Two I can think of even though there is some evidence some other people remember or care.
When I was young, I watched Read All About It on public broadcasting. The story features a group of kids using a magic printing press to fend off an alien invasion.
It sounds silly, but it could be really suspenseful. Those kids faced death on many occasions, and the overall mood was more spooky than fun.
Starring Frank Converse, if I remember correctly. I watched a few episodes, kind of liked it.
The Cleopatras, which went from Flagship BBC Drama to buried, not talked about, forgotten with startling speed.
The story is this: The BBC produced the magnificent I Claudius in 1976 to huge acclaim and success, despite a rather limited budget that restricted shooting to entirely in-studio. So having scored huge success with the studio-filmed historical epic, they did it again with The Borgias; and for a third time with The Cleopatras.
The Cleopatras drew critical loathing and was a flop, and in the embarrassment of the failure the BBC buried it - I mean, completely. No repeats, no DVD release, no nothing. However, in it’s own small way it was a masterpiece - you can find the full series rescued by fans on Youtube.
The core problem with the show was the tone it struck. Faced with chronicling an era where intra-familial murder and marriage were pretty much the only milestones in the story, the writer chose to present these things as simply day-to-day trivialities. So you would get dialog like:
“Shall we invite your brother?”
“But you had him killed last week - have you forgotten, silly?”
“Oh, yes of course!”
The thinking was that there was so much horror and mayhem, this was the only way that you could present it.
I thought it was brilliant when I first watched it, and again when I rewatched it a couple of years ago. Just, I would say, way ahead of it’s time. Recommended. Perhaps not the equal of I Claudius, but a worthy partner piece.
j
Men Into Space. It was a low-budget, black and white melodrama that ran before actual humans went into space. But it took things seriously and stayed away from aliens and monsters. Little-kid me loved it.
A lot of British comedies, some well known in the states, some much less so.
I seriously cannot remember a time when I didn’t know every word of The Young Ones or Blackadder(except for Blackadder 3rd and 4th when I can specifically remember them playing for the first time on TV). Neither of which are that well known here, though have a small fan base.
There was a Young Ones book (it was common in the 1980/90s for comedy shows to release books for the Christmas present market) that I recently discovered at my parents house and it is actually really really funny and has held up well. I would put money on the fact that I may be the only person on this board to have a copy.
The Day Today and Brass Eye are works of dark disturbed genius, and criminally unknown here.
Not in the same league quality-wise butThe Mary Whitehouse Experience had an incredible influence on my teenage year (the catchphrases alone) but has since disappeared without trace.
Oh and not old enough to remember it first time round (by several decades) but saw enough Quakermass Experimentrepeats for it to be a pretty important scifi influence (along with Doctor Who, of course)
I hear they are taking another stab at remaking it…
Back around the late '70s r early ‘80s, there was some kind of Hollywood strike, maybe a writers’ strike. One of the networks desperate for content started to air pilot episodes of series that hadn’t been picked up. One of them was about a mermaid who was picked up by the crew of a submarine. I remember liking it and hoping it would get picked up as a series. I don’t remember what it was called or who was in it. I know my siblings watched it with me, but when I mentioned it later they disavowed any memory of having seen it. I may have once started a thread about it here, but I can’t find it now.
In 1982, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of George Washington’s birth (although they aired it a month late), there was a show called I Love Liberty. It had a whole bunch of celebrities doing patriotic speeches, sketches, and songs. I don’t remember much about it. But I do remember Hal Linden and Michele Lee singing “Stars and Stripes Forever”. (Yes, it does have lyrics. Many different versions, in fact.) You know that part where the piccolos and flutes do one thing, and the tubas and trombones do something completely different, yet together they sound great? Hal Linden had one set of lyrics, to the tune of the brass, while Michele Lee had a different set, to the tune of the woodwinds, and together they made a great duet. I have yet to find a recording of that performance.
Sometime in the late 1970s, there was a show with three female comedians, doing various sketches. One of them did a monologue dressed as Wonder Woman. I remember two of the jokes:
“My bracelets are bullet-proof. How many killers do you know that aim for the wrists?”
“Everywhere I go, children follow me around, shouting ‘Make the wings flap! Make the wings flap!’”
Possibly this…
No images or videos from it seem to exist. This might actually be Fate trying to spare you the embarrassment and/or disappointment of seeing it again.
If it’s called Bachelor Boys, don’t lay down that bet. Although I only bought it a few years ago off Amazon Marketplace.
If it has the “Dr Vyvyan” section wherein he bemoans the fact that bottoms don’t spend all day sitting about in bowls of milk, so should really get the credit for making you poo, not roughage. Then consider my fist well and truly shaken at you.
I watched a couple of episodes on line maybe 12–15 years ago. Can’t remember on what website though. It was really good.
The series was shown in abbreviated form a full two years after it was filmed. IIRC, the network it was on (CBS, I think) thought it was too cerebral.
I also found some materials on it at another website. Several episodes were written but never filmed; in the finale, it was revealed that
the protagonist was a Soviet sleeper agent.
I, Claudius had the tone of a Roman Mafia saga, a quarter century before The Sopranos aired.
Do you have the DVD box set? I do, and I finally have proof that there were only twelve episodes of The Young Ones. They figured, if twelve eps was enough for Fawlty Towers, it was enough for them. See, more than one person has insisted that there were further episodes of TYO. If they weren’t just messing with me, they were probably thinking of something else Mayall and Edmondson were in: Bottom, Filthy Rich and Catflap, or Comic Strip. (I don’t think anyone would see Blackadder and think it was TYO.)
Which version? I think there are horribly mauled versions on DVD where they cut out a lot of the weird tangential skits.
I always thought Bottom was an implied sequel for the Young Ones. Though I don’t think I’ve seen Filthy Rich and Catflap since it first aired.
The National Science Test hosted by Art Fleming on NOVA (PBS). There was a “distinguished panel” answering multiple-choice science questions that were easy enough for me to answer correctly as a junior high school kid. I think they did that special show in 1984 and 1985.
What interested me the most was the voice of the narrator reciting the questions and answers. You can here his voice here. Anyone know his name? Thanks!
The Extra Stoopid Edition. It has three featurettes, commentary on two episodes, and I’m fairly certain nothing was cut.
ETA: Since you’re familiar with those shows, did either of them have an episode where Mayall’s character’s parents were going to cut him off financially? One person insisted there was a “lost” TYO episode with that storyline.
I have a memory of a sketch show which I think was British, and which I think was Alfresco, with Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Ben Elton, and Emma Thompson, etc, but have not tracked down the specific sketch so now don’t know if it was real.
It was a Gone With The Wind sketch, but the last line was “Frankly my dear, I don’t give pig shit.”
So it could be Alfresco or it could be There’s Nothing to Worry About!:
Those are mostly people who knew each other originally from the Cambridge Footlights: