One of the dumbest sitcom premises of all time is one of the most “beloved television classics” (in Nick at Nite / TV Land speak) of all time, and I haven’t yet seen mentioned here.
The basic premise is that a man dies, leaving a widow and five kids behind with no visible means of income. The kids decide to form a bubblegum ‘rock & roll-lite’ band to make money. The band produces amazingly well-produced music (given their obvious lack of musical training - the bass player, for example, strums, the drummer is an eight-year old) that sounds for all the world like it was performed by expert studio musicians and dubbed in as the band lipsyncs.
Feeling the band lacks a little extra edge (to compete with contemporary bands - Led Zeppelin, the Who, Derek & the Dominoes, Grand Funk Railroad, etc.), the kids ask their mother to join the band as a second pianist. The widowed family then tour the country in a school-bus sporting a psychedelic paint job, and “performing” at dinner cabaret revues.
The show’s main stars are a former Broadway theater vet as the rock & roll mom, and a teeneybop idol as the band’s frontman. Songs “performed” by the band will be released as national singles.
Oh yeah, there’s also this smarmy manager / agent that hangs around (apparently having no other clients to manage) as a proxy father figure. But there can be no sexual tension between the mother & agent, cuz’ the agent is jewish (everybody knows that talent agents are all jewish!), and we can’t have any jewish guys hitting on the waspy, white-bread mother after all!
Lancelot Link/Secret Chimp:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065309/ A spy/action show like The Avengers or The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but with an all-chimpanzee cast, with voiceovers. “A member of pop band Evolution Revolution, Lancelot Link is called upon by the Agency to Prevent Evil (APE), in their ongoing fight against CHUMP.”
My Mother The Car was a terrible show. But silliest premise? How is a talking car different to a talking horse? And some of the suggestions seem to mix up concept with execution, along with the show being a comedy. Hogan’s Heroes is not dissimilar to Allo Allo. They are not supposed to be documentaries.
BrainGlutton, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was a show about a family of bush rangers (not the sort that steal money, the sort that look after a national park - but the other sort would have made for a great comedy!) and their pet kangaroo, Skippy, who was basically the kangaroo equivalent of Lassie.
Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo - no worse a concept than Lassie or Flipper, and had the advantage over the latter of not needing a fortuitous canal, inlet, or fjord in order to catch the bad guys.
[Every episode] [Skippy bounds up to Head Ranger, makes Eucalyptus-leaf-rustling & nibbling sounds] Head Ranger: What’s that, Skip? Sonny’s been bitten by a snake and is about to be killed by evil poachers, again? I’ll get the chopper and follow you back to him!
[/Every episode]
[sub][Viewing experience greatly enhanced by presence of a late-teenage Liza Goddard.][/sub]
I remember the song but I don’t really remember the show. I believed I watched it in a block of kids 'n animal shows. Flipper, Skippy and Gentle Ben are somehow linked forever in my mind. Skippy! Skippy! Skippy the bush kangaroo.
Skippy! Skippy! Skippy your friend tried and true.
“See, we’ll have this heartwarming family story, but the family is a knight and his sons in medieval England. Only it’s nothing like the real medieval England, it’s an SCA/Renfaire version where everybody is clean and well-nourished and has good teeth, and the boys never rape serf girls – in fact, we’re hardly even reminded that the serfs exist . . .”
Come to think of it, didn’t that one star Sally Field, who was also the star of The Flying Nun? She really knew how to pick 'em, didn’t she? If she hadn’t made *Places in the Heart * and Norma Jean, I’d never have forgiven her …
Five pages and no mention of Thanks, the sitcom set in the Plymouth Colony that featured a randy grandma played by Cloris Leachman? Why is it that I remember this terrible show so vividly?
I don’t remember the name of the show, but it would have aired some time during the 1970a. The premise of the show was similar to that of Fantasy Island only it took place on a train.
The show you are thinking about is possibly TIME EXPRESS . It aired on CBS in 1970. Vincent Price was the conducter of the train that took people back in time to relive momentus events in their lives.
Four episodes were aired.
It should not be confused with NBC’s SUPERTRAIN which was the Love Boat, only on a train.
