“The Defenders”, an early 60’s show featuring E G Marshall and Robert Reed as father/son lawyers who defended socially liberal causes. Sadly, the show has never aired in syndication, to this day. I think it should be required viewing for everyone, to see the legal struggles and suffering endured by people who were denied the rights that people take for granted today. I think one or two episodes can be seen on YouTube.
I have a really vague memory of this show, Best of the West, starring the guy from Silver Spoons.
Apparently I was six when it was cancelled. I don’t know whether it was good or not, but I must have liked it a little bit to (sort of) remember it after all these years.
I too came in to mention All’s Fair. I used to watch it because Bernadette Peters was at her height of hotness then. I also remember a goofy ham named Michael Keaton in it.
I have a vague recollection of a variety show with a name something along the lines of “_________ and ___________ Together at Last!” And it didn’t make any sense and the two hosts, who I can’t remember, were not two people that the public was clamoring to see together, especially since the female half was a fashion model and not really a performer of any kind.
I haven’t been able to track down this show online. Anyone have an idea?
Shout out to The Brothers Grunt
Today I was at a comic con and some guy had a set of TigerSharks figurines for $650 a piece.
My friend, who is a few years younger, never heard of these TigerSharks. The guy selling them said they were a Thunder Cats spinoff that only had one run and was never re-aired.
I totally knew these TigerSharks. I recognized every character. My friend pulled up the show theme song on his phone. Recognized that too.
Then I had a memory of watching this bad block of cartoons every day after school, by myself, without my brother or parents, on the spare tv in mom’s bedroom. They weren’t particularly good but I was happy to finally be able to watch tv by myself and choose the shows.
I checked Wikipedia and sure enough:
“The series lasted one season with 26 episodes and was part of The Comic Strip show, which consisted of four animated shorts: TigerSharks, Street Frogs, The Mini Monsters, and Karate Kat.”
My brother, a couple years older, has no recollection of TigerSharks or this block of cartoons either.
I decided that only a handful of us must have seen them at all.
Timely thread!
I remember The Governor and JJ and He & She.
***Paris 7000 ***was a good show that really should have run longer. It came on in midseason and lasted only through the spring:
I really wanted to watch Jericho but never managed to, probably because it was on opposite Batman or some other show; I don’t remember exactly. Walter Koenig guest starred as a Resistance fighter in one episode.
Blue Light was another good show that deserved a longer run. Lawrence Montaigne and Bruce Mars were among the Nazis who were featured:
***SEARCH ***was a lot like an Earthbound version of Star Trek; not surprising, since Bob Justman was one of the producers.
I pegged Peter Scolari as the one who would happen. Shows what I know.
At the same time I rethought my crush on her sister.
Ditto for Bernie and Keaton’s performance explained his choice as Burton’s Batman: more than a little insane.
I couldn’t understand Paula Prentiss’s attraction to Richard Benjamin then, and 50-some years after their marriage I still don’t get it.
Ah, yes, good ol’ Werewolf Women in Prison. Good stuff! 
I watched Strange Report when I was in high school. I especially liked the theme music.
[Any reboot of Battle of the Network Stars will need the participants to wear classic single-layer-of-nylon Speedos, wet, and shown on the high dive. It’s what made it Must See TV back then. Hello, Erin Gray!
I too have a *very *vague recollection of this, but cannot remember who the two stars were either. IIRC, it made sense in that there was some “connection” between them, like the “marriage” everyone assumed existed between James Garner and Mariette Hartley back in the early '80s. (Hell, maybe it was them!)
I’ve been going through lists of US TV series arranged according to decade and can’t seem to find it either. Is it possible this was a one-off special?
Make that two of us who watched it. I also liked Threshold that premiered that same year. I was sorry when they pulled it after just a few episodes because there were complaints that it was too dark and violent for family viewing. And I never understood why Invasion only lasted a year.
Marshall Herskovitz, Winnie Holzman, Edward Zwick and Jason Katims created, between them, four TV shows focusing on people at different stages of their lives.
Thirtysomething, (1987) about people in their 30s (obviously), ran for several years, and was quite prominent as far as pop cultural references and mentions were concerned
My So-Called Life, (1994) about high school kids, only ran for one season, but is high on the list of shows that people have fond memories of and wish hadn’t been cancelled.
Their other two shows, however, while of similar quality, are all but forgotten. I don’t think I’ve heard either one even mentioned in a decade aside from discussions like this:
Once and Again, (1999) was about two divorcees falling in love, and their families. It ran for three seasons, then seems to have been completely forgotten.
And even more obscure is Relativity, (1996), about 20-somethings. It only ran for one season. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone else who watched it.
Otherworld - A family gets trapped in an alternate dimension and struggles to get home.
Probe - A quirky genius solves high-tech crimes
You weren’t kidding about Erin Gray in Battle of the Network Stars. Hot damn.
I saw Juliet Mills in something quite recently. Oh yes, she was in the pilot of Time After Time.
Anyhoo, apart from the Probe that Sefton just mentioned, I also liked these forgotten shows:
[ul]
[li]Mr Merlin: Merlin is now an old man who runs a gas station, teaching a new kid to be a wizard.[/li][li]Throb: set in a trendy pop rock radio station. Where I first saw Jane Leeves. Also had one of the actors from the above Mr Merlin in it. Oh, and apparently the late Paul Walker of Fast and Furious fame.[/li][li]All the various versions of It’s A Living set in a restaurant at the top of a skyscraper. Life’s not the French Riviera! Also Wendy Schaal… sigh.[/li][li]A Man Called Sloane, which I thought was called TR Sloane but maybe that was the pilot movie.[/li][li]The Wizard, David Rappaport carries a magical carpet bag everywhere. I can’t really remember much else.[/li][li]The Powers of Matthew Star. Well this was awful, but as a kid I loved it. When they made a Starman series a few years later, it reminded me of this show.[/li][/ul]
Of-beat quirky HIgh School comedy with an unusual premise, with actors close to the age of their characters.
Probably appealed to people who had recently been in high school more than to people who had not yet been to high school.
In my market, it was shown off season, in an odd time slot, and the stations knew that there wasn’t a second season. /Nobody/ I knew ever heard of it.
“Quirky” doesn’t begin to describe “Square Pegs,” a high school comedy. Sarah Jessica Parker, pre-“Sex and the City,” as bespectacled Patty; her best friend Lauren, overweight and with braces on her teeth; a character named Johnny Slash (“I’m New Wave. Totally different than punk. Totally”); a peppy cheerleader named Muffy; the class clown named Marshall; and Tony Dow (better known as “Wally Cleaver”) as Patty’s father.
It was a slice of 1980s American high school life. Not too far away from my own high school years that I couldn’t understand and enjoy it. I’ve got the series on DVD; it’s fun to pull it out from time to time, and relive those years.