AS SEEN ON TV: FRIDAY

As Pep Streebek once said, "Thank God, it's Friday!"*

FRIDAY

AS SEEN IN:
'Robinson Crusoe'

CREATED BY:
Daniel Dafoe

PORTRAYED BY:
Tongayi Chirisa

TV STATUS:
Recastaway

TV DIMENSION:
Land of the Remakes

From Wikipedia:

Friday is one of the main characters of Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe". Robinson Crusoe names the man, with whom he cannot at first communicate, Friday because they first meet on that day. The character is the source of the expression "Man Friday", used to describe a male personal assistant or servant, especially one who is particularly competent or loyal.

Robinson Crusoe spends twenty-eight years on an island off the coast of Venezuela with his talking parrot Poll, his pet dog, and a tame goat as his only companions. In his twenty-fourth year, he discovers that Carib cannibals occasionally use a desolate beach on the island to kill and eat their captives.

Crusoe observes one of the Caribs, kept captive and about to be eaten, escape his captors. Crusoe ambushes two pursuers, and the others leave in their canoes without the knowledge of their counterparts' outcome. The rescued captive bows in gratitude to Crusoe, who decides to employ him as a servant. He names him Friday after the weekday upon which the rescue takes place.

Crusoe describes Friday as being a Native American, though very unlike the Indians of Brazil and Virginia. His religion involves the worship of a mountain god named Benamuckee, officiated over by high priests called Oowokakee. Friday tolerates cannibalism, and even suggests eating the men Crusoe has killed.

Crusoe teaches Friday the English language and converts him to Christianity. He tells him that cannibalism is wrong. Friday accompanies him in an ambush in which they save Friday's father.

Crusoe returns to England twenty-eight years after being shipwrecked on the island, and four years after rescuing Friday. Friday's father goes with a Spanish castaway to the mainland to retrieve fourteen other Spanish castaways, but Crusoe and Friday depart the island before they return.

Friday accompanies Crusoe home to England, and is his companion in the sequel "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", in which Friday is killed in a sea battle.

There were many versions of this classic tale made for television; and many of them, being only one-shot TV movies or episodes of anthology TV series, would be shipwrecked themselves in alternate TV dimensions since they leave so much of the story left untold.

But despite the high production values in this newer version, the Earth Prime-Time port of call belongs instead to the 1964 series which was a French/West German co-production. And that's even though it was then dubbed into English for the UK market.

Still, for the sake of that "joke" at the beginning, this was the first portrayal of Friday whose picture I could easily find......

BCnU!

* I can't believe it took this long into the year before I finally used this character just to do that joke.