Bob Dylan Revealed What He Watches on TV to Make Himself Feel ‘at Home’: ‘They’re Old-Fashioned’
Bob Dylan has been more or less constantly on tour since the 1980s, but he still makes time to wind down and watch TV. While the musician is private about many elements of his life, he’s happy to discuss the shows he likes. He shared the programs that make him feel most at home and the ones he avoids.
Bob Dylan said his family first got a TV when he was a teenager
Dylan was born in 1941, and his family got their first television in the mid-1950s.
“I was about 14 or 15 when we got one, my dad put it in the basement,” he said in an interview with journalist Bill Flanagan on his official website. “It came on at 3:00 and went off at 9, most of the other time it showed a test pattern, some kind of weird circular symbol. The reception wasn’t that good, there was a lot of snow on the screen and you always had to adjust the antenna to get anything to come in.”
The image quality wasn’t great, but Dylan said he liked much of what he watched.
“I liked everything I saw – Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Highway Patrol, Father Knows Best. There were theater dramas, too, like Studio One, Fireside Theatre. Quiz shows, too – Beat the Clock, To Tell the Truth, Queen for a Day, they were all good,” he said. “There was one called You Are There with Walter Cronkite, The Twilight Zone, there were a bunch of them.”
He shared the shows he’s been watching lately
These days, Dylan has a remarkably similar taste in television shows. Much of what he likes premiered decades ago.
“I recently binged: Coronation Street, Father Brown, and some early Twilight Zones,” he said in a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I know they’re old-fashioned, but they make me feel at home.”
He also told Flanagan that when he’s on tour, he likes to watch I Love Lucy, “all the time, non-stop.”
Dylan also said that there are a number of programs that he avoids altogether.
“I’m no fan of packaged programs or news shows,” he said. “I never watch anything foul-smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting, nothing dog a**.”
Bob Dylan nearly had his own TV show
Dylan nearly starred in his own TV show that he wrote with comedy writer Larry Charles.
“He’d gotten deeply into Jerry Lewis, and he wanted to make a slapstick comedy,” Charles said on the podcast You Make It Weird, per Rolling Stone. Dylan also “wanted to star in it, almost like a Buster Keaton or something.”
They pitched the series to HBO and, to Charles’ surprise, the network greenlit the show. It never made it to screens, though, because Dylan immediately tired of the idea.
“We go out to the elevator — Bob’s manager Jeff, my manager Gavin, me and Bob – the three of us are elated we actually sold the project and Bob says, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s too slapsticky,'” Charles said. “He’s not into it. That’s over. The slapstick phase has officially ended.”
