When the TV channel Fox Retro (TopTV 181) starts on 1 May (when On Digital Media (ODM) launches their TopTV pay television platform), South African TV viewers are in for a return to true classic television.
South African TV viewers will find that Fox Retro is very much what M-Net Series (DStv 110) - previously known as The Series Channel - used to be when that channel started on MultiChoice's DStv TV platform: classic television from the 60's, 70's and 80's. M-Net Series has over the past 15 years steadily moved away from its classic TV roots broadcasting great reruns spanning the gamut from show like Mary Tyler Moore, The Wonders Years and MacGuyver to BritTV like Fawlty Towers and Absolutely Fabulous. Especially the past few years M-Net Series has been on an accelerated track as the TV channel morphed to become a melange of second-window reruns of popular TV hits (shows that's almost been exclusively on M-Net), a motley assortment of B level reality show fare, as well as as bulking up on a staple of American talk shows like Ellen, The Doctors and Jerry Springer.
Fox Retro promises true classic TV - of the American kind, with a sprinkling of the best of British TV. Fox Retro's May schedule include the start of the first season of the 80's shows Fame and Battlestar Galactica (both ironically also on The Series Channel when that started), Kojak, The Six Million Dollar Man, Knot's Landing and Brit sci-fi like Space 1999. M*A*S*H, Starsky & Hutch, Hart to Hart, Magnum P.I., Miami Vice and Dukes of Hazzard are also on Fox Retro's May TV schedule.
