Alternately depressed or incensed by the evening news, my friend Troy finally stopped watching it all together. No use getting his blood pressure up over stuff he has no control over anyway. Years ago he switched to, and now sticks with, Nick at Night.

“If it hasn’t happened in Hooterville, I don’t know about it,” he proudly boasted. I must agree with him.

Before I came over here to the Emerald Coast, I had DirecTV. I was so excited when I was able to drop my cable TV, because Cox Cable, New Orleans’ cable TV monopoly, is notorious for its miserable customer service in the Crescent City. (I hear they’re pretty good over here.) Finally I gave up on ‘em, bought a dish, and loved watching NewsWorld International, the History Channel and “So Graham Norton” on BBC-America.

Then DirecTV raised their basic rate above $40 a month and I realized it was a huge waste of money just to watch three channels.

“But we have 2 billion (or whatever the number is) sports channels,” the customer service dude protested when I called to cancel my service. Who gives a flip? I don’t watch sports.

He offered to keep me at the previous rate for three more months. Still not worth it. I’d made up my mind. I cancelled my satellite service.

I suddenly felt so liberated!

I didn’t have to drop everything at night when NewsWorld international ran the English-language service of Deutsche Welle. I didn’t feel obligated to see who Graham Norton had on as a guest. (Though the time he featured Sylvester Stallone’s mother Jackie because she could read peoples’ fortunes by examining photocopies of their nekkid rumps was a howler.) I did, though, kinda miss the History Channel.

I know, I could’ve bought a TiVo and watched these shows at my convenience. But ya know, not having to watch them at all was so incredibly liberating.

On those occasions when I felt the need for a little telly, I’d go to my video library and select a DVD, VHS or Beta and pop it in. (Yes, I had Beta right up until I moved to Crestview. I still have the deck and plenty of tapes in the attic. And yes, it is still a far superior format over VHS.)

When I moved to Crestview the satellite dish moved with me. It’s been in the attic since I got here. We once thought about hooking it up, but it looks so tacky stuck on the house, and besides, then I’d just have to subscribe to the service again. Then, once we’ve invested in the service, we’d feel an obligation to get something out of that investment, so when deep inside we’d really rather settle on the couch with a good book, we’d feel we’d better switch on the tube and watch the Hitler Channel (as a college educator friend’s students call it) to justify forking over more than $40 a month.

In fact, we’ve got it easy now. Living in a sort of hollow in north Crestview, we can’t get over-the-air TV reception at all. It’s a great excuse not to even worry about the switchover to digital television next week, er, I mean in June. (Does the government really think people who have been warned more than two years in advance that the switch from analog to digital is coming but who haven’t bothered to pick up their converter boxes yet will really do so now that they’ve been given a couple more months?)

But not getting TV reception is a stupendous reason to have a sensational video library!

(“Video,” to be clear, means any format for presenting images and sound on your television monitor, be it DVD, VHS, my beloved Betas, laser disc, videodisc, 8mm, etc.)

In Saturday’s Northwest Florida Daily News, my friend and colleague Del Stone wrote wistfully of viewing “The Invaders,” a favorite TV series of his youth, today by way of a DVD boxed set. “The Invaders,” alas, don’t hold up as well when viewed in adulthood, Del said.

How I sympathized.

I have always been a huge fan of those British action/adventure/spy/secret agent “The” series: “The Saint,” “The Protectors,” “The Persuaders,” “The Prisoner,” “The Champions,” and my absolute favorite TV series of all time, “The Avengers.” I have box sets of them all, plus a couple that omitted the “The”: “Danger Man” and “Secret Agent” (precursors, respectively, to “The Prisoner”). American classics on my shelf include “I Spy,” and the greatest American classic “The” series, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”

(Trivia time: U.N.C.L.E. stands for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Its concept was scribbled on a napkin by Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, who also named The Man and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. respectively, Napoleon Solo and April Dancer. Fleming was pals with Sam Rolf, the series’ creator.)

Anyway, we seem to have sidetracked: Watching some of those shows today, I have to share Del’s disappointment. While I still love the witty repartee between Lord Brett Sinclair, played by Roger Moore, and Danny Wilde, played by Tony Curtis, in “The Persuaders,” the show is not as stylish as I recalled, apart from an awful lot of early ‘70s absences of taste in both set decoration and costumes. (Tony Curtis was too old to be wearing those skin-tight leather pants.) Lord Brett’s gold Aston Martin, however, was the bomb!

“The Protectors” occasionally has to omit some key plot development in order to squish a whole adventure into half an hour while not omitting any of Robert Vaughn’s (the original “Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) wit.

“The Champions,” which I would occasionally watch at my pal John Laudi’s house as a kid, loses almost all of its mysticism and sometimes seems almost plodding. They really needed to take more advantage of Sharon, Richard and Craig’s special powers, bequeathed by the mysterious race of mystics in the Himalayas when their plane crashed.

“The Avengers” never failed to please. Stylish, witty and brilliantly written, it still holds up today. While the format with Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, which proceeded the Emma Peel episodes, is a little rough, it is still well-written. But Emma Peel karate-chopped her way into my heart. Dame Diana Rigg remains a favorite actress, and “The Avengers,” with suave John Steed and that awesome supercharged Bentley in British racing green, has never been successfully emulated since its heyday in the mid- to late-1960s.

(”The New Avengers,” with Patrick MacNee’s Steed character in a more avuncular role to the younger, more active Purdy and Gambit, had a mid-’70s style of its own, yet retained the clever plots.)

If I’m not in the mood for action/adventure, I have plenty more boxed sets. Like the complete “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” collection, all the original “Absolutely Fabulous” and “Fawlty Towers,” the “Wooster & Jeeves” series (even when they moved the stories to Bertie Wooster’s adventures in New York and the series started going downhill), “Thunderbirds” (“Filmed in SuperMarionation!”), “Mapp & Lucia” and most of “Will & Grace.”

A series I was so pleased has held up, and in fact seems even better than when I first started watching it on Showtime in the 1980s, is “Robin of Sherwood,” a retelling of the adventures of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Michael Praed, and later, Jason Connery (son of Sir Sean), were awesome in the title role, and the transition from the former, as Robin of Loxely, to the latter, as Robert of Huntingdon, was brilliantly handledfrom the second season to the third.

When I need my World War II history fix, I can pull down my boxed sets of “Band of Brothers,” “Victory at Sea” or “The World at War.” All are remarkable history series.

For sheer World War II fun and fiction, I just can’t go wrong watching a few episodes of my beloved “Hogan’s Heroes,” even with all of their historic inaccuracies. (I watched an episode two nights ago in which a Wehrmacht major was commanding a unit of Luftwaffe enlisted men. In fact, Wehrmacht Gen. Burkhalter commands a Luftwaffe Stalag and it’s fearless commandant, Col. Klink. It never would’ve happened given the well-documented rivalries between the different branches of the German military. But who cares?) And what’s with all those perennial patches of obviously fake snow in every episode?

Yet “Hogan’s Heroes” holds a special place in my heart. Dad and I used to have our evening quality time watching two back-to-back episodes after the evening news. I’d come home from my summer job, we’d flip on Channel 5 (WNEW, New York) in time to hear the anchor signing off with his signature, “Thank you for your time this time until next time,” and then the familiar drum introduction of Jerry Fielding’s familiar “Hogan’s Heroes March.” (I have two recordings of it, including an instrumental conducted by Bob Crane, and a vocal by several of the cast members. “Heroes, heroes, lusty men of war. We’re the sons of heroes of the war before…”)

I’ll even venture a bit of sci-fi in from time to time. (Del would be so proud of me!) “UFO,” done by Gerry Anderson, the same guy who brought us “Joe 90” and “Thunderbirds” had a groovy theme song and his wife Sylvia did fabulous futuristic costumes. If I wanted to get a tad (but not too) contemporary, I’ll pop in an episode or two of the original “Battlestar Galactica.” Those shiny Cylons must’ve wrecked havoc with studio lighting and camera placement.

But it’s still those fabulous old “The” series that draw me back over and over. They are endearing for various reasons:
• Canned studio ‘60s and ‘70s adventure musical scores
• That wonderful vivid color
• After viewing several episodes, you start to notice the same studio set has been redressed as a new location. On “The Saint” there’s a favorite “European city” exterior set on which they just changed out the shop signs from Italian to French or English, depending on where Simon Templar was battling the bad guys next. On “The Persuaders,” Lord Brett and Tony always seem to be dashing into the entrance hall of the same mansion.
• Some series, such as “I Spy” and “The Protectors,” were shot on location in exotic countries. The former must’ve spent close to a whole season on location in Asia.

They just don’t make TV shows like these any longer. Reality TV, hospital dramas and budding singers being insulted by snooty judges just hold no attraction for me.

Not when John Drake, Simon Templar, Napoleon Solo, Ilya Kuryakin, Kelly Robinson, Alexander Scott, Lord Brett Sinclair, Danny Wilde, Harry Rule, the Contessa Caroline di Contini, and the elegant, suave and sophisticated Emma Peel and John Steed have so many communists, terrorists, kidnappers, counterfeiters, extortionists and subversives to combat.

But only when I feel like watching them.

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