zoinks! 4 meddling teenagers and a dog take a shortcut home from some mundane activity and end up driving their hippie van through a haunted swamp.
Oh, and one of them is wearing an ascot.
Yeah, but that Bill Oriely character…I mean, that stretches the limits of beliveability.
I enjoyed this when I was younger but now I have to nominate Power Rangers. Although I still think the first three or four series are the best, I can’t forgive them for this line from the pilot (I may have this slightly wrong)–
“Alpha, Rita’s escaped. Find me five of the most dangerous creatures in the universe.”
“You don’t mean…teenagers?”
Small Wonder. I hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated this TV show. Quirky inventor creates robot girl who, in all appearances was an eight year old girl, who was always malfunctioning. Invented presumably for the purposes of lawful pedophilia. Stupid.
Bowling For Dollars. The premise is its title. The dumbest idea for a syndicated game show – ever.
**The Littlest Groom. ** (FOX) Worst. Reality. Show. Ever. Eclipses even the hateful “The Million Dollar Hoax” and “Married By America.”
The PJs. (UPN) Wil Vinton animation and the comedic sensibilities of Eddie Murphy equals the most hateful animated series ever.
Werewolf. (FOX) The Fugitive begat the The Incredible Hulk/Nightstalker which begat this drek.
Woops! (FOX) Five postnuclear survivalists try and repopulate the world. Oh! And it’s a comedy. BTW, who the hell misspells “Whoops?”
HEY! I liked that show & I was in college!
Actually, I liked it with the original Snow White who resembled the Disney one. About midway through, they changed the look (probably for legal reasons- it was before Disney owned ABC which was the host network for The Charmings) AND the actress. It just went downhill after that. Btw, Paul Winfield was excellent as the looking glass.
Third Rock From the Sun.
I still have trouble believing that this was a gor-real show, but I have to admit that someone actually filmed an episode. Maybe it was intended as a joke. I hope so.
There was a VHS tape I borrowed several years ago called TV Turkeys (or something very similar). It was a collection of really bad TV shows. One entry was )get ready):
Suicide Theater
This was a circa 1960s pilot in which a guy tries to commit suicide by several means, and failing at each. The basic idea is actually an Urban Legend, and shows up in Brunvald’s books, The Big Book of Urban Legends, and an old issue of Mad. I think people think the idea of a failed suicide is funny.
The kicker comes when the hapless guy tries to gas himself, and finds a note slipped under his door from the gas company, saying that his service has been cut off for nonpayment. He turns to the camera and says, “Well, whattaya know! I couldn’t even do it that way!”
That phrase set off a memory alarm, just like Marcel Proust biting into that damned roll. That voice… that phrase. My god “Well, whattaya know – I finally got the Last Word!” Dr. McCoy in Star Trek.
The would-be suicider was a pre-Star Trek De Forrest Kelley!
So if this was a joke, it was an old one.
In addition to Blind Justice/Longstreet, here are a few other detective show premises you might have forgotten:
Ironsides paralyzed
M.A.N.T.I.S paralyzed with a super powered suit
Cannon really fat
Barnaby Jones really old
Richie Brockleman really young
Kolchak specializing in vampires
Knight Rider super car
I’m sure there was at least one detective who used ESP, but I can’t remember right now.
But those premises are positively real compared to some of these
Mr. Smith talking orangutan with a 256 I.Q. becomes a presidential advisor
I Married Dora spunky illegal alien marries boss to stay in the U.S. The only sitcom I ever saw with a warning that the “sit” was a federal crime.
Chicago Teddy Bears really, really, really adorable and funny mobsters
Doogie Howser, M.D. a 16-year old doctor who isn’t just fully qualified, but fully qualified in EVERYTHING.
Capitol Critters Washington as seen through the eyes of vermin, who are also trying to avoid cats and exterminators.
Herman’s Head Remember that funny scene in Animal House where Good Larry and Evil Larry argue about what to do with the drunk chick? Now imagine it with four personalities. Arguing about everything from sex to a second cup of coffee. For 30 minutes. Week after week.
Many of these listed were interesting premises poorly executed.
(I came to mention WOOPS!)
“Perry Mason”
Week after week, self-righteous DA Hamilton Berger consistently accuses the wrong person. How does he keep his job? Perry Mason’s clients are always innocent, and he usually smokes out the real perp on the witness stand.
I would love to have sat in on the pitch meeting for Hogan’s Heroes.
“Okay, here’s our idea. The show is set in a Nazi prisoner of war camp. The prisoners also secretly sabotage the German war effort. Occasionally they will have to kill to accomplish these missions. Oh yeah, it’s a comedy…”
I know this show! It’s the one where a group of would be survivors are placed on an island, and they have to use their survival skills to compete against each other, and the last one who survives wins a prize. I think it’s called The Island Where Everyone Can’t Be Trusted.
That show had an interesting premise. And it seemed like I could always find an analog between the show, and my current crises.
Also, Fish Police was a fantastic…
comic book. The TV show was poorly done.
According to Harlan Ellison Comic’s Book Bibliography, he had something to do with the original.
I don’t remember what he did, but I do remember likeing the 80s’ series.
FISH POLICE: HAIRBALL
1987, Comico
story and art, Steve Moncuse
Collection of issues 1 through 4 of Fishwrap Press’ Fish Police
FISH POLICE
“Finny Friends, Adieu, Toodle-oo: An Outroduction to Fish Police”
Issue 26, December 1990, Apple Comics
story and art, Steve Moncuse
Last issue of the Fish Police series
Well, to be fair, the show was loosely based on the successful Billy Wilder film Stalag 17, itself based on a successful play.
I’ll have to add another category to my earlier list:
Repeated Formula: Typically mystery/crime shows, where an intrepid central character or group of characters repeatedly breaks complex cases. Individually, this may not be that extraordinary, but for a character to investigate and solve 40+ murders in a calendar year strains credibility. Similarly, shows like The Fugitive never vary from their basic chase premise, with the pursuer never making any measurable progress and yet never giving up/getting reassigned/running out of funds. These shows strain crediblity in their endless repetition, aggravated occasionally by the pesky kid who everyone complains about even as they forget that the kid has saved all their lives 15 times just in the last two months.
I call this issue “sustainablility.” One factor that must be considered when evaluating a premise is how many episodes can reasonably be expected to be written based on the premise without it all becoming ridiculous. In other words, how long can they sustain the premise?
Shows about doctors, cops, lawyers, etc. tend to be extremely sustainable, as the very subject of the show means that there will always be new cases, new clients, etc. The detectives on Law & Order investigate a homicide every week, but that’s not surprising. They’re New York City homicide cops. But on a show like Murder, She Wrote, where the protagonist is not a professional crime-fighter, it does start to seem very strange that she runs into a murder every week. As it happened, people liked the show enough to suspend their disbelief on that matter, but more than one fan of the show has joked that if they saw Jessica Fletcher coming near them, they’d run far far away, lest they end up as one of the many corpses that she seemed to attract. I see that program as a flawed premise well executed.
Sitcoms about families or groups of friends or coworkers have also proven to be very sustainable. If you only have 22 minutes, you don’t need a big subject for every episode. You can come up with little some problem or issue, deal with it in a funny way, wrap it up, and there’s your episode. The whole Seinfeldian premise of “a show about nothing” was a riff on this. You could make a successful sitcom and it didn’t even need to be about anything, as long as it was funny.
So, to me, one of the things that makes a bad premise really bad is the question of sustainablility.
But I digress…
My vote for a really bad premise: I think it was called “My Two Dads,” about a case where a single mother dies (I think), but doesn’t know who the father of her daughter is. (This was before DNA testing, natch.) So the two possible fathers move in together to raise her. It was horrible. And it was eerily reminiscent of the Tracey Ullman Show sketch where she plays a teenage girl being raised by a male gay couple. But the guys on My Two Dads weren’t supposed to be gay, which they kept finding ways of making clear. Did I mention it was horrible?
I’m With Her. She’s famous!! He’s NOT!!!
An odd couple indeed!!
IMDB doesn’t list Suicide Theater under Kelley’s accomplishments, but this site does (So either I’m remembering correctly or there’s at least one other person who shares my delusion). Third entry from the end:
Aha! The truth: "Suicide Theater was really The Bitter End on an ABC Anthology called The Little Theater back in 1950. Not an unsold pilot at all, although that’s the way TV Turkeys promoted it:
There is a biiiiig difference between all these other defective detectives and Blind Justice. The other detectives were private eyes. You can do anything you want in your private life. You want to be a quarduple amputee basketball player? Go on and try.
But this blind guy is a who fought to get his job back ON THE NEW YORK CITY POLICE FORCE.
Apparently, he gets his badge and gun back because he signs a waiver.
Well, since this thread is about premises for shows, I’ll mention the unaired pilot for the never-actually produced 1960s “Wonder Woman: Who’s Afraid of Diana Prince?” series. It was “inspired” by the Batman craze, ABC intended to create a straight-out sitcom about the '‘Amazin’ Amazon".
The premise? Diana Prince is actually a highly delusional ugly loser living in an apartment with her pushy mother. Desperate to impress her boss Steve Trevor (who, like Vera or Maris, would never be seen onscreen) would don the red, white & blue bathing suit and fight crime. The chief gimmick being that whenever the near-sighted (and, as previously mentioned, delusional) Diana put on the Wonder Woman suit and looked at herself in the mirror, she saw the reflection of a knockout babe. Also, she flew by flapping her arms & legs like a chicken.
This premise was so awful that it even the trial pilot episode wasn’t completed. It was a mere 15 minutes long. Luckily, for everybody, the show never got made. But the premise was there.