You beat me to it. DAMN!
I too cast my vote for My Mother the Car. Not only did I watch it back in the day, but for some reason the theme song was burned into my brain. I can still sing it. To which elfbabe will attest, to her great chagrin.
but believe it or not my mother dear
decided she’d come back
as a car
she’s my very own guiding star!
A 1928 Porter, that’s my mother dear!
<<THUD>>
Ow! elfbabe, cut that out!!
Yes, yes, yes, My Mother The Car, The Flying Nun and I Dream of Jeannie are all worthy contestants. But there was an Australian show entirely told from the PoV of a pet dog … someone help me here …
That’s not what’s dumb about The Patty Duke Show. What’s really dumb is that the same person plays identical cousins. What kind of screwed up family tree is that? The kind that don’t branch out, if you know what I mean.
Good question. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
I think that’s the exact opposite of what happened… 
I’ve liked the episodes I’ve seen of it so far. I loved it when a defense attorney put her on the stand and tried to make her look like a schizophrenic in order to get the probable cause for a weapon search thrown out: “They’re talking to you right now, aren’t they?”
Hah, I saw when I was searching for your posts that you had mentioned My Mother the Car, and I came in here SPECIFICALLY to tell everyone that you sing that song.
:mad:
WHAT? Oh, hell no… I PROTEST. There is no fucking way “Manimal” is a worse premise than ANY of the six shows I cited. And I didn’t even get to the truly VINTAGE block of crap like “BJ and the Bear,” “Automan,” “Man From Atlantis,” “Enos,” “Joanie Loves Chachi” and “Battle of the Network Stars!”
… man, I watched a disturbing amount of shitty TV as a kid.
“Let’s make a new Star Trek!”
“But, we’ve already got one running.”
“Yeah, but that one is on a space ship that moves from place to place. Let’s make one where everybody is stuck in one place. That way, we can bore the viewers into expecting lame-o shows for 5 years so that when we actually add the action and diversity we should’ve had in the first place, all the newbie Trekkers will think we’re geniuses.”
“Brilliant! You sure people won’t think it’s a rip off of Babylon 5?”
“What do we care? And a little while down the road, we’ll make a Lost In Space version of Star Trek, starring bimbos and hack actors.”
“Brilliant! I’ll be sure to invite my friends Berman and Bragga to come help us out a little bit after a while. Those guys are genius.”
“Genius!”
The Magician was another of the mid 1970s shows with a weird premise. Bill Bixby played a stage magician who used his talents to rescue kidnapped damsels, solve crimes, etc.
Banacek was based on the idea that some people went to incredible lengths to steal things or kidnap people with remarkable complexity. The series pretty much just used these plots to show George Peppard acting cool and wearing really scary 1970s style clothing.
And has Supertrain made the list?
Got it! The Bob Morrison Show.
Some user comments from IMDB: "Yes, this television gem could only have been thought up from where else but Down Under. Bob Morrison was the name of the dog. I forget what breed it was, but I remember that it was white. And when I say that this dog ‘talks’, I mean that Bob Morrison ‘thinks his thoughts aloud’ so that everyone can hear it. For example, someone would do or say something stupid to him and he would just sit there and look at that person with his big brown puppy dog eyes while a ‘voice over’ would talk his thought aloud (usually some dry witty snap) and the laugh track would go off hysterically.
Bob Morrison was no Marmaduke. No, this dog had more personality than the dull cast members grouped together"
So good it was cancelled within its first series.
Ok… This was a show, and it was shown on a TV. Does it count?
Read this box First:
The name of the Show was “Hit the buzzer, win a cookie.”
Then this one:
Ok ok but it WAS on Garfield’s (The Cat) TV from time to time, in the cartoon. “Zzzt… Thats right, you hit the buzzer, you win a cookie!”
There was a show in the early 70’s called The Girl With Something Extra about a young lady with ESP. Her new husband doesn’t have ESP. It didn’t last long.
Haj
Wasn’t there some sort of Bionic Boy idea kicked around? Or was that a parody?
“There’s been an accident in the womb. We can rebuild him. Faster. stronger, brattier…”
Robot Chicken
There used to be this show I would whatch when I was a young’n. It was a British show (I think). I can’t remeber what I was called but the premise was; this cuople living in the middle of suburbia was bound and determined to “live off the land” So all the food they ate had to be grown in their little back yard, they to wash clothes by hand ect… Plus they had these snoby neighbors that absolutely HATED them because of all this.
Does anybody know what show I’m talking about?
Don’t know the name, but I’ve seen it. The self sufficient wife was way too hot for that premise. What a honey.
That always really bothered me when the show was on the air. It was about a comedian and how he finds material in his everyday life, how’s that not something? That’s a more complicated premise than say, The Cosby Show, the premise of which is that there’s this family, see? And that’s it. That’s a show about nothing.
So many contenders:
My Mother The Car
Automan
Manimal
Knight Rider
Team Knight Rider
Baywatch
Baywatch Nights
Starlost
The Adventures of Skippy
Second Hundred Years
Tucker’s Witch
My Favorite Martian --which I’ll admit to loving to this day
VIP
It’s About Time
and too many others.
It’s important to remember in this discussion that bad premises can make really good and successful shows and great premises can make terrible shows. Thank goodness there’s no shortage of either.