Daybreak with Taye Diggs, but then I’m a sucker for time-bounce stories.
Life with Damian Lewis as a cop who was convicted of murder and found innocent a decade later, whose settlement includes the requirement he be re-instated as a detective. I think it made it a season and a half.
And another vote for Pushing Daisies, very fun show with an awesome cast.
Nichols with James Garner
Anyone mentioned Journeyman yet? A fantastic time travel show, very much akin to Quantum Leap in concept.
If you haven’t seen the British version, check that out, too.
Or vice-versa.
I agree Bakersfield PD was a terrific comedy.
I’ll add the Supernatural American Gothic (1995) with Gary Cole as Sheriff Lucas Buck. It was uneven and needed a bigger budget but when it got it right, it was great.
TCMF-2L
Huh? Are you saying there was a British version of Journeyman? It’s not mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
I wonder if he was talking about Life On Mars.
Earth 2
Along that line, I loved Voyagers! as a kid. I haven’t seen it since, but it was kind of a pre-Quantum Leap mashup of Dr. Who and The Greatest American Hero, and almost inarguably better than both.
Stranger
People decided to hate it before a single episode was aired because they thought the name sounded vapid. Though it turned out to be really good, that initial perception was a really big ship to turn around.
What about The Magician (w/the late, great Bill Bixby), from 1973-74 on NBC?
You beat me to it, Voyagers was the one I was going to mention and had to poke around for the name of. I also remember liking the show as a kid, and remember using a compass that I had as an Omni (the time travel device for the main character on the show) to play. I don’t know how well it holds up as an adult show, but it’s included on Amazon Prime video so I may have to put it to the test. I distinctly remember that their future tech had what I’d now call a very steampunk feel, lots of brass devices with cogs and wheels.
Is this the one with people going back in time to live with dinosaurs and starred the commander from Avatar? Because I liked that one too but it involved time travel and, as has been demonstrated, if I like it and it involves time travel it will get cancelled.
I loved Square Pegs with Sarah Jessica Parker and Jami Gertz. It was a cool , fun show and deserved more than one season.
No, that was Terra Nova, about a family that went to the Jurassic to colonize an (effectively) alien world to escape an over-crowded, polluted, resource-depleted near-future Earth, with a continuing but never resolved sub-plot about some sort of sinister corporate-government conspiracy.
Earth 2 was about a family that went to an another solar system to colonize an alien world to escape an over-crowded, polluted, resource-depleted near-future Earth, with a continuing but never resolved sub-plot about some sort of sinister corporate-government conspiracy.
Agreed that Studio 60 dies a merciful and deserved death.
Shame, it had a great premise, great acting, likable characters…but it was badly written. Strange to say that about an Aaron Sorkin show.
Another vote for The Good Guys. Funny and inventive, with the flash backs and not taking itself too seriously.
Here’s one you did not see:
Endgame
It was Canadian, and only got 13 episodes. Shawn Doyle was brilliant as an agorophobic Chess Master.
Aaron has been rewriting the same show over and over again for twnety years and it gets more tired and cliched every time. He can write snappy dialogue and inspired (if totally implausible) disquisitions, bit when it comes to story or believable female characters he’s rubbish.
Stranger
One I think no one will remember, because I was probably one of the about half a dozen people in the weekly audience:
**United States **(1980) lasted only six weeks. Starring Beau Bridges and Helen Shaver.
Nominally a family comedy (husband, wife, two kids in suburbia), it didn’t have gags and pratfalls so much as situations and reactions, with observational humor dominating (in my recollection).
The reason I call it ahead of its time is that it was a boundary pushing sitcom about 35 years before boundary pushing was allowed. It wasn’t afraid to go dark, and the situations always had that realistic part-comedy, part tragedy aspect that a lot of real family situations have. One episode, “Uncle Charlie” has stuck with me all these years. I would say that if it had aired this year, it would be up for an Emmy.
[spoiler] The show starts centered around the couple getting ready to go to a weekend garden party. She’s not ready, he is getting increasingly irritated, they go back and forth, she finds something new to delay them each time he thinks they are ready to go. Pretty bog standard sitcom, yes?
As he gets more and more irritated, she gets more and more defensive. Finally,as he reaches the end of his rope and explodes at her, she tells him she does not want to go. Then, in a superbly performed scenes, she breaks down and tells him that “Uncle Charlie”, a long time friend of her parents will be at the party. When she was a little girl, on vacation with the family at a lakeside cabin, “Uncle Charlie” followed her into the woods, got her alone, and molested her. The puzzlement as to what she did to bring this on herself, the self-loathing, the shame as she tells her story was heartbreaking.
After persuading her husband not to immediately go after “Uncle Charlie” (who is presumably in his 60’s now), they end up not going to the party and spending the evening at home.[/spoiler]
Non stop yuks.
As I said, way, way ahead of its time. The TV audience was not ready for this show.
Which one? 1998 with Jeremy Piven or 2009 with Bobby Cannavale? I think they ran 15 and 7 episodes respectively.
Jeremy Piven & Paula Marshall. The new one didn’t quite gel.