I remember this. I believe it was a series “commissioned” by CBS for its late night schedule (I think ***Leg Work *** with Margaret Colin :o was another). It was definitely filmed in Canada (Toronto or Vancouver), but I always thought the setting was Boston or Chicago (there was some “Irish” influence, as I recall).
I got to watch it in Czechoslovakia in 1991–92, with Czech overdubbing. I thought it was quite good.
(jumps up and down and waves) I do! I do! It was You Tube, 30 years before You Tube.
In the mid 1980s, there was a one-season series called “Kay O’Brien” about a female surgeon in residency, and her colleagues. Lifetime ran it periodically for many years afterwards, and when Patricia Kalember, who played Kay, made her first cameo appearance on “Madam Secretary”, I went, “Hey, that’s Kay O’Brien!”
I saw part of it at the time, and it was cheezy then. The network tried to do a “War of the Worlds” redux and did it by broadcasting it in real time.
I’m pretty sure it’s on You Tube.
In the early 1980s, there was a movie called “Special Report”, parts of which were also broadcasted in real time, about a domestic terrorist who holds Charleston, SC hostage with a homemade nuclear weapon. It too is on You Tube and I finally saw it within the past couple of years, after I realized I could get You Tube through my Tivo. At the time, some people were concerned about panic, and there were people who figured it out pretty quickly when the news network was one they’d never heard of (Global Broadcasting Network, that kind of thing) and it wasn’t being covered on any other station.
In the end the bomb explodes but there are relatively few casualties because Charleston was mostly evacuated. The news channels moved on faster than we did after 9/11.
Missed the edit deadline: Did you also see “I Was A Zombie For The FBI”? TV Guide described it as “Aliens steal the formula for a popular soft drink” and that was indeed pretty much the extent of the plot. It was a film school project from the early 1980s, shot in B&W with all the hair and clothing styles from the early 1980s and the cars were all from the 1950s. The alien was the same stop-motion alien used in the ZZ Top video “TV Dinners” a couple years later.
Gatchaman (1972), very few remember that one because that Japanese animated show from the 70’s was repackaged and they squeezed out the more adult and serious themes it had, and turned it into what everyone remembers as Battle of the Planets (1978, and shown in the early 80’s in the old country) .
YouTube short clip showing how one scene was cut, with the violent end of some secondary characters removed from the American version. The American version was the one shown translated to Spanish in the old country. Much later in the 90's I learned about the gross censorship and dumbification made to the original show, then I finally did see it in its original form and liked it a lot.
BTW, I remember watching Battle of the Planets as a child, and in an episode where the team’s commanding officer threatened to ground them if they (did x, or did x again) I thought that he was threatening to grind them–as in toss them into a large meat grinder or something.
I would’ve posted earlier, but I couldn’t remember the name of a show starring post-Night Court John Larroquette. Turns out it was The John Larroquette Show :rolleyes:.
IMHO, a great show (1993-1996). Larroquette plays a recovering alcoholic who becomes the manager of a big city bus station. It made me appreciate Larroquette as an actor.
I’ll third and fourth this. My little brother and I used to watch it all the time. He was only four or five at the time, and he always called it “Simon” after the main character’s name. Our favorite episode was some kind of Raiders of the Lost Ark clone, where they had to survive traps in an ancient tomb.
Not sure if either of yours really count, Fawlty Towers is well remembered and cherished by large numbers, Red Dwarf while much more obscure had a fairly good following and a long run.
There was a third TV Movie done in the style of News Broadcasts called Countdown to Looking Glass. It was on HBO and was about the events that lead up to a Nuclear war.
Here’s one that everyone I 've ever mentioned this show to, has never seen it. It’s a Canadian show called "Made In Canada" but when shown in America, primarily on PBS (where I saw it) is called "The Industry".
It’s a dark comedy featuring a group of back stabbing executives, actors and actresses at a Canadian TV Network. It ran 6 seasons, though I’m sure I didn’t see all of them and ran from '98-2003. I remember it being very funny, but have never seen it or even heard anything about it since my first viewing
These are much more recent, but nobody I talk to in real life has seen them — British comedies
“The Thick of It” (2005-2012) - with a blindingly foul-mouthed Peter Capaldi as a political mastermind for the Labor party (unnamed but obvious) at the end of Gordon Brown’s premiership. Spun off a movie “In the Loop,” about the run-up to the Iraq war, and has been remade in the U.S. as HBO’s “Veep.”
“Twenty Twelve” (2011-2012) — a mockumentary about the preparations for the London Olympics starting Hugh Bonneville of “Downton Abbey”
“W1A” (2015-2015) — After the Olympics, Bonneville’s character gets an executive position at the BBC and the mockumentary moves to satire of the media business and modern office life in general. This one hit very close to home for me and I have a fantasy to make every executive at my company sit and watch every second of it and then submit term papers on what they learned. If it could be done at gunpoint, it would somehow me more satisfying.