Yo, 1966 represent!

I used to get home from babysitting and watch this with my brothers. Recently I came across the DVDs for cheap and decided to indulge my nostalgia. I've now watched both seasons and, Lord help me, it's not a particularly good show (especially when they're reusing footage or shooting on soundstages) but I'm strangely obsessed.

Also, I think this is a great candidate for (not so) classic-TV-to-big-screen translation (way better than Big Valley, for heaven's sake). Because what part of running around the desert in jeeps shooting stuff up is not fun?

Heh, it was no Combat. But then, they didn't mire themselves in angsty back stories, did they?

My brother loved the show title and thought some version of it should be played around the house. Look out, Barbie!

Yay! I even motivated this one a while back.

And Combat, too, buttersister. :-)

I liked it, though I was a bit young during the original run. Even then, though, I appreciated the mutual respect between the Rats and their archnemesis Dietrich (played by a sexy import named Hans Gudegast who would later, on the advice of his agent, change his name to Eric Braeden and still later became a tentpole figure on "The Young and the Restless")

There's an early episode where Dietrich meets a beautiful, blind storyteller and he practically purrs with appreciation. Seriously hot.

For the uninitiated: The Rat Patrol follows the adventures of three Americans and a Brit as they zip around the North African desert in their jeeps, ambushing supply convoys and sneaking around German-occupied towns, with occasional forays to the Mediterranean coast for more sneaking around less sandy German-occupied territory.

Our heroes:

• Sgt. Sam Troy (Christopher George), the fearless leader. Basically Kirk without the alien babe magnet.
• Sgt. Jack Moffitt (Gary Raymond), token Brit. Spent time in North Africa on archaelogical digs with his father, has his own doctorate in archaelogy, friendly with the natives, speaks Arabic and German. Not an officer because he enlisted. Basically Spock.
• Pvt. Mark Hitchcock (Lawrence Casey), Troy's driver. Would have been your typical Ivy League legacy frat douchebag if he hadn't enlisted. Babe magnet.
• Pvt. Tully Pettigrew (Justin Tarr), Moffitt's driver. Picked up his wheel skills running moonshine in Kentucky/Tennessee. Left behind with the jeeps a lot.

Attempting to thwart our heroes is the aforementioned Captain Dietrich, who is a professional German officer rather than a Nazi and therefore an honorable and respected opponent. He really is an effective officer -- somebody gets captured practically every episode, although sometimes it's on purpose as part of some cunning plan -- but he has the misfortune to be up against the heroes of a TV series, so he has to lose every week.

First season exteriors were filmed in Spain, second season in California. And they mostly used exterior footage, which I really like.

I didn't catch this the first time around (my father might have been watching it, but it was probably after my bedtime). However, I had the good luck to stumble on it and Combat! in re-runs on an obscure channel in LA back in the early 90s. It was fun. American Life Network was airing both shows on but don't seem to be doing so any more. Oh well. Maybe I'll try to get the dvds.

I used to see this on television in england when i was a kid -- my father liked it a lot. Hence my nostalgia-driven purchase of the two seasons on DVD. At heart it's essentially Roadrunner vs Coyote, with the half-hour format leaving no room for subtlety and the methods of production at the time leaving little room for consistency and continuity. Basically, then, something to watch in one or two episode blocks....