Thanks to SyFy and their constant reruns of classic Twilight Zone episodes, I’ve been thinking a lot about the traditional idea of a narrator, someone who moves the story along in a voice-over capacity. It’s a classic storytelling technique, and there are a lot of examples of a legendary narrator: Captain Kirk opening every episode of ‘Star Trek’, Earl Hamner Jr. as the voice of grown-up John-Boy in ‘The Waltons’, even more recently examples like Ron Howard’s work on ‘Arrested Development.’ Of course, my fave-rave sitcom also uses the technique, though Ted Mosby is a highly unreliable example of the trope, leading us to today’s expository query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) spent some time perusing old Transformers clips recently, and could also make a serious case for Generation 1’s voice-over announcer Victor Caroli, asking: Who is the most legendary narrator of all?
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There are tons of great ones, but it’s probably hard to beat Morgan Freeman as the all time best.
Jean Sheherd in A Christmas Story is pretty pervasive. It inspired The Wonder Years, after all.
But there will always be a special corner of my heart for Waylon Jennings telling me “Y’all come back now, y’hear?” to find out how them Duke boys got out of their latest predicament.
David Attenborough comes to mind for any documentary. When Sigourney Weaver replaced him on the US broadcast of Planet Earth, it was sacrilege.