If we’re to include purely local television shows, it would be easy to come up with a vast number of them that few living people remember anymore since most of them were terrible. I remember the one I’ll mention only because it was on the closest television station to me when I was young and had a strange name. I recall watching it a few times when I was very young. The show was called Easter’s Parade and it showed on a station in Lima, Ohio. It ran from 1955 to 1984. It was characteristic of a certain sort of cheap local show that ran on television stations back in the 1950s. Such shows were explicitly called women’s shows. The assumption back then was that in the middle of a weekday only women watched any shows, since the men all worked and the women all stayed home. It was a talk show with a hostess named Easter Straker (and hence the show’s name). There are a few clips of it in this video:
Just as an aside, Lima is where the program Glee was set. I thought Glee was ridiculously unrepresentative of Lima. It appeared that the makers of Glee had never been out of southern California in their life.
I really don’t think that’s unusual; there’s no reason you would. It was a fairly generic “the romantic woes of a single girl in the city” sitcom. I mean, it wasn’t bad; but it wasn’t anything groundbreaking or wildly popular. It wasn’t a Seinfeld or a Friends or Sex In The City. Unless you are a fan of one of the actors, there’s no reason it would have stood out. As I said, I only remember it because I found Lea Thompson engaging and entertaining.
I recall a particular episode of the Friday the 13th tv series.
One of the cursed items the main characters were looking for was called “Mesmer’s Bauble” (Or so I recall). Anyway, it comes into the possession of this guy who is a fan of a rock singer (think female hair band solo artist of the early 80s). He discovers that the talisman can change reality to his desires. He befriends the star, then has her fall in love with him, and then finally he decides he would rather be her with her fame and fortune, etc. When the protagonists finally discover what happened they attend a concert of this guy who assumed the identity of the real singer. They snap the necklace off the guy’s neck, and he ends up melting or something because the illusion is broken.
That episode always gave me the creeps.
I miss the TV show “Voyagers” where this guy and his kid sidekick travelled throughout history with a timepiece called an Omni. Wherever in history they wound up, history had been changed and they had to correct it to prevent time paradoxes or mishaps. It was a good show.
I also recall some tv show called The Powers of Matthew Start but my memory is so vague as to what it was even about.
That was the first episode of that show I ever saw! Not the one with the stage magician who got a hearing aid that let him read minds, or the one with the time-freezing pocketwatch, but — yeah, this was the one, no doubt about it!
Brotherhood of the Bell. Going from memory (I refuse to look it up): The Brotherhood of the Bell is a secret organization similar to the Skull and Bones. The hero is trying to escape them, but it seems there are more people affiliated with this group than not, as he has a hell of a time eluding them.
I challenge anyone to admit remembering this show. I watched it with my daughter, and we both thought it was incredibly hokey. They say it was a “special,” but I think it was more a failed pilot.
I remember watching that back around 1982 or '83. The adventurer dude was played by Jon-Erik Hexum, who met an untimely self-inflicted death sometime later:
I’ve always thought he was inspired by Howard Hunter’s “attempted suicide” on Hill Street Blues a bit earlier, which really sent the wrong message. (“Blanks won’t kill you even if the gun is up against your temple.”)
A show so forgotten even this thread has yet to bring it up after 650 posts: ACTION, a Fox TV show from 1999-2000, starring Jay Mohr and Illeana Douglas. They were both brilliant in a show about a ruthless, unscrupulous movie producer (Mohr), and a former child TV star turned prostitute (Douglas) that Mohr hires one night, then because he’s so impressed with her, he hires to work for him at the studio.
It had 13 episodes, but they only broadcast 8. They had guest stars such as Keanu Reeves and Salma Hayek, and a theme song by Warren Zevon. I just recently bought the DVD set off Amazon and it was well worth it.
A couple scenes from the show - though I couldn’t find the ones I wanted to show.
Looking for a male lead:
Product placement:
I thought Illeana was brilliant, but according to the “making of” featurette, she had problems playing a prostitute, a role she knowingly auditioned for and accepted. She even argued about incidental dialog (My character wouldn’t ask , “What time is it!?” She would know what time it is!), and the writers used the argument as the basis of a scene dealing with the actors in the movie Mohr’s character was making. This probably explains her reduced screen-time and the introduction of a character in the last few episodes.
An entertaining 13 episodes and a great featurette. Pity there wasn’t a second season, and that Illeana didn’t embrace a role she was so good in.
there was monsters, even there was a freddy one … although it was more backstory on how messed up the people in the town was than freddy related
The strangest friday the 13th episode was one where there was a painting that was related to the marquis de sade that was being used to hide bodies by a serial killer type by putting the victims in the painting and back in time with de sade getting blamed when the bodies are found
somehow the redhead goes in the panting and sort of falls for him ot the point she offers herself as a playmate and clears his name and almost decides not to come back there were a couple of graphic for broadcast tv whipping scenes too …
I think I have one that no one else has mentioned. People have talked about the plethora of syndicated fantasy/sci-fi shows in the 90s following in the wake of Hercules and Xena, but I remember a short-lived show (13 episodes) that I bet no one here remembers.
The show was called Roar and was set in 4th century Ireland and focused on young Prince Connor and his friends as they try to unite the tribes of Ireland to fight off a Roman incursion. It’s about as historically accurate as Hercules and had a mish-mash both Celtic and Christian mystical elements (banshees, the Holy Grail, the Spear of Longinus).
The only reason anyone would remember Roar is that it stars an 18 year old Heath Ledger in his first starring role.
