American Roman Catholic religious-themed anthology shedding light on the contemporary search for meaning, freedom, and love.
Paulist Productions, the company behind Insight, kept all of the master tapes of the show in the basement of their offices at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades. This was the oceanfront property where, in 1935, screen star Thelma Todd was found in the garage, slumped over the steering wheel of her convertible, dead at age thirty from carbon monoxide poisoning that was ruled accidental but which many suspected was a homicide, with even her lover, the owner of the property, producer Roland West, being suspected. Built in the 1920s, the 15,000 square-foot landmark, a Spanish-Moorish three-level structure near the Santa Monica Pier, was later sold to Paulist Productions after West died in 1952. It was sold to them at a fraction of market cost by West's widow, singer and actress Lola Lane, who, after West's death, had converted to Catholism and admired Insight's creator and producer, Paulist priest Father Ellwood Kieser. The basement area where the tapes were stored was once a speakeasy club and alleged mobster hangout. UCLA has undergone preservation efforts to restore the approximately 450 reels of tape found there. The irony of the site of Todd's scandalous death as the office for a religious production company was not lost on Father Kieser, who told a reporter that the Paulists "exorcised the place before we moved in," and that his screening room was once the "nightclub's men's bathroom."
The series was produced in the United States, and nearly all of its episodes were set there, but the animated opening credits show cars driving on the left-hand side of the road.
English