On the off chance that I’ve infuriated any hardcore Zone fans with some of my frustrated commentary, I’m happy to say that “Mr. Bevis,” the pilot for a lighthearted show that never got off the ground, was much more entertaining. It stars Orson Bean as an eccentric oddball who meets his guardian angel at the end of a horrible day of the world forcing him to conform to its mediocrity. The angel is played by veteran Henry Jones – we saw him as Steve Austin’s arch-enemy Dr. Dolenz in a trio of Six Million Dollar Man stories – although I understand that Bean wouldn’t have been available for the proposed series and it was offered to Burgess Meredith before it was shelved.
The strangest thing about this episode from today’s perspective is how normal Mr. Bevis appears to modern eyes, and how stilted, boring, and downright Victorian the world of 1960 appears. Granted, leaving a cup and saucer on the sofa on the way to work is a little absent-minded, but Mr. Bevis’s desk, cluttered by enough knick-knacks to enrage his dull boss, looks like the desks at pretty much every job I’ve worked in the last twenty years. Well, the pop-eyed minstrel clock wouldn’t get on anybody’s desk any more, thank God, but you know what I mean. He dresses kind of flamboyantly for the period – not unlike Jimmy Olsen in the fifties and sixties, now that I think about it – and drives a forty year-old car, but he makes everybody except his boss and his landlady happy.
Overall, this is a cute half-hour that doesn’t have the malice or the misogyny of other episodes that we’ve sampled. It’s also got small parts for William Schallert and Vito Scotti, and our son said that he liked it more than other Zone installments as well. I don’t know that I’d want something this whimsical every week, but I’m glad to have made Mr. Bevis’s acquaintance. He’s welcome to come by after dinner for a few games of Munchkin and Gloom whenever he’s free, and I wouldn’t say that about most of the occupants of the Twilight Zone that we’ve met.
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 