a deadpan comic who launched from another variety show, hosted by Tom and Dick Smothers, who also championed Steve Martin, Jim Stafford, Rob Reiner, and tons of musicians other networks wouldn't touch with their dead polling), Henny Youngman, Frankie Valli, Bob Einstein (aka Super Dave Osbourne), and Sherman Hemsley, who appeared in a "cover version" of Monty Python's dead-parrot sketch and holy heck now I've gotta find this.

As often happens, I launch from snark, and touch down embedded in awed admiration.

So to summarize, the '70s: Bonkers.

We're seeing a revival of deep-strange TV thanks to proliferation, heated competition among streaming services. Networks do still exist, though like ancient gnarled root systems beneath the green shoots that actually feed, or some massive mossy fungus sprawling miles beneath the surface of broadcast.

OK kids, so "broadcast" is what they used to call how TV pictures zoomed .... You know what? Take a history class. Google it. The pandammit taught us how to Zoom as well as stream, so when I say, again, I'll be Zooming from current home Tuscaloosa to old home Dothan, via the Wiregrass Museum of Art, and Holly Meyers, you get it, right? Get it fully at the link below. Speaking of outlandish, idiosyncratic and marvelous, we'll be talking all things House clan, 6 p.m. Thursday. We may raise the Moon Winx sign, which Glenn hued together back in Color TV! days.

More: The Life and Times of Glenn House: A Retrospective Talk

Afterwards, should you choose to peek at Peacock, try the free first episode of "Mrs. Davis," a surreal SF/fantasy comedy that has, at heart, a lead played utterly uncynical, powerfully fierce, and a little daffy, by Betty Gilpin, as an intense, more-than-she-seems nun, reluctantly bumbling 'round the world for … the Holy Grail.

Not a spoiler, as it's in early minutes: A hottie driving a convertible, passengered with a dude who's not her husband, jerks away from a Sudden Cow! and bang! Decapitated.

Or.

Cops show up suspiciously fast.

Then a woman in indigo, seeming 7 feet tall though imdb.com swears she's just 5 feet 7inches, comes riding from the darkness of desert on a literal white horse, and yells something like "Find the head!," before wackily performing CPR, causing blood to jet merrily out of the neck stump.

It's no corpse, but a gushing dummy, an elaborate scam by well-equipped but ill-meant stage magicians, and (for reasons that evolve) Gilpin's Simone/Lizzie likes to spend spare time busting malignant illusionists.

Did I mention her convent is near Reno?

And that's just lagniappe, a dessert in the desert.

There's also magnificent Margo Martindale as a superior mother; Ben Chaplin as a castaway named Dr. Schroedinger, stranded on an island for a decade with nothing but a grumpy cat and literal rocket science for company; Tom Wlaschiha, A Man Who Has No Name from "Game of Thrones," as a sinister, though possibly heroic, priest; a hippie-ish ex of Simone/Lizzie's who may be leading an underground rebellion against the all-powerful AI (titular Mrs. Davis); Katja Herbers as a fanatic dedicated to keeping the Grail on the move ….

It's co-created by Damon Lindelof ("Lost," "The Leftovers," the amazing HBO Max "Watchmen" series), and Tara Hernandez, who was partly responsible for comedy black hole "Big Bang Theory," but seems to have risen above, as this show's endlessly watchable, not poke-your-eyes-out dire, and funny, as opposed to laugh-track-forced cause-of-unfunniness-in-others.

Peacock feathers — aside from being spookily iridescent, eerily reminiscent of blue orbs glaring from deep cover — symbolize metamorphosis, renewal, rejuvenation. When NBC gave us the bird logo in 1956, the intent was direct: Peep our eye-popping new color technology!

Now feathers spread wider, as Peacock has become an over-the-top — meaning it bypasses broadcast, cable, satellite — streaming service owned and operated by NBCUniversal, subsidiary of Comcast. As Viola moans in "Twelfth Night," "O time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me to untie."

True dog lovers know: Mutts rule. So-called cross-breeding is how we conceived the idea of breeds in the first place. Don't bet against the efficacy of odd couplings.

Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Odd couples '70s TV peacock mrs. davis NBC streaming | MARK HUGHES COBB