Another wierd Liquid Television bit was Aeon Flux. I thought it was interesting, but I never understood who the players were or what they were fighting for.
Get a Life! Chris Elliott’s character seemed to die at the end of every other episode:
“And then a giant rock fell on me!”
Not to mention his alien pal Spewy, who vomited on everything, and a time machine powered by a watch, a copy of Time Magazine, and some thyme.
Another vote for the wonderfully surreal “Green Acres”. Stranger than strange.
However, does anyone else remember a strange show about a couple who raised chimpanzees, dressing them in clothes, etc.? The very funny Peggy Cass was one of the stars.
“So what does that stuff he’s spraying taste like?”
“Hmmmm… Like the food of the Gods!”
OMG!!! I loved that show! Everyone I know who remembers it says it sucked, but I loved it. It was terrifically bizarre, but in a good way.
I’m 22. When I heard about this show (I think they made a reference to it on The Simpsons or something), I refused to believe that it was a real show. I was convinced it was just something from like MAD Magazine or something.
Also from The Simpsons, I refused to believe that “Paint Your Wagon” was a real movie until I saw it on the IMDb.
I doubt anyone reading this is old enough to remember:
QUEEN FOR A DAY
I was only about 6 years old when it was on.
The premise:
Three women were presented on stage and each would tell their tragic story…“My husband died three years ago at the grain elevator, I have six kids, one of them has polio, another needs medicine for diabetes and another is blind. If I were Queen For A Day, I would like a new wheelchair for my son, and a washer so I don’t have to leave the kids at home alone when I walk down to the creek to do laundry.”
The next two women had stories that were equally tragic. Lot of tears.
Then the audience would vote and a machine registered which of the three got the loudest applause.
She became Queen For A Day and got the washing machine and wheelchair (or whatever else she asked for, within reason) and the other two women were sent home with nothing!
It was the saddest show you can imagine. The audience cried during the whole thing, the contestants cried during the whole thing and most likely the television audience cried during the entire show as well.
My father was in a German prisoner of war camp in WW2 and he LOVED Hogan’s Heroes. It was a very funny show.
The most brilliantly strange show I can remember is Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.
The most disturbingly strange show I remember is Shields and Yarnell , a variety show starring a husband and wife mime team. pukes
Wasn’t the maxx a cartoon where the star was a steroid freak with a mask?
Great ones everybody – Don’t know that in shows for adults Red Dwarf, Python or Cop Rock esp. can be topped. For honorable mention I’d add:
Harry and the Hendersons
Celebrity DeathMatch
There is a regular feature on our local TV news where kids who are in foster care (always circa +10-16 yo - sometimes groups of several sibs) are brought before the cameras, their stories are told and viewers extorted to make room in their hearts and homes for the wards, who invariably note that all they want is a real family.
I know there has to be all kinds of safety precautions in place, and it is safe to assume (I hope) that both the News and social services have the kids best interest at heart. BUT I feel the word “strange” covers it … I hope the kids aren’t being exploited for “news” and that the people this brings out of the woodwork are tested & re-tested … none of our other 4 local news station departments do anything like this … I feel a bit bad pissing on what on the face of it is a noble thing — but it doesn’t sit 100% right with me.
One of the strangest for me was “The Sonny and Cher Show”. This was their attempt to re-do “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour”, which had ended a few months after their divorce. It made me very uncomfortable seeing Cher deliver zingers to her ex-husband knowing the serious resentments just below the surface. Rather creepy, regardless of whether or not the resentments were justified. I couldn’t imagine putting up with that myself.
Oh, and I remember “Queen for a Day”, too. I was about the same age as you, Dmark.
What about some of today’s shows, like Fear Factor? Let’s build a show around the concept of the creepy kid in elementary school who ate worms for a quarter.
The old Batman was pretty darn strange. The Avengers was at least sporadically odd. That’s as far as I can go right now. Catwoman and Mrs. Peel are fighting in my head.
What, no votes for “Dark Shadows”?!
I totally loved it, used to run straight to my friend’s place after school every day. (She had cable.)
Probably the only soap opera ever to have it’s own comics and bubble-gum cards. I would have said witches and vampires too, but between “Passions” and “Buffy”…
I used to catch this “kid’s show” at about 5 A.M., it was run by a possibly Brazilian woman with giant tits and the worlds smallest shorts (she shaved), her name was Zuza (I think) and she obviously was a snotty bitch who hated kids, I always guessed that she couldn’t act and wouldn’t make porno movies so she ended up with that job, the show was so odd that it was hard not to watch.
unclviny
Lexx.
It keeps coming on late at night on Sci Fi after something I actually mean to watch (haven’t been for awhile so I don’t even remember what that show is…probably Stargate) and it always catches me by suprise, like someone waiting in the dark with a baseball bat.
Can’t let a thread like this pass without mentioning Sapphire and Steel.
The children’s TV show with the hostess in the short shorts was Xuxa, I think its name was Llevatelo. Xuxa did in fact pose for an R-rated calendar, but it wasn’t a big deal in Brazil, since they’re comfortable with adults being adults. They don’t have that weird meme we have on the subject.
Duckman was about as strange and subversive as they get. I’m sure every week the writers started off with a list of who to piss off, then wrote the show.