One actor, one role, many series

[Wendell_Wagner]

Here’s a very comprehensive list of crossovers between TV shows:

http://www.poobala.com/crossoverlist.html

[punkkid]

Steve Coogan played Alan Partridge in “The Day Today,” “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” and “I’m Alan Partidge.” I’m pretty sure he was somewhere else too- maybe another Chris Morris show…

[tomndebb]

I think Henry (Harry) Morgan deserves some sort of honorable mention for playing in (one of?) the largest number of different crossovers.

Early 1950s, neighbor Pete Porter in December Bride from which he was spun into his own series in the early 1960s, Pete and Gladys.

The mid/late 1960s second incarnation of Dragnet gave us Officer Gannon, who reappeared in the Dan Aykroyd pastiche of Dragnet in the late 1980s as (now) Captain Gannon.

The 1970s MASH* provided Col. Sherman Potter, who reappeared in the spinoff, After MASH.

He also appeared as Judge Bell opposite Walter Matthau’s Harmon Cobb in the TV movie, The Incident, then reappeared opposite Matthau in Against Her Will: An Incident in Baltimore and, again in Incident in a Small Town. The two later movies are odd: the second has the same characters appearing in the same time setting in a completely different city and state and the last one appears to have been a remake of the first, even though they were only four years apart. ::: shrug :::

[kaylasdad99]

Don Novello has trotted out Father Guido Sarducci so many times that I’d risk carpal tunnel syndome if I tried to type them all in a single post. But here’s a list of ten shows he’s played that character on:

1. Tales of the City
2. La Pastorela
3. Saturday Night Live
4. Making Tutti
5. Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abramowitz
6. Gilda Live
7. Sin City Spectacular
8. Married . . . With Children
9. Blossom
10. It’s Garry Shandling’s Show

Note: All of the above were produced for television; there are no theatrical-release movies to flesh out the list.

Another note: Not all of the shows on my list are, strictly speaking, series; some appear to be comedy/variety specials.

Still, anybody want to try to top him?

[BobLibDem]

I happened to catch Diagnosis Murder last night and Mike Connors appeared as Joe Mannix.

[Michael_Ellis]

@Sampiro

Bob Newhart has played the character Bob Hartley on at least three series: The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart (final episode) and Murphy Brown (cameo with Marcia Wallace).

He also sorta played the same character on a 1990s episode of Saturday Night Live, complete with a cameo by Suzanne Pleshette in the last scene.

[Skywatcher]

@Sampiro

Odd crossovers: several of the doctors from

St. Elsewhere once had a drink at Cheers (this was on an episode of Cheers!, not of St. Elsewhere), Kramer once got a walk-on role on Murphy Brown and Sherry Stringfield’s character Dr. Susan Lewis once used the services of Third Watch .

CBS got into habit of crossover episodes for a while. Jessica Fletcher even joined forces with Thomas Magnum once.

[elfkin477]

@h.sapiens

While watching a rerun of Law and Order: SVU, it occured to me that Richard Belzer has played John Munch on four series: as a series regular on Homicide: Life on the Street and SVU and as a guest on Law and Order and The X Files (although The X Files isn’t on his IMDB listing, I don’t think I hallucinated it).

Does anybody know of any actors who have played the same role in more than four series?

Um…The X-files is in his IMDB listings. #18 under “notable TV appearances.”