We … are sorry. We … did not wish … to make trouble. 
Wow that looks like a young Patrick Stewart and Micheal Douglas, with buddy in behind with, like, Ken Dryden’s first mask.
That’s Lee Van Cleef(!), '60s Western movie icon, as “The Master”, an aging American ninja master; Timothy Van Patten, younger half-brother of '70s TV icon Dick Van Patten, as The Master’s reckless young apprentice; and Sho Kosugi, '80s low-budget ninja movie icon*, as The Master’s traitorous former pupil and now arch-enemy. If I remember correctly, the Master and his apprentice wandered the country in the apprentice’s cool '80s van, helping out the downtrodden A-Team style, while…either running from or pursuing the traitorous former apprentice? Both? Foiling his schemes, anyway.
*I think that there may have actually been some sort of legal requirement in the 1980s that if your production had ninjas, you had to cast Sho Kosugi as one of the lead antagonists or protagonists.
Also, for forgotten ninja series, how about Raven? It starred Some Guy as a former U.S. government agent/ninja who was “retired” but helped the downtrodden, as one does. It also co-starred Lee Majors as more or less the God of Grizzled Drunken Low-Rent P.I.s.*
I remember really enjoying the pilot/T.V. movie, and being disappointed it didn’t go to series. According to Wikipedia, though, it did go to series, an abbreviated seven episode first season, and a full 20 episode second season, of which I have no memory. Either I somehow missed the series, or it was so bad I’m blocking it out.
*I still very distinctly remember his character’s reaction to ninjas in the pilot: confronted by a ninja in a back alley, he pulls out a gun and shoots him (yes, it was a direct quote from Raiders of the Lost Ark). Later, he’s confronted by another ninja, who kicks the gun out of his hand. So he pulls out his backup piece, and shoots the ninja. I remember the “hero” being a bland, wooden actor, but Lee Majors being a hoot and obviously having a blast.
As a young child I never slept much. I was always the first one up- usually before the TV channels started broadcasting. I used to watch a show on the local Boston PBS station, the first one of the day: Gigglesnort Hotel. To this day, I’ve never me anyone who remembers it. I’ve googled it, of course, but nobody I know remembers it.
…And that’s the problem with coming late to a 240 post thread.
If I recall correctly, Majors has three or four guns in holsters and gets several kicked away from him before finally being able to shoot the guy.
In another episode our hero is at a restaurant table with an evil martial artist, who looks at the table and says “There are 5 ways to kill you with this stuff” - our hero replies “There are 8 ways to die here” and the bad guy gets this hilarious look of concentration on his face, as he tries to figure out what ways he missed.
This guy remembers it.
I vaguely remember ‘Fury’, ‘Lassie’, and ‘Sky King’, yes! … Then ‘My Friend Flicka’ - the story of a horse and the boy who loved him (or was it the other way around). About the time MMF came on, it was time to turn off the Saturday morning tv and go out and play.
Who remembers Jennifer Slept Here?
And as for kids shows, The Letter People
and The Math Patrol
I remember Hot Wheels. Came on when I was about 8 years old.
Show got a lot of flack claiming it was just a half hour commercial for toys.
So what? It was cool as hell as far as 8 year old me was concerned.
And this is a cool thread, BTW! And that’s adult me talking.
Yep. Hot Wheels ans Skyhawks.
I made a runway out of teletype paper, and played with my Matchbox airplanes while I watched the cartoon.
It’s funny, as I read this thread it seems like every suggestion I think of gets mentioned- Otherworld, Quark, Once a Hero. Guess they aren’t as obscure as I thought.
How about Nowhere Man, in which a photojournalist goes to the bathroom during an exhibition of his work and when he returns the gallery has been stripped bare and all traces of his existence erased?
It was like a reverse fugitive. Instead of helping, he would get involved In people’s lives, then the conspiracy would track him down and ruin everything.
I also remember a couple of super-obscure ones, a show where they used proposed sitcom scripts and actors under contract as low budget filler, and another that simply aired failed pilots. The one I remember best was about a scientist who got merged with a robot in a teleporter accident, like a cross between the Fly and the Hulk.
This one isn’t that old, but does anybody remember God, the Devil and Bob, with French Stewart as Bob and – who else could it possibly be? – James Garner as God. Thirteen episodes; probably ahead of its time.
Yep, I remember that one. UPN, I think? It was the '90s, when there were a lot of X-Files clones. Nowhere Man didn’t have any supernatural elements, just the paranoid conspiracy, but I remember the cinematography and staging being very close to the X-Files model. Wasn’t the main character’s name something like “Thomas Vale”? (Geddit? Veil?) If I recall correctly, he eventually figured out that he had accidentally taken a picture of a war crime in Central America, which the Conspiracy wanted to disappear, but I think that might have been a red herring? I remember thinking it would be a cool twist if the whole thing were an elaborate audition, and the finale would have him finally getting to the heart of the conspiracy, only to be offered a seat at the table…
Now that you mention it, I think maybe in the first confrontation, he gets a gun kicked out of his hand, and then pulls out his backup piece, and in the second confrontation, he gets two guns kicked out of his hand, and finally shoots the ninja with a third gun?
She went into surgery a character actress with a well-known face: she came out without the recognizable face and could no longer be cast to stereotype.
The season finale was a twist, but not that. Obviously it was never followed up on, but it was a decent, dark end to the show.
Oh, how about Werewolf, the early Fox series?
Also, The War of the Worlds.
Are we doing shows no one remembers or shows we have thankfully forgotten?
The Secret Diaries of Desmond Pfeiffer.