The Magnificent Montagues. A pilot that aired one time as a filler in 1964. Me and my brother loved it - it was about a washed-up stage actor who got a gig as a TV kid’s show host called “Uncle Sunshine”, and makes a hit by being obnoxious on the air. Hilarious, to me at least.
Washingtoon. A USA network series based loosely on a Village Voice comic (very loosely, as in they used the character names but nothing else). You can see an episode on YouTube, but I don’t recommend it.
Almost posted it, but thought three was enough.
Mr. Merlin.
The Charmings.
Seeing Things was a very popular show in Canada. Night Heat was pretty popular, too. Certainly they wouldn’t be particularly obscure to Canadians of the appropriate age.
I’ve been trying to forget Lancelot Link, secret chimp and Wait 'til your father gets home for decades. Trying and failing.
My Mother the Car was also I can’t seem to forget.
Great show!
Also, E/R (not to be confused with ER)
It was a good show.
Also, my recollection of truck stops across the country is that they don’t give a shit who you are. I’ve criss-crossed the whole country any number of times by motorcycle, and slept in truck stops, gotten warm in truck stops, taken showers in truck stops, zoned out in the TV lounges of trucks stops, all without attracting the slightest bit of attention, despite being dressed mostly in leather and having (then) nearly waist-length hair. Not to mention tattoos (in those pre-hipster days).
But that was back in the pre-internet days thirty years ago. Who knows what it’s like now. Also, I understand that the sleepers in long-haul trucks have gotten positively luxurious, and of course the drivers can now stream anything right there in the sleeper. And they’ve got electrical hookups in the truck stops, so the drivers don’t even have to idle the engines all night.
There was a game show called “Whew!” That was only on for about a year. I remember it was on the summer after I graduated high school. I would babysit my 8 year old sister while our folks went to work. We watched it every day. But now she doesn’t remember it at all.
I’ve watched episodes of both Lancelot Link and When Things Were Rotten in the past couple of years. The former (which was a Saturday morning kids’ show) is…ummm…really really bad. Not only is it full of stereotypes that didn’t age well, as well as the fact that trained animal acts (it was entirely chimpanzees in costumes) have fallen out of favor, but the pacing is incredibly slow, as the viewer gets to watch chimpanzees slowly walk across rooms, manipulate objects, etc. The latter show holds up a bit better, and it was clearly a predecessor to Brooks’ Men in Tights film, 20 years later.
I also remember Hot L Baltimore, and that I really liked it at the time, even if I didn’t understand all of it. I was nine or ten years old when it was on TV, and my parents (who were, in retrospect, really liberal) let me watch it, despite the fact that it had a “parental guidance suggested” warning on it (undoubtedly because there were characters who were prostitutes, as well as gay characters).
There was an insane kids show in the 70’s called Gigglesnort Hotel. It came on very early in the morning, like 0530. If I got up a bit too early for school I’d catch an episode.
Good to know. I’d like to cross-country hitchhike again, but I’m more leery of potential serial killers than I was 40+ years ago.
(Considering that I now look like my avatar, drivers might actually be more leery of me.)
Lucan
James At 15
We had 5. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and an independent station that played nothing but syndicated reruns, Gilligans Island and such.
In 1979 we were one of the first households in our part of the state to get cable TV. $9 a month (none of those stupid municipal or equipment fees they tack on now) for 32 channels including HBO.
Today I pay over $200 for almost 1000 channels and theres not a gawddamned thing on worth watching half the time!
TENAFLY
An intellectual detective with a life. Always enjoyed the show and it’s about all I remember of 70s TV.
I used to watch that show sometimes, too. It was created by Bill Jackson, who had hosted The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show, a kids’ puppet and cartoon show on a local Chicago TV station in the late '60s and early '70s. Gigglesnort Hotel was Jackson’s next project – it used a lot of the same puppets as the Dirty Dragon show, and it wound up getting syndicated to other markets.
The Max Headroom TV show. I was working for Coca-Cola at the time and we had to switch out the flavor strips in the vending machines for special Max Headroom Coca-Cols labels. Then 6 months later switch back to the normal strips.
How about a show called “Honey, I’m home!” ? From what I remember it was part color, part black and white about a TV sitcom family from the 50s live in the present time. Thought it was a great show but obviously the people who did the ratings didn’t. Maybe lasted part of a season?
Re: Space Precinct. I had to watch an episode when I found out it was directed by Gerry Anderson (Space !999). It was totally mediocre.
I remember that show. I probably would have been in middle school when it was on. I remember I liked it enough that I taped it so I could watch it after school, probably because it aired at the time time as another show I liked. But my taste in TV shows has changed since I was 12, so who knows if I’d still like it today.
How about the Pac Man Saturday morning cartoon? I guess I’m not the only one who remembers it since a friend who’s about the same age I am loved it as a kid. But another friend who’s a little younger thought the idea of a cartoon based on Pac Man was laughable. I think it lasted maybe two seasons, so you probably only remember it if you’re in the very narrow age range to have been watching Saturday morning cartoons in the early 1980s.
I watched that one. Kind of a precursor to Pleasantville
I thought at least the idea of Herman’s Head was great. I know I compared it to the movie Inside Out when it came out. There were relationships of the show with The Simpsons. Hank Azaria and Yeardley Smith were on both shows. There were mentions of the other show on both shows.