I’ve seen a lot of the post-80’s American shows that people have mentioned.
Nothing Sacred was good. Too good for tv, apparently. So was Profit (which wasn’t supposed to be a comedy, for the guy who said it was hilarious).
Dangermouse had an eyepatch, right? Anyway, let’s see, what else have I seen: Beverly Hills Teens, Highlander, Briscoe County, Jr. (in fact, in my house we’d say, “Hey it’s Briscoe County Jr.” for the longest time whenever we saw whatsisname), Herman’s Head, crap, I can’t keep track of all the ones I’ve seen. Oh yeah, I definitely agree about Tales from the Dark Side’s theme being creepy. That’s also the only thing I remember.
However, only one person outside of my family seems to remember My Secret Identity. It had that guy from Sliders when he was younger as a teenager who gets superpowers from some lab accident. I can still hum the theme song. “You’ll never guess my secret identity, something something mystery . . .”
Oh, and what about this one cartoon show from the 80’s that had two kids and their robot travelling back in time and participating in events from the Bible? That was kind of weird, now that I think about it.
UFO. British import in the 70’s. Purple haired chicks, Deloreans, Interceptors, Moon base, space-suited aliens with green liquid oxygen in their masks, and a cool theme song with a typewriter spittin’ out secret data in the opening montage. One of the first things I did when I first hit the Net was to hunt up that theme song.
Several great ones just mentioned. Someone mentioned ** My Secret Identity**, with Jerry O’Connell. After I had originally posted, this thread kept running through my head and that was the show that popped up. The only thing I remember was that he used spray deodorant and maybe hairspray to control him when he was floating, and I think he could also go really fast. And he had that goofy science-guy neighbor.
A few months ago my sister found the **Rags to Riches ** movie on VHS somewhere and bought it! So I got to watch and remember. I can vividly recall a couple of episodes (well parts of them) even to this day. I’d forgotten all about it again until someone mentioned it.
And I was reading something about ** You Can’t Do That on Television ** the other day, and a mention came to an old favorite I forgot about ** KIDS Incorporated **, where both Mario Lopez and Jennifer Love Hewitt got their starts. I still remember most of the theme song to that one.
Shoot, I wish I could remember the other one I was thinking of yesterday.
Ah, thanks for prodding this back into my conscious memory. Can’t say I was a die-hard fan of My Secret Identity, but it was an entertaining TV program, largely due to the good-natured fun the show had with the premise. Ran for two or three seasons, IIRC.
Sinungaling I think the time travel/Bible cartoon your thinking of is either The Flying House or Superbook. They both had similar mostly the same premise. I remember both from when we first got cable.
FH was about two kids who time travel along with an incompetent scientist and his pet robot in the title house. Since the scientist couldn’t control the time machine to take them back home (kind of like Doctor Who), whenever the house landed, the kids would go out and explore while the scientist tried to work on the time machine. They then had a series of encounters with various figures from the Bible.
In Superbook, the kids would travel back in time with a robot (not sure of the method - a time machine disguised as a book maybe, I remember the same time travel sequence used in every episode involved fluttering pages, shining lights, clock hands running backwards, etc. ) and have similar Bibically connected adventures, but at least they got to go home at the end of each episode.
The bad thing is both shows come on religious cable channel TBN very early Saturday morning. Yet another reason I hate my insomnia, rediscovering lame kids shows like these.
Television Parts with Michael Neismith Really funny. He did a special called Elephant Parts first.
How about Police Squad? Leslie Neilsen and the Crew from Airplane
In the mid-1980s there was a show called the The Canned Film Festival. I think Laraine Newman was in it. It was set in an old one-screen movie theater and the same few characters would show up every week to watch weird old movies. There were ongoing plots among the characters (including the unseen elderly mother of one character, who communicated by playing songs on the theaters silent movie-era organ), but the character segments were just bumpers for the movies, like MST3K. That show was where I first saw the all-midget western The Terror of Tinytown.
I’ve seen so many of the shows mentioned here, but I haven’t seen anyone mention Aaron’s Way yet. Also from the mid-80s, it starred Merlin Olsen as the head of an Amish family that has to move from Amish country to L.A. to run his recently deceased brother’s vineyard and help the brother’s family. Your typical Amish fish out of water stuff, probably hoping to capitalize on the success of Witness.
Television Parts is one I wish would come out on DVD. It was canceled about two weeks or so after I bought my first VCR, so I was lucky to get a couple of shows on tape. It was the first time I hade ever seen Whoopie Goldberg and Taylor Negron (sp?) who were guests on the show.
I have Elephant Parts on Laser Disc and I remember renting Television Parts Home Companion oh so many years ago.
Popped into my head this morning. Here’s another one I’ve mentioned several times on various threads. I can’t track it down at all. It’s set in Medieval times, but it’s not Robin Hood. At least I’m pretty sure it isn’t. I’m a major R H fanatic and I’d have remembered. Anyway I watched it as a kid, say mid-Sixties on either KVOS, CBC, CHEK or BCTV in the Vancouver area. Those were all we got!
Ok damn you guys who just came in at the end of 6 pages and posted all my cool 80s shows
I used to love Herman’s Head, and Punky Brewester. And Voyagers, Marblehead Manor. I watched too much TV.
Anyone remember Square One TV on PBS? “sketch” show about math. Usually hilarious, especially the Dragnet spoof at the end of each show, Mathnet. I would watch it if it were on today.
Zoobillie Zoo? Ben Vereen as the cat
Shirttails cartoon
Poochy, I never watched it but I always wanted the Poochy doll.
There was a cartoon about a bunch of animal kids who hung out in a old caboose as a clubhouse. One of the main characters was a moose. Always wanted a doll from that show too. The Clubhouse Gang or something?
Seconds for Galaxy High (still have a tape of that somewhere), Rags to Ritches, Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys.
I’ve been asking people for years if they remember The Tomorrow People. Great BBC show. I remember these big balloons chasing people down the street, attacking them, and become mind-controlling jumpsuits. It was wonderful!
In the 1980s version, I loved William Conrad as Nero; hated the no-talent Lee Horsley as Archie.
In the recent A&E version, Timothy Hutton was great as Archie, but I didn’t like Maury Chaykin as Nero.
Speaking of Huttons on TV, did anyone catch Timothy’s Dad, Jim, in “Ellery Queen”?
I liked that show,as well. Both Hutton and his on-screen father David Wayne were
“right out of the book”.
I watched the deservedly short-lived “The New Perry Mason” once, just once. IMHO, the problem wasn’t the lack of Raymond Burr so much as the lack of chemistry between the cast members and their lethargic performances.
BTW, I think that taking Perry back to his 1930s pulp fiction roots with James Spader as the young Mason would be a kick-ass idea–so long as he has a good supporting cast.
Actually, “a Sears store” was the host’s offered clue for when the two didn’t get it before time ran out.
I loved that show! Two memories related to the bonus round: one of the Easy Questions was: “Which is bigger: the sun or your head?” And the other is the closest anyone ever got (probably) to answering a hard question: in a show where all the contestants were Trekkies (because of controversy over a previous show’s question over what, technically, Sulu’s role was on the bridge), all the “hard” questions were about George Takei (who made a cameo appearance via satellite) - I remember “The Politics of George Takei” (probably asking who he voted for in some local election) and “Sulu! Sulu! Sulu!” as categories.
Anyway, the spun question asked for the exact quote of a line Sulu had in some early draft of a particular episode, and the guy got very close! Of course, they asked for the EXACT quote, so no dice!
Oh, and has anyone mentioned Friday the 13th, the Series? I loved that show! Too bad about its sudden cancellation; I want the DVDs!
Yes, I do! At least it sounds like the same one I used to watch. Wasn’t that called Crossbow? I can even hum the theme tune. I think the rather good young adult’s writer Anthony Horowitz wrote a few of those. He was also involved in the popular Robin Hood series of around the same time, which I’m sure people will remember. The one with the Clannad theme tune and the dishy Michael Praed as Robin, who was later replaced by some blondie guy who just didn’t cut it IMO.
YES ! When I saw this thread this is the show taht I thought of. I used to love this show as a kid (saw it on a UHF channel out of Buffalo in the early 70’s). Since my first name starts with “P” I of course found the show extra cool making my own “P” pendant pretending I was Prince Planet
