“Fool of a Fife!”
Make a Wish was a hugely popular show for kids that ran 1971-1976, but it has been buried in ABC’s vaults ever since.
Chicago Hope was a critically acclaimed medical drama that had the misfortune of being scheduled against the blockbuster ER. The second year it was moved to a more secure time slot and got better ratings, but then Mandy Patinkin left the cast. Then it got moved to Wednesdays. Then Patinkin returned to the show but in a major retooling, five of the major characters were written out. In a final indignity, it was moved back to Thursdays where it was against Frasier and what was then the hottest show on the air, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Alf?..
I would say he is remembered fondly. OTTOMH He appears, seemingly voiced by the same actor as in the original program and the Saturday morning cartoon, in an episode of Family Guy “By the end of the third season I was so coked up, I was completely incontinent. Would I do it again . . .” and in an episode of Duncan Rules where he still eats cats and works in an eighties nostalgia club.
Alf was apparently a nightmare to be on. The set had huge holes for the people operating Alf to roam, driving the rest of the cast crazy. And Max Wright, the dad, hated playing behind a puppet. On the last day of filming, once it wrapped he walked off the set without saying goodbye.
I am not sure he deserved better. IIRC He had a recurring role in Oz as a mentally ill prisoner with a limited vocabulary and obssession with dental hygiene. He had a recurring role as (I do not remember. some figure with authority of some kind over the lead character) on The John Laroquette Show. He was not very memorable. He was very replacable. There were probably a dozen other actors you could stick in any of his roles without making a difference.
Yeah, I liked Chicago Hope in its first season.
Remember when Ally McBeal was a huge cultural phenomenon (I never watched it but it seemed like everyone was discussing it). Then, nothing.
Yeah, I was really startled to see Florek playing more normal characters later on. He did marry Roxanne, and at one point when the law firm was in receivership, he was the receiver for some reason (IIRC).
Notably, Dan Castellaneta played a client on L.A. Law - he worked at an amusement park in a Homer Simpson costume and had been unjustly fired.
Andy Griffith is easily in the top ten undying classic TV shows of all time.
I loved “Cold Case” but that too has dealt with music rights when doing reruns.
Has anyone mentioned Twin Peaks yet? I missed it on American TV, but I remember hearing people talk about it whenever I ate in a restaurant.
It was popular enough to receive a (truly insane) follow-up series 26 years later.
Are you sure you weren’t eating at Twin Peaks?
I haven’t seen “St. Elsewhere” mentioned. I don’t recall watching it when it aired in the 1980s, but I understand that it’s extremely hard to find on other formats, and I’d like to check some episodes out without shelling out a lot of money.
I loved “Lost” until I figured out who was going to get off the island, a season or two before it ended, and had no desire to continue watching. Another time-travel series, “Manifest” started out great but then went off the rails; I did finish it anyway and in fact kept my Netflix subscription active in order to do so.
And “Madam Secretary” was also a great series! I loved the way her kids aged in real time.
How about that Beauty and the Beast show with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton? Didn’t he live in the sewer?
Andy Griffith (the ones with Don Knotts) are still pretty good. Danny Thomas and My Three Sons are pretty dreadful. One night recently at 3am I couldn’t sleep and turned on an episode of the Donna Reed Show on Tubi, which ran for a long long time on ABC. I thought it would put me to sleep, but it was so dismally unfunny it had the opposite effect. I had to turn it off after 10 minutes. “Family” sitcoms of the 50s and 60s were mostly awful. And don’t get me started on The Real McCoys. I’ll have that damn theme song going through my mind for hours.
That one had some greatness. A young Howie Mandel, Ed Beigly jr, that old guy who always seems to play doctors, the voice of KITT/ Mr Feeney from Boy Meets World and some truly great writing.
Ha! 
I was stuck in Minneapolis working nights during most of the show’s run. I didn’t get to see it until I moved to Moscow, where it was on Russian TV in the winter of 1992–93.
Kind of the sewers, there was an implausible abdandoned underground world with a whole community. Vincent was seemingly the result of genetic experiments that Father was a part of. We never found out. The show still has a cult following.