Well, I made an almost complete evening out of THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION. I began by watching PATTERNS.
I MUCH preferred it to the movie version, mainly because Richard Kiley was the right age for his role (played in the movie by an overaged Van Heflin). And in just an hour, the drama is really riveting. When Ed Begley, Everett Sloane, and Richard Kiley start thundering away at each other in those board room sessions, it's truly GREAT acting.
Both Begley and Sloane were nominated for Emmys (Kiley wasn't but should have been). Serling won the Emmy for his script, but the show was surprisingly not nominated as Program of the Year, despite the fact that the furor over its excellence was so great that they repeated the show with another live broadcast one month later, practically unheard of.