Wonderfalls – a highly educated, but highly unmotivated woman works at a Niagra Falls gift shop. After a bump on the head, she starts hearing toy animals telling her what to do. It was brilliant.
And make the British Army be evil, rapists and D=devil worshipers, Benjamin Franklin a sort of Dr. Frankenstein and an arcane wizard.
The funny part is that doesn’t even begin to explain how strange the premise of “Sleepy Hollow” is… nor how absolutely great it is.
Were there any mundanes at all on either side during the Revolutionary War?
It’s the story of a man who can bring dead things to life with a touch, but if he doesn’t touch the thing again within 60 seconds, something else dies. He uses this ability to bake amazing pies, and to solve crimes with his detective friend and his lifelong crush, a girl he brought to life and can now never touch again. And it’s a comedy.
(Pushing Daisies, if you didn’t know. And it was a great show.)
Probably, just like any other war.
Yeah, but did they have speaking parts?
Disagree. It wasn’t a show about nothing. They spoon-fed that to critics who never examined whether it was true. It was a show about a professional comedian in Manhattan and his amoral friends. Plenty of back story, too. That’s as much of a premise as anything else out there.
Wow. I have issues.
Family Guy is a great show with a terrible premise - “The Simpsons only Homer’s even dumber and the characters are less likeable.”
I recall rolling my eyes over “Quantum Leap”…and the rest is history.
I guess I’m a bit confused… if he touches her, does she die again? What happens after 60 seconds?
And how do you use such an ability to make pies?
Not really accurate. I lost interest as soon as I realized everyone survives.
I thought the thread was about good to great tv. There’s a ton of shows with wacky premises that resulted in mediocre or worse tv (e.g., “My Mother the Car”). But it’s more extraordinary when the show is better than its w.t.f. premise.
“Hogan’s Heroes,” while it is an ok way to fill a half hour of airtime, is simply not among the great TV shows.
Nitpick - there was no bump to the head; Jaye heard the wax lion then fainted. Great show. As the monkey explained, she heard them because she listened.
Let’s take Sherlock Holmes and make him a doctor solving the disease of the week. And let’s make him an unlikable asshole.
Let’s take Sherlock Holmes and make him a modern private investigator in modern London. And let’s make him an unlikable asshole.
Let’s take Sherlock Holmes and pretend the BBC isn’t doing the same show at the same time and set it instead in modern New York. And we will make Holmes a recovering heroin addict. And Watson is a woman.
Enough with Sherlock Holmes. Has it been done to death?
And yet each show is quite good to varying degrees.
Yes, if he touches a dead person they come back to life, and then he has a choice: touch them again within 60 seconds, they will re-die and no-one else will die; or don’t touch the person again within 60 seconds, and some other (person or animal or plant) will die. Then if he touches the person ever again, they will still re-die and the other thing that died will not come back to life.
This had nothing to do with his ability to bake pies, that was just what he loved to do. It helped solve mysteries because he could touch the victim, they would come back to life, they could ask whodunnit and touch the victim again within 60 seconds and they would be dead again. Of course this almost never actually worked in a straightforward manner.
I honestly thought Breaking Bad had quite an original premise. If nothing else, the originality sold me on trying the show, and it was one of the best television series I’d ever had the pleasure to watch.
My vote is for American Dad. It sounded (and started out as) a lazy attempt to cash in on Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy cred. A hyper-conservative caricature who works for the CIA and has a talking fish and an alien as housemates. It was a by-the-numbers Family Guy ripoff, complete with standins for Brian and Stewie. The first half of the first season was exactly what you’d expect, and it wasn’t very good. But once it found its footing, it turned into a hilarious, clever show that I personally think had a greater integrated funniness than Family Guy.
Oh, it’s totally the best thing that has ever been on TV. I guess it’s not a case of “bad premise” as much as “most above and beyond its premise”.
In that case, perhaps, but more often great TV shows have premises so flimsy you might as well not bother describing it.
A wacky redhead wants to be in showbiz like her husband.
A desperately poor bus driver’s schemes to get rich backfire, while his wife always forgives him. Mind you, this was a sitaution comedy.
An upper-middle class black doctor and his attorney/wife raise five children and never encounter financial, racial, drug, or really any other type of problems.
Not to mention the premise of the original Law and Order – there’s a crime, the police spend the first half of the show tracking down a suspect, and the prosecutors spend the second half of it trying the case.
On a ratio scale the “reality” show Splash surprised me.
Let take random famous people and have them dive off diving boards. For a whole season.
Not saying it was fantastic, but hella better than it sounds at least.
Wasn’t part of the premise that Ned saved money for his pie business (The Pie Hole) by obtaining spoiled/rotten fruit and then making it fresh again by touching it?