Oh, those dull '50s …

… Kukla Fran and Ollie: The gentle puppets that bewitched America in the 1950s. (Hat tip, dave Lull.)

Today, we watch television not as curious viewers dipping into a creative and experimental new form of entertainment, but as audiences conditioned by genres, formulas, and network mandates. Without these limitations, Kukla, Fran and Ollie created a new, gentle intimacy with its audience, one shaped by routine but not bound by formula, in which it was always possible to be delighted or moved.