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There are a lot of TV shows. They just keep throwing these things out there to see what sticks. Sometimes it blows up and sometimes you get 4 episodes and nobody but trivia weirdos remember it. This thread is for the shows that time forgot. The stuff that some executive was sure was the next big thing...only for them to replace it with reruns after 3 weeks. First up, let's start with Holmes & Yoyo (1976). Back when The Six-Million Dollar Man was exploding, networks wanted to get in on the robot rush. At the same time, you were deep in the Police/Detective show popularity. You had a bunch of aging cowboys fresh off the cowboy show bubble and needed a vehicle for them. Keep the gun, keep the law, trade the horse for a car, and make it modern times. Why not smash both bubbles together? Well, this is what you get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeJd7j-Rhtg "The series follows Detective Holmes and his new android partner Yoyo, on their adventures and misadventures, as Holmes teaches Yoyo what it is like to be human, while trying to keep his quirky partner's true nature a secret from criminals and fellow cops." Yoyo had a bunch of abilities, depending on the episode. Super strength, speed reading. If he pressed his nose a Polaroid came out of his suit pocket. He could plug various devices into his chest and control them (I don't think plugging the power cord of the soda machine lets you control what comes out, but I'm not a scientist). Most of the humor of the show came from (well, attempted to come from) various ways Yoyo hosed poo poo up or was buggy. There was always some issue Holmes had to solve by adding more oil, or moving him away from the garage door opener or such.  The series lasted 13 episodes. They ran 11 in '76, then quietly burned off the last 2 episodes in late '77. Nobody wanted to watch Robot Detectives but police procedurals continued their popularity without androids. You can find most of the episodes on Youtube if you want to watch.  ABC was so sure that Robots + Cops was going to be a hit, that Holmes and Yoyo wasn't the only show with that premise greenlit that year, the other Future Cop (1976) starred Ernest Borgnine, but only lasted 5 episodes before ending. 
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Aug 12, 2021 02:55
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As a wee lad I remember being stoked about Supertrain, a 1979 series which turned out to be a disastrously expensive flop that almost killed NBC. It was basically Love Boat on a disco bullet train. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUERtAe73NI I also watched Salvage 1, an ABC series about a garbageman (Andy Griffith) who builds a moon rocket out of junk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mR-gz9EFO8
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Aug 12, 2021 19:33
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Following the late '80's-early '90's trend of titular vehicle shows: Viper, a very '90's show with a whole bunch of very '90's cars in it. What was better to kid-me than a red Dodge Viper? A red Dodge Viper that morphs into a... grey Dodge Viper! It's pretty bad. Looked cool at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4HmS7yKO60
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Aug 12, 2021 19:55
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Athanatos posted:First up, let's start with Holmes & Yoyo (1976). Why the gently caress is everything in the 70s orange? Did the TV show actually air looking like that? Or did the film degrade or something.
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Aug 12, 2021 20:11
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This is a screenshot from Brooklyn 99, you can't fool me.
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Aug 12, 2021 20:14
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Number_6 posted:As a wee lad I remember being stoked about Supertrain, a 1979 series which turned out to be a disastrously expensive flop that almost killed NBC. It was basically Love Boat on a disco bullet train. This was latenight talk show fodder for years, but drat if the idea isn't dumb fun as hell. Look at this fellow with his disco guns ready:  madeintaipei posted:Following the late '80's-early '90's trend of titular vehicle shows: Viper, a very '90's show with a whole bunch of very '90's cars in it. What was better to kid-me than a red Dodge Viper? A red Dodge Viper that morphs into a... grey Dodge Viper! It's pretty bad. I think another failed 90s show MANTIS featured a Dodge Viper. Dodge really trying to push those cars through bad tv.
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Aug 12, 2021 21:32
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Thank you for bringing this bizarre programme to my attention. I have little to contribute, except for this picture 
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Aug 12, 2021 23:04
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Quark (NBC 1977-78) Sci-fi comedy about a space garbage man who gets into wacky adventures. Spoofed a lot of classic sci-fi movies and TV shows. Some parts have not aged well (the professor in the first episode and Gene/Jean - a "transmute" - a humanoid possessing a complete set of male & female chromosomes). Otherwise some clever writing and parodies.
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Aug 13, 2021 00:59
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Moving into the 90s, NBC was loving Dick Wolf and his hit Law and Order. They have to get him in on this robot stuff! So he made Mann & Machine (1992) a show where Yancy Butler plays an android police officer partnered with a human detective. Well...we all know now that the loving Cop + Robot poo poo does not work no matter how hard they try (Even recently with Almost Human (2013)), so Mann & Machine was a bust...but NBC still had Dick Wolf and Yancy Butler under contract to make something and they since Miami Vice had ended a few years earlier, they hoped to get back those viewers. Dick Wolf created South Beach (1993) instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZx43WL6ZY  Two thieves are given the choice of going to jail or working for a government agency. Since Yancy Butler was still under contract, Dick Wolf wrote this series with her in mind. They added Eagle-Eye Cherry (yes, that Eagle-Eye Cherry) as the 2nd thief and tried to find their new beach hit. They failed. They made 7 episodes, and only 6 were aired. Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo did the music! Still failed. Yancy Butler was great, but everyone else was awful. Turns out just because you have 1 hit song in the 90s, doesn't mean you can help carry a tv show. Hell, they even had John Glover play the handler (someone who will show up again in my failed tv series posts), but he was wooden and real awkward. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXHihDNPVno&t=1924s It ended up being your bog standard "Criminals do good things and learn a bit about themselves and help out the little guy while angering their secretive boss, but also getting the job done" type deal. They had a decent budget for action, but the acting just killed it. Episode 3 had Tom Verica who carries the episode and is a joy to watch, and shows that the idea for the show wasn't bad, but the execution was awful.
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Aug 13, 2021 03:54
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Athanatos posted:I think another failed 90s show MANTIS featured a Dodge Viper. While not strictly a tv series, there were a few made-for-tv movies attempting to reboot the Smokey and the Bandit franchise in the 90s featuring a Dodge Stealth. It was intended as a prequel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandit_(film_series) Content: Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years . It's 90s Canadian Deadwood. (And apparently did get a second season?? huh) Space: Above and Beyond also ruled.
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Aug 13, 2021 04:12
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I was really into Rubicon when it aired. I wish they had the opportunity to finish the story. Had pretty interesting opening credits too.
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Aug 13, 2021 19:47
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One Big Family (1986). The last attempt at a hurrah for Danny Thomas. It went a season. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xypp5IhMaA4 I have an episode of One Big Family, but there is so little info out there on the series, I'm not sure which one it is. The 5 Mrs. Buchanans (1994-95). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_hbr4Og46k I watched most of this when it originally aired, but remember zip except Charlotte Ross was called Bree. At least a handful of full episodes are on YouTube.
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Aug 13, 2021 20:04
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There's a YouTube channel devoted to compiling intros/theme songs to as many shows from a given season as possible: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYTWOtXPXTwy0lpKx7HK8DA I'm a big fan because I'm always impressed by just how much garbage was dumped onto TV and will most likely never be seen again by anyone anywhere, even in the age of streaming. For example, the late-80s sitcom "Raising Miranda," starring this guy and his mullet: 
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Aug 13, 2021 21:31
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In 1995, Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner was released on the Sega Saturn. Somehow it did well enough that not only did it get an indirect sequel in 1997, it got a TV show adaptation as well. Behold, the most 90s show Japan managed to produce And not only did it get one season, the show did well enough critically and commercially it got a second season. Now if only it wasn't a pain in the rear end to find subtitles for. And in the same vein as a Japanese show based on a Japanese game, in the 90s there was also a short lived TV show based on Vampire: The Masquerade It is about what you expect
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Aug 14, 2021 09:00
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I actually pretty legitimately enjoyed Kindred: The Embraced, not going to lie.
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Aug 14, 2021 18:47
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My wife as well. She had the VHS tapes of that show (and just that show on VHS). She only had volumes 2 & 3 of it, so I went on eBay to complete the set. I've never watched it though.
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Aug 14, 2021 19:09
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First time posting on this part of SA since I usually reside in GBS, so hello everyone and by all means tell me to gently caress off if I’m asking the wrong questions like they did over in CD. Wondering if anyone else here remembers a weird clip-show on SyFy (then called the Sci-Fi Channel) called Headf**k. It was shown randomly on Friday nights back in 2002 and 2003. Had I not gone so far as to tape as much of the show as I could during its run, I’d be convinced it was a weird half remembered dream from my teens because so far I’ve never found anyone else who remembers it even existed at all. The show essentially consisted of mangled edited clips from HG Lewis movies, bizarre short movies and music videos, and occasional reality-bending ‘thoughts’ from resident wacko David Icke. The show was pretty much helmed by him for the first season, then his presence was noticeably absent for the second season. I’d post the clips I have of it here for people to get an idea of how loving strange this show was, but VHS generation loss has pretty much ruined the audio to the point I’d probably have to pay someone to fix it (which I’m seriously contemplating doing).
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Aug 14, 2021 19:34
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I am not sure if anyone in the world remembers Dick Spanner, a weird marionette gumshoe detective show about a robot spanner in the future which my Dad used to videotape for me from early morning TV (it was shown at like 4am). They were all about 4 minutes long and we ended up missing a few here and there so the story didn't make sense. Thankfully someone seems to have stitched it all together in one piece on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8O-EjYIhiQ Convex has a new favorite as of 12:43 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 14, 2021 20:03
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Space Precinct 2040 was an extremely ambitious sci-fi series made by the same guy who was behind The Thunderbirds and all those weird puppet shows. It only lasted a season before getting cancelled due its huge budget and low ratings. I honestly think it holds up pretty well these days and some of costumes and special effects still manage to look pretty impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdmzohn44g8
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Aug 14, 2021 22:15
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Mister Kingdom posted:Quark (NBC 1977-78) The idea of an interstellar garbage man isn't the worst one, and I might in fact steal it for a short story or a ttrpg one-shot.
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Aug 14, 2021 23:01
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A mans mother is reincarnated as his car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_3jcDKUBtQ
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Aug 15, 2021 01:55
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frankee posted:A mans mother is reincarnated as his car Useless trivia: Jerry Van Dyke turned down Gilligan's Island to do this show because he didn't want to be part of an ensemble show.
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Aug 15, 2021 02:16
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Nowhere Man aired for one season on early UPN alongside Star Trek Voyager, starred Bruce Greenwood as a photographer who (inadvertently?) captured evidence of a conspiracy which then destroys his life by psychological warfare, making it seem like he doesn't exist. Even his wife vanishes in the middle of a date and then later pretends to be married to another man and not know him. I haven't watched this show in 25 years, partly because I haven't found it anywhere, but partly because I haven't wanted to find it, because it cannot possibly be as good as my memory of it. Can it?
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Aug 15, 2021 04:49
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Also John Doe aired for a season alongside Firefly I think, ended on a massive cliffhanger twist and was canceled. Kind of one of those procedural-with-a-twist shows, John Doe turns up as an amnesiac who has for some reason encyclopedic knowledge of everything except his own past.
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Aug 15, 2021 04:53
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Back to the mid '90s again I remember really being invested in another canceled-after-one-season show, Earth 2, which had a colony ship that escaped a polluted Earth but crash lands on the wrong hemisphere of their barely-settled destination planet, and IMDB tells me a few things I didn't remember like Clancy Brown and Tim Curry having roles. I remember some weird aliens that they either couldn't communicate with or maybe they weren't even sure they were fully sapient.
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Aug 15, 2021 05:23
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Remember the time Fox came out with Method and Red? A sitcom about Method Man and Redman moving to a fancy New Jersey suburb and dealing with issues like drama with the neighborhood association and not letting Method Man's mom (who also lives with them) find out about their shenanigans. https://youtu.be/m6iKbgwKHtM It only lasted nine episodes and I'm shocked as hell it even made it that far.
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Aug 15, 2021 07:20
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I used to come back late from work and crash out in front of late night TV, featuring all these strange shows that never made it in primetime but somehow limped along for years: * Silk Stalkings was about cops in Miami investigating crimes that always turned out to be sex-related (detective checks out the half-baked dead body and quips "looks like another SILK STALKING"), shot in a lurid neon-heavy vaporwave aesthetic. The first episode we see their neon and glass police headquarters, which the chief excuses in an aside ("can't get any money for more staff but never any problem for facilities, am I right?"). There was lots of shoulder pads and hairgel. The lead actress was named Mitzi Kapture and unbelievably had not worked in porn. Her character had a brain aneurysm "that could go off at any moment" which was an occasional B-plot between pouting over naked corpses. This went on for 8 years, so maybe not a failure? https://youtu.be/_Yp3_zOaz9w * I have terrible remembering what happened in Thunder in Paradise, possibly because the production crew weren't sure themselves. Two ex special ops types (Hulk Hogan and Jack Lemmon's son) hang out on a beach, and somewhat they have this super fast boat that they use in missions for the government. The heroes spend a lot of time working out and posing and highfiving each other, while wordless crowds of women ogle them, having somehow found their secret beach hideout: https://youtu.be/WGklwzZs14M
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Aug 15, 2021 11:51
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Dark Skies - "History as we know it is a lie." Sci-fi show where the aliens (gross parasites than inhabit human bodies) from Area 51 are real and have infiltrated world society. All of the world's major events were orchestrated by them. The show was set to run five years ending with an alien invasion in 2001.
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Aug 15, 2021 12:09
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nonathlon posted:(Hulk Hogan and Jack Lemmon's son) There's a celebrity pairing I didn't know about!
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Aug 15, 2021 13:04
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Turn-On, the infamous ABC bomb from 1969. Some networks refused to air it, at least one cut it off after 10-15 minutes and some that did air the episode were flooded with complaints. Few clips of the show exist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW_Cp1bAjZA
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Aug 15, 2021 15:37
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Goblin Craft posted:Also John Doe aired for a season alongside Firefly I think, ended on a massive cliffhanger twist and was canceled. Kind of one of those procedural-with-a-twist shows, John Doe turns up as an amnesiac who has for some reason encyclopedic knowledge of everything except his own past. This was a really fun one. It was a 90s/Early 2000s "Person with strange quirk solves weekly mysteries." "In the opening scene of the series' pilot episode, a mysterious man awakens on an island off the coast of Seattle, Washington, naked, with absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got there. However, apart from the details of his own past, "John Doe", as he comes to call himself, seems to have access to the sum total of all human knowledge: he knows how many dimples are on a golf ball, the population of Morocco, and other such obscure (and not-so-obscure) facts. He also has expert knowledge on everything from the stock market to computers. Over the course of the series John attempts to find clues about his past by using his unusual ability while also helping to solve crimes with the Seattle police department. In the process it becomes clear that an international conspiracy known as the Phoenix Organization is watching John's every move. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgb1c39jyaY It starred Dominic Purcell of Prison Break fame. It was enjoyable and had those X-Files Mytharc type episodes. Another one of those "It's set in Seattle" that was crazy popular for a while. Goblin Craft is right, it ended on a huge cliffhanger, and the show never got to explain why this man who didn't know who he was, knew every fact in the world, but the creator did an interview later and spoiled how the rest of the story plays out: Make that someone who looked like John's friend. The villain unmasked in the finale was actually just a Phoenix member with some fancy facial reconstruction. Turns out, the Phoenix believed Doe was the Messiah and its members were actually protecting Doe from a second group, which wanted him dead. The truth: Doe was injured in a boating accident. That mark on his chest? A scar left by a piece of shrapnel from the explosion. His Überbrain? A by-product of transcending his body during a near-death experience, traveling to a spiritual plane where all the universe's questions are answered
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Aug 15, 2021 19:40
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Calling it a “favorite” feels wrong, but the fact Heil Honey, I’m Home had even one episode made is like the kind of thing that I’ll remember and have it blow my loving mind every now and again. quote:
Like, this was made in 1990
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Aug 15, 2021 20:02
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Heil Honey I'm Home! is a British sitcom, written by Geoff Atkinson and produced in 1990, which was cancelled after one episode. It centres on Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who live next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein. Well, I wonder who the real racists were! edit: wait stop no i'm actually trying to delete this
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Aug 15, 2021 20:50
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I was super into Manimal as a kid which made it to 8 eps I think. Luckily i was also young enough to read the Anamorphs books which cribbed heavily from it. From what I recall, the titular Manimal could transform into any animal but they only had three that they filmed transitions for: Hawk, Panther, and Snake. Which is really all you need. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX_vP5N1_ZY
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Aug 16, 2021 02:52
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I thought he could only change to a panther or hawk because of Native American maaaaagiiiic.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:03
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RC and Moon Pie posted:Turn-On, the infamous ABC bomb from 1969. Some networks refused to air it, at least one cut it off after 10-15 minutes and some that did air the episode were flooded with complaints. Few clips of the show exist. This is amazing. Looking into it, the lead-in was a Talky Western (not much action, mostly drama) called Here Come the Brides (1968). It also replaced a popular nightime soap opera, Peyton Place (1964) (Mia Farrow's big break show), which opened on a shot of a church, and was about small-town soap opera stuff. So you put a raunchy, sex comedy, line pushing, social commentary skit show after a family western, replacing a family soap opera, and make it the lead in of ABC's weekly movie night. I mean, read the description here: Production executive Digby Wolfe described it as a "visual, comedic, sensory assault involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics—even people." Just a loving word salad. The clips that remain are non stop cuts and just throwing things at you.
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Aug 16, 2021 05:56
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Goblin Craft posted:Back to the mid '90s again I remember really being invested in another canceled-after-one-season show, Earth 2, which had a colony ship that escaped a polluted Earth but crash lands on the wrong hemisphere of their barely-settled destination planet, and IMDB tells me a few things I didn't remember like Clancy Brown and Tim Curry having roles. I remember some weird aliens that they either couldn't communicate with or maybe they weren't even sure they were fully sapient. I really liked this show, bummed it ended.
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Aug 16, 2021 13:19
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To add something, in the late 90s there was a show called Prey, only got one season but I thought it was really interesting. Basically a new species of hominid had evolved from humans and where gonna take over or something, they all had extremely republican traits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(American_TV_series)
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Aug 16, 2021 13:21
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Borscht posted:I was super into Manimal as a kid which made it to 8 eps I think. Luckily i was also young enough to read the Anamorphs books which cribbed heavily from it. From what I recall, the titular Manimal could transform into any animal but they only had three that they filmed transitions for: Hawk, Panther, and Snake. Which is really all you need. Unless I'm mixing up shows, Manimal was a spin-off of Nightman, a show about a saxophone player that gets an iron man-esque suit.
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Aug 16, 2021 14:00
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Borscht posted:I was super into Manimal as a kid which made it to 8 eps I think. Luckily i was also young enough to read the Anamorphs books which cribbed heavily from it. From what I recall, the titular Manimal could transform into any animal but they only had three that they filmed transitions for: Hawk, Panther, and Snake. Which is really all you need. David Letterman relentlessly roasted this show during its short run.
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Aug 16, 2021 14:23
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