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Grab a Martini, He’s Back, Baby

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Rat Pack has become cool again. Ergo, Joey Bishop has become cool again. Ergo, Joey Bishop’s sitcom, “The Joey Bishop Show,” has become cool again. Well, cool enough, anyway, for a marathon on cable channel TV Land (from 5 p.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday), which arranged for Bishop to choose the episodes.

Joey Barnes, Bishop’s character on “The Joey Bishop Show,” is a nightclub comic who also hosts a TV show. In the sitcom, which ran from 1961 to ‘65, he’s a warm, nice guy, not a Rat Packing carouser.

But the Rat Pack sometimes looms. In an episode in which the Andrews Sisters are afraid Joey will sing with them on his show (5:30 p.m.), his jack-of-all-trades manager, Larry Corbett (played by Corbett Monica), lays it on the line: Joey’s got a rotten voice. Even Sinatra thinks so, Larry says: “Remember that night he heard you sing? . . . He walked over and said, ‘Congratulations, Joey. I didn’t know you didn’t have a voice.’ ”

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And Dean Martin?

“Dean Martin never rapped my singing,” Joey says.

“He never drank till he heard you sing.”

You don’t need the Andrews Sisters, Martin, Sinatra or Larry to tell you Joey Barnes can’t sing. He does that all by himself, and that’s where Bishop’s mastery of underplaying comes in. Instead of the typical over-the-top sitcom wailing, he seems to make sincere attempts at such songs as “Roll Out the Barrel,” which are dreadful--but at the same time so sweet that they are as charming as they are amusing.

Fatherhood gives the marathon one of its best episodes. In a look at the future, new dads Joey and Danny Thomas hilariously portray their teenage sons (7:30 p.m.).

It’s uncool in a very cool way.

DETAILS, DETAILS: Joey Bishop had a late-night talk show--also called “The Joey Bishop Show”--that ran from 1967 to 1969. Who was his sidekick? Answer next week. Answer to last week’s quiz (In “The Andy Griffith Show,” Opie’s best friend in junior high is Arnold Bailey. Who is it in elementary school?): Johnny Paul Jason.

Set Your VCR

Jodie Foster is a tyke named Marieanne in a “Gunsmoke” (Wednesday at 1 p.m. on KDOC Channel 56) that has some dangerous characters--an ex-gunman looking for revenge, and a pet dog that has become a killer. The episode, “The Predators,” first aired in January 1972.

The “Elaine’s Strange Triangle” episode of “Taxi” (Sunday at 1:30 a.m. on Nickelodeon) won David Lloyd an Emmy for writing. The scene with Alex dancing in a gay bar is a classic.

This weekend, KOCE Channel 50 begins airing “Danger UXB” Sundays at 8 p.m. (It repeats at midnight.) The British series, which aired on “Masterpiece Theatre” in 1981, stars Anthony Andrews.

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Screenwriter Robert Towne (“Chinatown”), who also directs (“Without Limits,” the upcoming film about runner Steve Prefontaine), wrote the “Dove Affair” episode of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” (Tuesday at 4 a.m. on TNT) from 1964.

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