Hoo-boy, am I going to be the bad-guy regarding comments about this show. Everybody loves dogs and animals, and yes, Lassie (who, I understand was played by a series of male Collies - they found that female collies were difficult to train and work with) was an incredibly well-trained and smart dog. That part was fun. But, as a t.v. show, I found the plots to be contrived and the pace of the shows to be slow, filled with long spaces with no dialog. The music was schmaltzy and maudlin, as were the plots, I'm afraid. Timmie, played by John Provost was a cute child actor. He seemed to go for long periods without checkin' in with Mom or Dad. You'd think as much trouble as he got in where Lassie had to go find Mom and Dad to rescue him, the Martins would have kept a little tighter reign on their boy. Lassie had this uncanny ability to communicate long complex sentences with only a bark or two. She also had an amazing ability to understand fairly complex English sentences. As a family show, it was obviously aimed at families with younger children. It was a fun show, if you could suspend reality enough to stay with it.
Review of Lassie
