This must rank as one of the greatest series in television history. Really there is nothing quite like it so far as I know, since I am not the best TV addict in the world. But offhand I don't know of any other series where one person acts a different part every week and did so for at least 8 years and the parts covered an extraordinary wide range of characters and emotions as well as genres, a few morphing into sci-fi territory, and some in comedy, soap opera, Western, etc. It's true after she suffered exhaustion Young did not star in every show, but still what we have is a remarkable achievement.
As I said, though not the ideal TV addict, offhand I can't think of a similar achievement. Sitcoms are NOT the same thing. An actor such as Marjorie Lord or Jane Wyatt would perform weekly too but the character was the same and the scripts required little emotion. Compare that with Young's often powerful explorations of different characters.
It's odd that, to my knowledge, Young's achievement in the series is no sufficiently acknowledged. Young also deserves credit for her tactical switch from the cinema to the TV screen where, instead of waiting months for a decent movie script to turn up she was able to perform in a miniature movie every week. In terms of glamour, she immortalized her beauty in literally thousands of glamour close-ups and sometimes even extreme close-ups. How man such close-ups does the average star get in a lifetime in movies?
The shows themselves were incredibly well written, some bordering on what today we would call "feminist" themes, especially "Incident in India" where Young plays a Muslim woman who outsmarts all the met in the village, but also where she plays an Egyptian queen, Nefertiti, always looking absolutely gorgeous but superbly acting as well,
Kudos also the "Dear Midge" where Young showed she could do comedy with the best of them, as when she tries to use her eyes to seduce a man. In a few episodes she adopts a false nose and eyeglasses to make herself look unattractive.
To contextualize my praise, other series that I have admired are the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series, the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, the Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, The Outer Limits to name similar anthology series. But those were not one-man shows like Young's was a one-woman's show.
Besides their aesthetic quality, the series also had an epiphanic moral at the end, where one of the characters realizes that they had something to learn.
Often this epiphany can be just a little too pat, but that's the only criticism I can make. In one episode with John Newland it's hard to believe that a Hollywood director would rip up his contract just to be with his wife, even someone as lovely as Loretta Young.
