I've recently rented quite a few DVDs from Netflix featuring early teleplays from the early days of television. However, I was taken aback by this particular episode because it's from 1948--now THAT'S early and I had no idea they any shows that old any more. Not surprisingly, the Kinescope recording is pretty rough--but what do you expect considering its age!
"The Medium" certainly was not what I expecting. Instead of spoken dialog, it was all sung--and no, these were NOT songs but actual sung dialog. This sort of thing worked wonderfully with "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", but here the sing-song dialog was pretty tough to endure--particularly because some of the singing was very high-pitched and uncomfortable to hear. As a result, it is irritating and just about impossible to watch. Really, I didn't care after a bit about the story--I just wanted the awful singing to stop!! It's sad, really, as I usually love these old live plays. Plus, I really can respect all the hard work it took to present this in such a rapid manner. It's just the case where they had a rare failure.