How’s this for a Survivor variation?
16 people on an island, no tribes. Each week, there’s a contest of some sort, and the top eight finishers vote one of the losers off (in event of a tie, names will be drawn from a hat). The catch is, no one knows who’s voted off until the cast is down to 8. There’s a similar process every time the crowd is halved. Obviously, the weekly votes of those who have already lost would not be counted.
I think this would make good TV, in large part due to the high levels of dramatic irony.
Detective shows: they’ve had just about every kind of gimmick detective imaginable. What haven’t they done yet?-
A kid. A seven-year old child protege with a savant genius for solving crimes, a sort of junior Sherlock Holmes. Or Dougie Howser as a detective instead of a doctor.
The pilot episode: reading in the paper about a series of brutal murders, he deduces a connection that no one else has noticed and sends it in anonymously to the police tip line. It proves so insightful that the police think it came from someone with personal knowledge of the crime and trace the tip back to the kid. The detective in charge of the case is naturally hesitant to take advice from a seven-year old (even if he is in college) but secretly decides to give him full access to the case files, which allows the boy genius to solve the case.
The ongoing series features the boy serving as a secret consultant to the police, despite his parents’ reluctance to let him be involved with lurid and dangerous investigations.
The Belittles.
A family that lives in squalor, barely making it, with a Grandpa with Alzheimers, etc.
In every episode, something good will happen only to have it end in misery within a half hour.
It’ll be the world’s first situation tragedy. or sittrag.
It will have a sob track.
A television show that’s on two channels at once!
Stay with me, here. On one channel, you have one point of view: say, Sitcom Family A with their kooky neighbors, Sitcom Family B.
Or maybe Police Procedural A, with Criminal Group B.
Or maybe Science Fiction Heroes A, with Science Fiction Aliens B.
Or maybe Soldiers A vs. Soldiers B.
The A storyline is told on one channel, and the B story is played out on the same channel and timed the same, so you can flip back and forth and follow the plot however you want. (Say, in Police Procedural A, the cop is kidnapped, you can flip channels to watch his story as Criminal Group B beats him up.)
a) Post your original ideas here
b) Let a Doper steal it
c) Let Uncle Cecil sue the Doper since all posts become their property!
Case Closed/Detective Conan. Even has the lurid murders.
As for myself…Law and Order: Beijing. (Either that, or L&O Singapore, or L&O Texarkana.) You know those regular L&O episodes where the criminal gets away after some legal pettifogging, leaving the viewers all pissed off? Well, some of the outcomes of THIS might still make you mad, but it probably won’t be because the guilty get away! 
Also, in a departure from the usual L&O franchise formula, this is a half-hour show. (Which works out to about 16 minutes of story, total, after you add commercials. Actually, we can probably add more commercials than usual to this one…the scripts we’re seeing tend to wrap up pretty quickly.)
During sweeps week, the condemned don’t get to wear hoods.
Law & Order: Before Miranda
Follow the adventures of fresh-faced rookies Lennie Briscoe and John Munch as they set up cases for crusading young ADA Adam Schiff in 1964 Manhattan. They have a little more, um, flexibility in coaxing confessions out of minority suspects in between rousts of the Stonewall Bar & Grill. In New York City, the war on crime… just got a little easier!
Andy Richter is… The Wanderer
Pursued unrelentingly by a one-armed detective for a murder he didn’t commit, The Wanderer runs from town to town. But each town is eerily familiar, and everyone he meets strongly resembles a cancelled classic TV show. SEE the wanderer negotiate a settlement to avert a Brady/Partridge smackdown! SEE a wacky Cuban bandleader (Benicio del Toro) and his lovely wife (Kathy Griffin) go underground with the Wanderer when their grumpy landlord and landlady turn out to be the Rosenbergs–with detailed records of Ricky and Lucy’s embarrassing ties to the Communist Party! SEE the Wanderer hook up with another wanted man–one you wouldn’t like when he gets angry! Co-starring Ed O’Neil as the One Armed Detective.
The Naked Silence
She’s a stripper. He’s a mime. They’re detectives. Hard-hitting crime drama with all the dignity and sensitivity we’ve come to expect from SHOWTIME at 2 am.
I think these have potential…
Copyrights do not cover ideas.
Ideas can’t be stolen.
Ideas are nobody’s property.
Might make a nice TV show though: Law & Order: Copyrights and Wrongs
Bum off the street named John: “Heyyyy, my name’s John, you can’t sell Bibles with a Book of John in em! I didn’t give me permission. I’se gotsa copyright on my name! See, right here, I wrote it in a letter and mailed it to myself, look at the datestamp.”
Lenny: “Hold it right there fellah, none of that makes any sense. Besides, the Bible’s been around 2,000 years. Perhaps you heard of the author? Trust me, you don’t want to get that guy pissed off at you, lawsuit would be the least of your concerns.”
Bum off the street named John: “Heyyyy, I knows my rights, it was my idea to wrote a book named John… and toilets! They didn’t pay me no nothing to be calling them johns neither. Whatchyu gonna do 'bout THAT!”
Manuel: “You got all the angles covered, don’t you John? But with you hassling these fine folks here, we might have to run you in and let you cool your heels in a nice cozy cell for a while for disturbing the peace.”
Lenny: “Yeah, great idea. I can’t wait until he meets those guys we busted trying to pick up prostitues on 43rd. Be a regular Johnapalooza down there.”
Bum off the street named John: “Heyyyyyyyy, you owe me $40 for that remark, buddy!”
That was Married with Children. God would destroy the universe rather than let Al Bundy remain rich and successful.
And as for my kid detective, I just realized I shouldn’t have said "parents’. His mother should be widowed and she and the handsome homicide detective develop a thing for each other.
My Fantasy Life. A person who is a total failure in real life, but with an active fantasy life. Everytime reality intrudes on her fantasies, everything gets mixed-up, with hilarious results.
Game Show format with an annoying host (maybe Carrot Top or Howie Mandel)
The contestant can win $10 million dollars, but in order to get to the $10 million dollar question must answer a series of questions. For each question missed the contestant must give up something of increasing value. For example the person misses the first question, he might have to give up one months salary. The person who misses two questions may have to sign over the title for his car. If you miss enough questions, you have to give up your home.
The kicker to this game is that you can quit at any time, but you do not get back what you have lost. If you are brave enough to go all the way and answer the final question right, you get the $10 million.
Normal Stature Toss
Teams of dwarfs compete to see who can toss people of normal stature the farthest.
I think I read once that there is a game show like this in Japan.
The Gallilee Kid
One day, out of the blue, 12-year old Jesse Christensen of Gallilee, Ontario tells his parents, Joe and Marilyn, that he’s the messiah. Is he or isn’t he? The series-long arc will explore the possibility that he’s delusional-or-that he might just be telling the truth.
This series would probably piss off Don Wildmon way more than Book of Daniel.
I haven’t liked what little of “The Book of Daniel” I have seen, but your show idea sounds way more interesting, and I’d watch it.
man is a two-bit criminal. he decides that he’s going to give up the life partly because he’s tired of being a scumbag, which he realizes he is, and partly because his girlfriend wants to settle down and wants to have an actual life.
so he goes after one last gas station in the sticks. he robs it and on his way out, he buys a lottery ticket. naturally, it’s the winner.
but!..the cops knock on the door and he gets hauled off. he’s convicted for some MUCH lesser crime and has the chance to get out a lot earlier than he should.
meanwhile, he’s got to try and keep contact with the girlfriend, who is VERY pissed at him for being such a scumbag, because she knows the ticket is in her hand. he has to try and tell her to stay put that he’s changed and all rehabilitated and such and that they can have an amazing life together after he gets out in (put in believable “short” time).
hilarity ensues.
in my mind, i kind of see it like “raising arizona”, but not.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0093822/ (that be “raising arizona”, if you need it)
A bit like Ethilrist’s Entropy idea. My local TV-station had a great filler for the hours when they didn’t have any programs on. They’d tour the neighbourhoods of my hometown with a camera in the car. Hours and hours of quiet, peaceful footage of familiar neighbourhoods and familiar streets at all hours of the day. It was like cycling through it yourself. The great fun was swithcin on th e TV and wondering where the car was, and then all of a sudden you’d recognize a street corner and go: " Oh, there we are!"
Elaborating on this idea, the car could stop at random houses and film backyards over fences; or ask to be invited in.
It would be called the *Your Friendly Neighbourhood Snoop-Channel. *
… and add close-up footage from satellite photo’s and you’re all set.
Encyclopedia Brown?