Honey West I was maybe 6 years old? But I still carry the image of Honey West in a black turtleneck as a standard of female hotness.
Around the same time, a young Robert Loggia starred in T.H.E. Cat.
Not a favorite, but for some reason memorable, there was a show I recall The Corner Bar. It was memorable because of a regular character being portrayed as flamboyantly gay, in all the repugnant stereotypical ways you might imagine. It turns out the actor was Vincent Schiavelli, before he made his name as the go-to freaky looking guy.
But, my favorite was Kolchak: The Night Stalker, spun off of the TV movie (remember those?) Granted, this was not an obscure show, and they have tried to remake it dozens of times since then, but I haven’t heard it mentioned in this thread?
I watched this and remember a re-occuring skit about a Jamaican cooking show. “Should I put basil? No, no, no, no, no. Should I put parsley? No, no, no, no, no. Should I put ganja? Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya!” He smoked a chicken and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And by smoke, I mean he put ganja on it, stuck one end in his mouth and let the other end.
And that title brings to mind Love, Sydney. (It was a very early occurrence of a show with an “out” gay main character, but I didn’t really notice or even see the big deal about it when I was a kid, and don’t really remember much more about the show than the theme song.)
Now that I think about it, both of those shows featured Evan Handler. He may have given Ted McGinley a run for his money as far as ending TV shows.
However, since It’s Like, You Know also featured the delicious A.J. Langer, it reminds me of an older show she was on, Drexell’s Class, which had Brittany Murphy and Langer playing the daughters of Dabney Coleman.
“Lime Street” was best known for casting Samantha Smith, who made worldwide headlines for writing to Yuri Andropov asking why he wanted to go to war with the U.S. and then he invited her to visit the Soviet Union; the show tanked with her untimely death and probably would have been a ratings disaster anyway.
You a football fan? Ever heard of Cowboys QB Dak Prescott? Dak is short for Dakota. His mom was a big fan of the show that she named him after her favorite character, so at least two other people know the show
While we’re on the cartoon kick…
Sheep in the Big City: A Cartoon Network original that was about a sheep in a city. It had very Airplane! like humor, was absolutely hilarious, and no one seems to remember it but me…
Even more obscure is Dinosaucers an old cartoon about anthropomorphic dinosaurs (who are aliens) that…fight crime? I guess? I only vaguely remember the show now, but I loved it when I was young.
I was a huge fan of this show, and in fact just recently downloaded and watched a bunch of episodes. To my surprise, it was still good! Of course I’m in the US so I think it was “regular popular” here.
Someone else mentioned the Life and Times of Grizzly Adams show. I have always had this memory of some kind of mountain-man-friends-with-animals show I saw when I was little. Except that show was on in 1977 and I was born in 1979. Anyone know if that show had any reruns? It’s possible we did see the TV movie in 1982 but I remember being excited to see it each week.
I also remember another that somebody mentioned - The Charmings! Also Bob & Margret was a favorite of mine when I moved to college and had Comedy Central for the first time.
Was Sledgehammer! all that rare? My brother and I *loved *it!
The Jackie Thomas Show
Starred Tom Arnold as the jerkish star of a TV sitcom. He had a team of writers that didn’t like him much and they got as much or more screen time as Arnold. I remember thinking it was hilarious at the time but I haven’t seen it since it ran in prime time. Allison LaPlaca costarred as one of the writers and I remember crushing on her.
Arnold was getting divorced from Roseanne Barr at the time. Her show was big at the same network and rumor was she got The Jackie Thomas show axed.
I remember Crusader Rabbit and a few years ago looked it up. Man, it looks so crude compared to cartoons that came later! Around that same period was a show called Jot. Not sure if that one was regional to the South, as I think it was semi-religious. I vaguely recall there either being bible verses or that Jot, a circular entity with feet IIRC, would teach kids lessons or morals. Memory’s hazy on that one, but I definitely remember it.
I remember Here’s Boomer and hadn’t thought of it in yeeeeaars!
I loved St. Elsewhere. If I’m not mistaken it was on around the same period as thirtysomething and LA Law, which I also loved even though I was barely 20-something at the time. Howie Mandel, when he had hair! on St. Elsewhere. Blair Underwood on LA Law, suh-wooon. I must’ve gotten those types of shows out of my system back then because even though cop/hospital/angsty hipster drama shows are a dime a dozen now, I very rarely watch any. Back in the day, I never missed an episode of these.
Don’t remember Three for the Road, but I had a 16-magazine (or maybe it was Tiger Beat!) pull-out poster of Leif on my wall for the longest time, does that count?!
I remember theme songs from many of the shows mentioned. For some weird reason the one I recall the most lyrics to so far is When Things Were Rotten. What a great campy show that was! I wasn’t old enough to know what camp was at the time but it still tickled me to pieces. Must’ve been all the clean, green cotton…
The one recurring sketch I remember was The Pharmacist, a pill-popping schmuck who would try to do some mundane task while higher than a kite, mumbling, “I can handle it, I can handle it.”
Fridays was a classic case of television mitosis, a SNL copy produced on the idea that if enough of the audience was drunk/stoned/busy having sex enough, nobody would notice the difference.
Only thing I remember about Three For The Road: thinking as a grade school kid “How come these guys get to travel all over the place and never once set foot in a classroom!”:dubious:
My pick: Alien Nation. The rare (at that time) example of a television series based on a movie that improved on the source.
Doris Day did have her own show in the late '60s or early '70s. It was a “gentle” comedy and I think she played a widow. McLean Stevenson was her boss in at least one season, and I’m pretty sure Denver Pyle played her father. Her other boss was some dude with a mustache; can’t think of his name right offhand.
The actress in Please Don’t Eat the Daisies was, IIRC, Patricia Crowley.
His gayness was greatly underplayed, to the point where he became just another sensitive guy. After three or four episodes, he was more like Felix Unger.
That’s the one! I always loved the “Parker Excuse File”, a Rolodex full of outlandish excuses for the main character not having done whatever thing they were supposed to have been doing.
I remember Dr Katz - it was one of the earlier “adult animation” cartoons that wasn’t weird anime. MTV NZ aired it and we didn’t have Sky (Pay TV) at home so I only saw the odd episode when visiting friends, but I recall it being quite good.
The post about What Will They Think of Next reminded me of another one: when I was a kid there was a show on very early in the morning on Nickelodeon. The credits were kids on bikes buying comics to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries and the show was basically someone reading the comics while a camera panned from panel to panel. Sometimes it would be a comic about two babies named Sugar and Spike and sometimes it would Swamp Thing.
I loved that show as a kid but it never seemed to be on consistently.
