The Quest (1982) - The king of a small European country dies and there are 4 possible heirs. So John Rhys-Davies travels to America to put the group through a new quest each week to determine who will ultimately win. I don’t know how many episodes actually aired but only 9 were made.
That was The Bradys, which only lasted six episodes. It was the Brady Bunch as an hourlong drama. Despite dealing with things like infidelity, alcoholism, infertility, and Bobby being paralyzed in a racing car crash, it also had a laugh track. Just can’t have the Bradys without one, I guess.
“Where’s Rodney?” Discused here
I watched every episode that was aired.
Absolutely! My dad and I watched it every week. I rewatched the first couple of episodes a year or so ago. Still pretty cool.
Anybody remember Lucan, the show about a boy who had been raised by wolves? He got caught in a hunter’s trap and grows up to become a detective, using his wolf skills to solve crimes and protect the innocent. I couldn’t get enough of that show as a kid.
How about “Q.E.D.”? Q.E.D. (American TV series) - Wikipedia
or “Otherworld”? Otherworld (TV series) - Wikipedia Occasionally featured Jonathan Banks as "Zone commander Nuveen Kroll.
Yep, I remember all of those. What I mainly remember is that unlike Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, they just weren’t much fun. They were just kind of bland, low-budget action-adventure shows. Except due to the low budgets, there wasn’t much action or adventure. And there was none of the meta-humor of Hercules and Xena - or much if any humor of any sort, really.
I particularly remember the Lost World for the pretty blonde who I think was supposed to be a survivor of an shipwreck or something who had lived in the Lost World since she was a child. She dressed in fairly skimpy leather outfits rather the proper pseudo-Victorian outfits of the rest of the characters. But her mannerisms, speech, personality, and everything else about her character, were just bland, late 20th Century American.
Also around the same time, there was a live-action Conan series, for which the big gimmick was that Arnold Schwarzenegger had supposedly hand-picked bodybuilder Ralf Moeller as his successor as Conan. I remember Conan, the show and the character as portrayed by Moeller, as being just kind of bland and grim and unimaginitive.
The creators of Hercules and Xena also created a couple of half-hour syndicated shows with similar sensibilities that aired as a block, but never achieved anything like the success of their predecessors. If I recall correctly, Cleopatra 2525 was about a female stripper who somehow wound up in the year 2525, and teamed up with a group of female…rebels? I think? I remember it being not very good, and even the cheesecake couldn’t keep me interested. Jack of All Trades starred Bruce Campbell as an American agent teamed with a British agent on a fictional Pacific island c. 1800 who fought Napolean’s schemes, which somehow revolved around an obscure Pacific island. I actually recently tried to re-watch it, and…I remembered why I didn’t really remember it. It tried, it really tried, for the mix of humor and action of Hercules and Xena, but I just didn’t think it managed it.
And then there was Young Hercules, which I think is only remembered now if at all for being Ryan Gosling’s first starring role. Another one that seemed to try to replicate Hercules’ formula, but that didn’t quite make it.
I have only a very vague memory that it existed, that the main character was some sort of science detective or something?, and that I really liked it at the time and was disappointed it didn’t last.
Was that the one about the family that somehow gets transported to an alternate universe, where America (or some close analogue) is ruled by a tyrannical government, and they are on the run from the government’s agents and trying to find a way home, and kind of accidentally inspire rebellions along the way with their fantastical tales of a free and democratic America? The main thing I remember is that the bad guys’ guns for some reason (because parallel universe, I guess) had the hand grips on top, and they all shot underhanded.
Don Adams’ Screen Test.
Syndicated show where an amateur would rehearse, then film, a scene, with guidance from Don Adams. The scene was usually played for laughs, something was exaggerated or one of the props would go wrong or something.
Did they still live in a big house with a maid’s suite but all of the (presumably now adult) kids have to squeeze into two bedrooms with a shared bath?
Who remembers Manimal, a show about a guy who can shape-shift into various animals to fight crime? For all of that fantastical premise it was pretty dull, and all I really recall is is that his love interest was in a tv movie imaginatively titled Policewoman Centerfold and was about as generic and untitilating as you might expect from an early ‘Eighties tv movie.
Stranger
I know those guys!
Anyone from Madison, WI might remember the amazing troupe of improv guys who worked for ComedySportz (on State Street). Well, a half dozen of them became the Bert Fershners. And then moved away and went on to become Doctors and Programmers and Regular People. Though one of them worked on the excellent documentary on Smart Studios in Madison, where Butch Vig recorded and produced Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Death Cab For Cutie and other bands.
I can find out more about the Fershners through friends we have in common, if anyone wants…
I’m flabbergasted to find these on YouTube, though I suppose I shouldn’t be. There’s an incredible number of failed TV shows posted there, most of which have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
I remember this vehicle for Robert Conrad, who played an ex-boxer turned private eye in his native Chicago. He caught pneumonia filming outdoors in the dead of winter wearing nothing but a skimpy bathrobe.
I really wanted to watch this show, but it came and went so fast (only four episodes) I never got a chance:
Described in TV Guide as “Four Americans racing around Europe in search of a plot.” 
This show started my lifelong appreciation of Thurber, and William Windom did a great job of playing him.
One of my high points was seeing him doing his one-man Thurber show on a nationwide tour, reading a lot of classics.
Sue Ane Langdon, who played Arnie’s inexplicably hot wife. She was also a bone of contention (so to speak) between Rob and Laura in an episode of DvD and a Soviet naval officer on McHale’s Navy (“No Sherman tank is built like that!”)
Grrrooowr! 
It changed its format in the last episode. The first few had contestants playing for cash (and one of them had an obvious solution I’m surprised all three contestants didn’t catch - “look for the left-handed suspect”), with three celebrities (I think F. Lee Bailey was one of them) to help; the last one was just the celebrities.
I think they were the Doublemint Twins at one point as well.
The title was quickly changed to The Sandy Duncan Show
I remember the pilot had a character who was frozen in the 1930s and then thawed; pretty much the only thing he could say was, “Amelia?!”, as he was searching for Amelia Earhart. They drove around in an ice cream truck to keep him cold (and alive); the character was removed, but the truck stayed.
I don’t think there was prize money. Also, under the rules, each town had to (a) have a population under 20,000, and (b) be within 200 miles of the other two cities in its first game - which seriously limited the possibilities in the first season, which had only one team per state.
Here’s my entry: Lie Detector - F. Lee Bailey hosted a syndicated weekday show where people would be hooked up to a lie detector to prove (or disprove) statements about them. The most famous contestant was Evel Knievel, who wanted to prove that he didn’t “chicken out” and release the parachute early on his Snake River Canyon jump.
Yep. He was nicknamed “Iceman”, and would freeze anything or anyone he touched. Apparently Marvel Comics objected due to the similarity in name and powers to their own Iceman character, so he was memory holed, and the ice cream truck went from a whimsical but logical gimmick in the pilot to just being odd for no reason in the rest of the series.
I loved Khan! (Of course, I was a younger, more simple boy then). When I looked it up recently I was surprised at how few episodes there were. When you only get one a week (or one every 3-4 weeks like Cool Million and the Snoop Sisters) it seems there are a lot more than there actually were.
For a newer show people seemed to have forgotten, how about Raines? Jeff Goldblum as a detective that hallucinates murder victims. Another “quirky genius detective” show, but I liked it. (I was older and less simple by then. FWIW). Nine episodes only. It really wasn’t a show that could last - Raines was so troubled by his hallucinations that he was either going to admit it and get treatment, thus ending the quirky defining characteristic of the show, or eat his gun. I voted for the latter. We’ll never know.
How about Strange Luck. I wish it would come out in some home media format so I could see it again.
In 2014 when Indy Niedell started his incredible WWI weekly centennial Youtube channel, I wrote in asking if the opening riff was from that. Soon a different intro was in use. Was it “if some nudnik on the internet hears a similarity, what about the estate of Morton Gould?”
My mom allowed Shenanigans with Stubby Kaye, and Captain Kangaroo to be my electronic babysitters, but Soupy Sales was too subversive. However, my absolute favorite, flying miles over my head, was Fractured Flickers with Hans Conried.
ETA: I’m sure I’m not the only one here who noted the recent passing of Arlene Golonka.
I haven’t seen “Kay O’Brien” mentioned here. It was a one-season series about a female surgeon, played by Patricia Kalember (who most recently was a senator on “Madam Secretary” and her best friend, an ER nurse, and the various dramas that take place in the big-city hospital where Dr. O’Brien was doing her residency. It, and “Skag” re-ran on cable for several years afterwards; “Skag” was about a blue-collar man in IIRC Chicago and his family, which also ran for one season. The single episode I remember was when his obese (part of the plot) teenage daughter got pregnant and had no idea who the father might be, and had an abortion. When she woke up in the recovery room, her parents were there, reading her some poetry. Weird.