LOS ANGELES -- Alistair Cooke can pinpoint the day he got the call about hosting a new show that was to take the best of British dramatic television and put it on PBS every week.
"I remember the date very vividly," Cooke said at a press event here to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show that came to be called Masterpiece Theatre. "It was Oct. 5, 1970.
"It is my son's birthday, and it was the first day we did any filming on my history of America series that was called 'America.' "
Cooke remembered coming back to his hotel in Boston and seeing a huge headline about the death of Janis Joplin.
"It said that her manager had found her and had said that a doctor and coroner had come in and found that it was a drug overdose. And he said no more.
"And I was mightily relieved because her manager was my son. It took me about two hours to get hold of him on the phone as you can imagine. And, as he said, what a birthday present. So, it was a very vivid day."
Cooke dismissed the possibility of hosting this proposed series because he was so busy with "America." He accepted the job when the Boston station that produces it, WGBH, begged him in near-panic a few weeks later. For the first couple of years, he came in from various locations for "America" every few weeks to record the introductions in Boston.
"I remember showing my first contract to a friend in the television business," Cooke said. "He was used to everything being for 13 weeks and was stunned that this one was for three years."
Now, two decades later, Cooke is best-known in this country for highly literate, often witty and always appropriate introductory spots that precede, and occasionally follow, the episodes of Masterpiece Theatre.
But Cooke is quick to point out that across the world, he has much greater fame for a weekly 15-minute commentary he does on America for the BBC.
"I get scores of letters every week from something like 50 countries and maybe one of them is about Masterpiece Theatre," he said, adding that officials from WGBH, "of course, don't like to hear that."
The on-air commemoration of the 20th anniversary started last Sunday with a repeat of three episodes of "Upstairs, Downstairs," the program that really put Masterpiece Theatre on the map of America's consciousness. It's the series that is Cooke's favorite among the more than 100 productions that have aired.
