“Wagon Train to the Stars”
Yes. IIRC, there was an episode where a rival company sent health inspectors to the Pie Hole and they found the kitchen full of rotten fruit.
You forgot " and threatens to beat the crap out of his wife every week".
I remember mentioning the premise of the first season to a buddy of mine who was a Ranger, and his response was “Oh, wow, if I was on that show, they wouldn’t have to vote anybody off… for a million dollars, there’d be people coming down with all sorts of weird injuries & such.”
A show about a dysfunctional family that owns a mortuary and that starts nearly every episode with somebody dying in an often bizarre manner. Complete with draining bodily fluids and reconstructing horrific injuries. One of the best shows ever made.
A hillbilly hits the ground with a rifle shot and strikes oil and becomes a multimillionaire, then decides to move across the country to a glamorous big city.
In order to be able to share an apartment with two single ladies, an aspiring cook has to convince his landlord that he’s gay.
It was nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in no time flat, along with picking up Emmy nominations for both Bob Crane and Werner Klemperer – and did all three again the year after that – and, since it ran for years and years and years, it of course got nominated yet again for Outstanding Comedy Series, right when Klemperer won the first of his back-to-back Emmys in the role – when Nita Talbot picked up an Emmy nomination on the show to boot.
You can’t say anything like that about “My Mother The Car”; it ran for one season, and racked up neither Emmys nor nominations, exactly like you’d expect.
There’s this bar, in Boston, and the owner is an ex-ballplayer whose alcoholism ruined his career. Along comes this uptight semi-intellectual would-be waitress. They kind of have a thing for one another.
Perhaps the best example of a bygone era when a television network was willing to give a show a chance to develop and realize its potential. There are several examples in this thread of the not-bygone era when networks are in no way at all prepared to give a show a chance to develop and are wholly oblivious to a show’s potential. Lucky for Cheers it came along when it did.
I saw the previews for it, and they hosted the Fall Preview show. I despised her. I mean *hate. *
Loach- it’s not Holmes, it’s the “unlikable asshole” part that is the issue. I am getting really tired of it. Yes, House was fun… for a while. It’s over.
A guy tells his kids the story of how he met their mother, over 9 seasons of television.
For most of the time, it works.
I have a friend who was a cameraman on Lost. He figured he wouldn’t be in Hawaii very long. Boy was he wrong.
A family of extraterrestrials come to earth to observe human behavior. Sort of Mork times four. And yet 3rd Rock was a pretty funny show.
As a kid I really liked Samurai Pizza Cats:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The series is set in the mechanical city of Little Tokyo, a mechanical city which fuses feudal Japanese culture with contemporary culture, and is populated by cybernetic anthropomorphic animals. The city is notionally led by Emperor Fred, a doddering eccentric. The city’s actual leadership lies in the hands of his daughter Princess Violet and a city council. The council is headed by the ambitious prime minister Seymour “The Big” Cheese, a rat, who constantly plots to overthrow the Emperor. He is aided by his inept minions: trusted adviser Jerry Atric and Bad Bird, the leader of an army of ninja crows.
Unknown to the prime minister, council member “Big Al” Dente, the commander of the Palace Guard, learns of his designs on leadership, but is unable to prosecute him for treason because of the plausible deniability he maintains. Instead, Al Dente enlists the services of Speedy Ceviche, Polly Esther, and Guido Anchovy, three cyborg cat samurai who work in the city’s pizzeria, along with their operator Francine. Known collectively as the Samurai Pizza Cats, they are assigned to stop Big Cheese and his evil henchmen’s plans to take over Little Tokyo.
[/QUOTE]
Apparently the dubbers got the original episodes from Japan but didn’t actually have anyone to translate them, so they just wrote new and sarcastic dialogue.
Crazy alien genius who looks like a British guy flies through space and time in a police box that’s bigger on the inside. Oh, and when the lead actor gets tired of the role or can’t do it any longer, we recast him and say he “regenerated,” and keep on going.
Repeat for 50 years. 
A man emigrates to Chicago, moves in with a man who may or may not be his distant cousin. Hijinks ensue.
Did your friend ever get relief for his Palsy?
I would say this does sound like a bad premise. Of course, it’s all in how you write it, but I would be driven crazy by a show where there could be no resolution other than “Spell’s lifted - end of series!”
I loved “Six Feet Under,” but I almost didn’t start watching it. The premise (a dysfunctional family running a funeral home) did not sound very entertaining.
With the last season mostly taking place over one weekend.
Two of my Wives watched House, so I’ve seen bits of it. I never could get past what an asshole the guy was.