There was a TV Show years ago (the early 2000s as I recall) on Showtime called Leap Years. The premise was it showed the lives of a group of friends when they were fresh out of college, the present (ie. the year the show was airing) which was five years after the early era and then the near future which was five years after the present. There were some clichés like one character was a struggling actress in the early era, a mega star in the present and a has been in the future but there were a few twists (one woman was married to one character in the present and a different one in the future, another character had two completely different careers). I have no idea if it holds up but I remember liking it at the time .
What is funny though is the show has almost no online presence at all. No old web sites, no reviews, almost nothing. It feels like I am the only person in the world who remembers it existed. Is there a show like that for you that it seems you are the only person who remembers it existed?
I remember the 1992 summer filler sitcom Grapevine. It was only six episodes and had sort of talking-head interview bits interspersed with the action. Each episode was based around a different couple’s relationship. IIRC each episode ended with one of the characters saying “That’s all I heard”, which had different connotations each time.
There’s a minimal Wiki page (linked above) and an IMDB page but not much else. Apparently it had a later brief revival but I missed that one.
I think this show was in 1979. It only lasted a few weeks, but I thought it was really cool. I don’t remember the title. It was an interactive detective show of sorts. It was hosted by Ed McMahon and had three contestants. It would open with a post-murder scene, with all the suspects gathered in the room. McMahon would tell the audience about each suspect, and each of the contestants got a chance to question the suspects detective style.
There would be videos of the suspects interacting with the victim before they were discovered, and viewers would have to keep a sharp eye for objects that were in the video but don’t appear in the final scene. In one episode, the killer had disguised himself as one of the other suspects, but there were slight differences that would give him away, like differing heights or slightly different hairstyles. It was a really fascinating game show, but I guess it lacked the spectacle of typical game shows, so sayonara.
It’s not showing up in McMahon’s IMDB page, but I assure you I really saw it!
It’s just a one-off comedy special rather than an actual series, but The Bert Fershners TV Special. The Bert Fershners were a comedy troupe that was briefly successful in the mid-to-late 1990s, and then it seemed like they just disappeared. It always felt like my sister and I were the only people who remembered them. There’s a minimal IMDB page on their special. Now there are a few clips on YouTube that weren’t there years ago the first time I tries searching for them (so I guess someone else remembers them).
I always wondered what happened to them. All Google turns up besides what I already mentioned are a couple of 1990s era reviews of their act.
I remember it. It was basically James Thurber brought to television. I also remember He & She, which was considered really sophisticated comedy at the time. I wonder if either of them would be thought of that way today.
I remember it. It was a sitcom based on the humor of James Thurber and opened with a little cartoon in his style. The star was William Windom, who played a cartoonist like Thurber. I don’t recall who played his wife, but his daughter was Lisa Gerritsen (“Beth Lindstrom” on MTM), on whom I had a huge crush.
I just looke it up. His wife was played by Joan Hotchkis
He and She, with Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. Another sitcom about a cartoonist, this time the creator of Jet Man. The egotistical star of the Jet Man live TV series was Jack Cassidy. I was in junior high at the time, and I loved the comedy.
(I just learned that Benjamin and Prentiss were married in real life, which was probably one reason the show was so good.)
A couple of other shows on at the same time (and produced by the same company, Talent Associates) were The Good Guys, a vehicle for Bob Denver, who owned a diner with his partner Herb Edelman, and The Governor and JJ, which starred Dan Daley and Julie Sommars. Dan was a widower and governor of an unidentified Midwestern state (of course). Julie played his daughter, who acted as his “First Lady.”
IIRC, all of these were on CBS and lasted just one season.
Around the same time (early '70s), a drama on ABC that I really liked was Paris 7000, in which George Hamilton played a troubleshooting American diplomat stationed in the French capital. I think it only lasted 13 episodes, which was a shame. It was a really good show.
I know for sure that some episodes of He and She are on YouTube.
Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, a buddy cop (actually private detective) show created by Stephen Cannell (Rockford Files). It only last for six months, but I liked it. It starred Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum.
A couple of others, from the late '60s and early '70s:
The Monroes, a “family Western.” Five siblings lose their parents and strike out West to keep from being separated. One of the few shows to ever feature real twins playing twins. Barbara Hershey played the older sister.
The Young Rebels, a ripoff of the Mod Squad format. Three YAs (a white guy, a white girl, and a freed slave), mentored by an older Ben Franklin type, form the “Yankee Doodle Society” to fight the British during the American Revolution. This one didn’t last long.
Even earlier, from the late '50s or early '60s: Assignment: Underwater, a poor man’s Sea Hunt. Like that series, A:U was syndicated. I believe at least some episodes are on YouTube.
For four and a half seasons, from September of 1976 to November of 1980, ultra-cool undercover cop Nicholas David Kresky took us on a wild roller coaster ride through the hip discos, gritty back alleys and dark criminal dens of LA’s seamy underbelly – and we wouldn’t have missed a minute of it! For one hour every week, we cheered, gasped and held our breath while our hero walked that razor’s edge between life and death, love and loss, style and substance.
Whether he was chasing a street punk up a fire escape or romancing a lovely lady in his hot tub, Kresky was always the very epitome of character, class and cool.
Heart of a cop. Soul of a lover. Feet of a dancer. An icon for the 70’s and – in our estimation – a role model for the 21st century. We hope you enjoy this humble tribute to our candidate for top TV cop, the inimitable…Nick Kresky!
I seem to remember it coming on sometime between Baretta and Starsky & Hutch, and maybe had a crossover episode with BJ & The Bear, but I might just be imagining it.
Didn’t Ed also host something called Challenge of the Super Heroes, in which Adam West and Burt Ward reprised their roles of Batman and Robin? I think some supervillains (like Julie Newmar as Catwoman) were on it as well.
So far as I remember, it was a game show of some kind, but I never watched an episode of it.
How about Poochinski? Survived for all of one episode. A cop died and was reincarnated into a bulldog. My clearest memory of this one is how incredibly bad the puppet effects for the talking dog were.
Speaking of Richard Benjamin: he also starred in Quark, a sci-fi comedy, about the crew of a garbage-collection spaceship, that was on NBC in 1977-8, for a grand total of eight episodes. It being sci-fi, I watched it, of course, and being 12 years old at the time, I thought it was funny.
Reading the Wikipedia entry now, it sounds pretty cringeworthy, especially as one of the main characters had both male and female chromosomes, and would change back and forth between stereotypical male and female personas. Also, it being 1977, the height of “jiggle TV,” the cast featured a pair of identical twin women, in skimpy space outfits.
Anyone remember Salvage 1, starring Andy Griffith as a scrap dealer who builds a rocket ship out of scrap to go to the Moon and recover what the Apollo missions left behind?
I remember wondering how they were going to top reaching the Moon.
The one episode I remember watching was when they found a Japanese soldier who didn’t know the War was over and had to return him to civilization. Andy Griffith’s character had been on the Doolittle Raid in 1942.
When NASA asked how their spacecraft could hover in the atmosphere, they brushed the question aside by saying “We use a different system.”