The Bold Ones: The Senator

It is ironic that the world's most successful democracy has produced only three good Television shows about democracy. In 1964 and 1965, Richard Crenna starred in the highly praised Slattery's People,about the minority leader of a state legislature.Sadly, Slattery's People was crushed in the ratings and is little remembered today, other than by TV buffs and political junkies. Much later came the much more successful The West Wing, which focused on the travails of a President and his staff. In between these two shows came a segment of The Bold Ones called The Senator. Hal Holbrook played Hayes Stowe, an idealistic, crusading junior senator from an unknown state, who combined elements of Birch Bayh, Bobby Kennedy and Mark Hatfield. I still remember some episodes of The Senator, and I understand that The Bold Ones is rerun on the Retro TV network, Perhaps the nice folks at Retro could get around to eventually rerunning Slattery's People as well.