Feature Category: Article

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

2007-08

Reality TV was king of the small screen in 2007, with the top five slots in the ratings filled by American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, but drama of the scripted kind was still making an impact as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes, House, and Lost were all still pulling in big viewing figures across the four main networks. Both Jericho and The Wire were entering their final seasons, after which one of them at least would enter the annals of TV classics, but it was a bad time for fans of animated genre fare, with The Batman, Ben 10, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast all beginning their final runs.

There were tons of new arrivals, of course, with Breaking Bad making drug dealing fun again, while Chuck, Gossip Girl, Pushing Daisies, and Reaper all debuted. The geeks of The Big Bang Theory made their bow, and it became cool to laugh at people getting hurt again when Wipeout hit our screens, but those were the shows that everyone remembers – what about the ones that didn’t stick around long enough to gain the following they did/didn’t (delete where applicable) deserve? This is the story of some of 2007’s lesser lights…

Kid Nation (CBS): What if you could televise Lord of the Flies? That’s the elevator pitch behind Kid Nation, a 2007 reality show from the people who brought you Big Brother. Filmed over a month at the Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch, built on the ruins of old west town Bonanza City in New Mexico, the show brought forty children, aged eight to fifteen, to establish their own society, free from the limitations (wise or otherwise) of adult imagination.

Adults were present throughout filming but limited their interactions with the children as little as possible, and children were free to leave at any time. Three eventually did. The population was split into four districts, labelled by colour, with each district electing a representative to the town council, which would have final oversight.

Arguments arose over whether to kill the town’s chickens for food, the imposition of a curfew to ensure sweet-fuelled exuberance didn’t affect the next day’s activities, attendance at a mandatory faith service, and the aftermath of losing an election, no doubt engineered and portrayed dramatically by the producers but fascinating nonetheless for viewers at home. Kid Nation wasn’t without its share of controversy, mostly born out of pearl clutching, which did cost it some advertisers, although the one genuine incident on set – a burn from a cooking oil splash – was found to be not the fault of the producers.

The final episode of the show gave viewers a taste of what they probably wanted all along when the kids – freed from the responsibility of their “jobs” – ransacked the town, but ultimately came back together to repair the damage they’d done. In this, they were probably better than their elders. In 2020, The Av club spoke to several of the participants, who noted that while they didn’t consider the show to be in any way exploitative at the time, watching it as adults made them feel uncomfortable. In the end, the negative publicity attracted by Kid Nation outweighed its value to the network and the experiment has never been repeated, although Channel 4 in the UK did air a similar show, Boys and Girl Alone, in 2009.

Journeyman (NBC): Created by Kevin Falls, a writer-producer whose first big break came on sports agency drama Arli$$ before going on to work on Sports Night and The West Wing, Journeyman told the story of Dan Vasser, a newspaper who is pulled through time to help his target solve a problem. Obviously taking its inspiration from Quantum Leap, where the shows differed was in Vasser’s anchorage to his “home” time, to where he’d always return at the end of his adventure and where he had a wife and child.

Scottish actor Kevin McKidd had appeared in Trainspotting and The Acid House before John Milius cast him as veteran centurion Lucius Vorenus in Rome, opening the door to this starring role as Vasser. McKidd is backed up by Gretchen Eglof as wife Katie, Reed Diamond as Dan’s brother Jack, a police detective who becomes suspicious of Dan’s activities, and Moon Bloodgod as Livia, Dan’s ex-girlfriend who was presumed killed in a plane crash ten years before.

Livia, though, is also a time traveller, one who jumped back to her home time of 1948 when the plane crash, her extended stay in Dan’s time possibly a mission to ensure he and Katie – who he met in the aftermath of the tragedy – get together. Livia often jumps to the same time as Dan, imparting advice and giving aid, and is pivotal in bringing Jack on side. Added to all this is another time traveller, Evan, whose linear timeline death occurs before Dan is thrust into his position but whom the two occasionally encounter.

Heady stuff, then, and probably a little too much for the average 2007 NBC viewer, even if Lost on ABC had softened the TV audience up for non-linear plotlines. Thirteen episodes of Journeyman were ordered, airing from September to December 2007, and while the writers’ strike initially put paid to a second half of the season, hopes were high that at least another nine episodes would be commissioned to finish the season. However, despite a fan campaign that saw fans inundate the network with boxes of Rice-a-Roni, the show was cancelled for good in April 2008.

Anchorwoman (Fox): No doubt named for – and with an aesthetic definitely borrowed from – the 2004 Will Ferrell film Anchorman, Anchorwoman was another offbeat, scripted reality show, the likes of which were proliferating the schedules in the mid-2000s. Starring Lauren Jones, a former model who had enjoyed stints as a “Barker Beauty” on The Price is Right and as a “Diva” for WWE, the show asked the question, “would you trust a bikini model to deliver the news?”

The setting for the show was Tyler, Texas, a small city one-hundred miles east of Dallas, where KYTX – the local CBS affiliate – were willing to give a chance to an aspiring newsreader. KYTX was a CBS affiliate and, as Anchorwoman was a Fox production, all CBS logos had to be edited out of the final footage, the local Fox affiliate presumably unwilling to risk the credibility of Fox News by hiring a newcomer.

Jones was in the job for a thirty-day period, which was filmed for six half-hour episodes, the first and second of which were aired back-to-back as an hour-long premiere. What could have been an interesting concept was undercut by the scripted direction of the show, leaning heavily into comedy to try and create a real-life version of The Office.

Unfortunately, Anchorwoman had neither scriptwriters nor performers on the level of Greg Daniels and Steve Carrell, and the premiere aired to very low ratings. So low, in fact, that Fox declined to air the remaining four episodes, any chance of lessons being learned from what happens to men when a beautiful woman walks into the room lost forever. I mean, the answer is obvious, but it’s nice to be remined how dumb a species we are from time to time…

Cavemen (ABC): In 2004, car insurance company GEICO began airing a series of commercials that featured a group of Neanderthals using the company’s website with the tag line, “so easy, a caveman could do it!” The skits were the brainchild of Joe Lawson and Noel Ritter of The Martin Agency, one of the US’s top advertising firms, inspired by “Pastoralia,” a short story by George Saunders.

Just as had happened with Martin the GEICO gecko, a Cockney lizard introduced in 1999, the American public loved the GEICO cavemen, who were developed into broader characters who enjoyed modern life. Seeking to cash in on the popularity of the throwbacks, ABC commissioned a script form Lawson in March 2007 and pleased with the results, put the show into production two months later.

None of the original actors from the commercials reprised their roles for TV, although Jeff Daniel Phillips did make several guest appearances as a friend of the cavemen. The parts instead went to, Bill English, Sam Huntingdon, and Nick Kroll, their trio of extant Cro-Magnons (although their features more resembled those of Neanderthal man) trying to make a life for themselves in modern day Atlanta, negotiating the pitfalls of race politics between the “Sapes” and the “Maggers.”

Lawson – and co-creators Josh Gordon and Will Speck (who were also working on Will Ferrell flick Blades of Glory at the time) – intended Cavemen to be a “unique buddy comedy that offers a clever twist on stereotypes and turns race relations on its head,” but a very negative reaction to the an airing of the pilot in test markets resulted in some considerable retooling, including moving the setting to San Diego (although the “locals” weirdly retained southern accents throughout the series). The first episode aired on October 2^nd 2007 as part of a double-bill with Carpoolers, the only sitcoms in their timeslot, and earned over nine million viewers.

By week five, however, they had slipped to number eighty-three in the weekly ratings and the writing was on the wall. Just two more episodes were aired before ABC cancelled the show, replacing it with hidden camera comedy show Just for Laughs. As a postscript, GEICO aired a commercial during the 2008 Superbowl which featured the ad cavemen discussing the show’s failure.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox): In 1998, Carolco founders Andrew Vajna and Mario Miller formed C2 Pictures with the express aim of resurrecting the Terminator franchise, which had lain dormant since 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Five years later, they delivered on their aim and produced Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, fondly regarded by fans and creators alike, but missing a vital ingredient from the first two movies.

The original concept for the threequel involved Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton’s battleworn warrior mother, but Hamilton bowed out of Terminator 3 in 2000, claiming the script did not do anything new or interesting with her character. When T3 arrived, Connor had died offscreen from leukaemia, which was an obvious problem when it was announced in 2005 that C2 were making a TV spin-off based on the character. Rather than using time travel or alternate timelines (as was eventually done in Terminator Genisys in 2015), Vajna and Miller opted to ignore the events of T3 and instead present terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a direct sequel to T2, even if they were unable to persuade Hamilton to reprise her role for TV.

Stepping into her boots was English actress Lena Headey, whose first attempt to break the US TV market in Ultra in 2005 got no further than the pilot stage. Her Connor was every bit as badass as the original, even if the lower budget necessitated fewer and less spectacular action scenes, and she was joined by Thomas Dekker and son John, a moody teenager confused over his feelings for Summer Glau’s Cameron, a very lifelike Terminator (model unknown).

The 2007 writers’ strike reduced the original series order from thirteen episodes to nine, still ample time to establish the concept of the Connors and their allies trying to prevent the creation of Skynet, both aided and opposed by various Terminators seeded throughout human society. Debuting in January 2008, it did well enough in the ratings on Tuesday nights that a second, full season was commissioned for September 2008, but viewership tumbled to almost half of the figures they had gotten for season one.

This led to Fox cancelling the show, despite plans for a third season that involved alternate timelines and Glau playing another character who would vie for John’s interest with Cameron. Fan campaigns tried to keep the flame burning, with hopes of alternate funding through crowdsourcing or another network picking up the show, but by 2013 creator Josh Friedman admitted defeat, especially as C2 no longer had the rights to the Terminator franchise. Friedman later returned to the world of the Terminators by scripting 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, which again ignored the events of subsequent movies and instead presented itself as a sequel to T2.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: More of 2007’s misses, including bionic women, lovely vampires, and Japanese game shows!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telphemera Years: 1976 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

Godzilla x Kong Special

With Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire riding high in the movie charts – and with a gap in the schedule to fill! – this week’s Telephemera Years dips into the archive to look at the Saturday morning shows that featured those loveable giant apes and lizards!

The King Kong Show (ABC, 1966-67): A co-production between American studio Rankin/Bass and the Japanese animators at Toei, The King Kong Show ran for three seasons from 1966 but hasn’t left quite the mark that the later Hanna-Barbera Godzilla cartoon, with or without Godzooky.

With character designs by infamous EC Comics artist Jack Davis, The King Kong Show’s main feature saw the giant ape befriending the Bond family, who were worldwide adventurers, with Kong acting as a protector of humanity. As was often the way, there was a back-up feature entitled Tom of T.H.U.M.B., parodying the spy craze of the time, which saw a secret agent reduced to just three inches tall.

While the show was in development, Rankin/Bass began a partnership with Toho, the Japanese film studio responsible for the Godzilla series, looking to make a sequel to Toho’s 1962 King Kong vs Godzilla (which had originally been intended to be King Kong vs Frankenstein!), in which Kong would fight giant crab Ebirah, but disagreements over who would direct the film saw Rankin/Bass drop out and Kong’s part filled by Godzilla. The studios settled their differences in time to make King Kong Escapes in 1967, which was loosely based on the animated show.

The first eight episodes are available on DVD through Sony, but you’ll have to trawl video sharing sites for the rest, including the debut of Mechani-Kong, the not-at-all MechaGodzilla-inspired robot ape that later turned up in King Kong Escapes.

Godzilla (NBC, 1978-79): You all know the story of Godzilla by now, right? Mankind’s stupidity and eagerness to destroy itself results in an ancient creature being awakened which cuts a swathe of radioactive revenge across a Japan only nine years removed from the atomic bomb atrocities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eventually becoming the Earth’s defender against similar creatures from outer space, even though we don’t deserve him?

The big green lizard starred in fifteen Japanese films from the Toho studio between 1954 and 1975 when the series was halted following lacklustre box office receipts for Terror of Mechagodzilla, and most of these films found an American audience in dubbed versions shown in fleapits, drive-ins, and on late night TV. The lull in Japanese action meant the US was ripe for homegrown Godzilla fare and Marvel Comics were first out of the blocks with a comic book in 1977 that eventually ran for twenty-four issues.

Marvel was not the only company preparing fresh Godzilla for the American market, though, and Joseph Barbera of the Hanna-Barbera animation studio thought the character perfect for his own animated show, tasking Duane Poole and Dick Robbins with coming up with a structure that could showcase the might of the creature while keeping the light peril necessary for such a show. Poole and Robbins created the crew of the research ship Calico, led by Captain Carl Majors and scientist Quinn Darien (Darien’s nephew Pete acted as the audience identification figure).

A typical story would find the Calico stumbling into the kind of dangerous situation that only the intervention of Godzilla could solve, his signature tune ringing out as he emerged from the depths to save the day. Thirteen episodes of the show were ordered, partnered with Jana of the Jungle as The Godzilla Power Hour from September 9^th 1978, ultimately leading to a second season which featured the horror that was Godzooky. Toho resumed making Godzilla films in 1985 and there have been several big-screen blockbusters starring the fire-breathing behemoth but for a generation of kids, there’s only one song they hear when they think of Godzilla…

Godzilla: The Series (Fox, 1998-99): Although it was officially a sequel to Roland Emmerich’s 1998 movie, Godzilla: The Series also took inspiration from the 1978 Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, presenting a giant monster that was a friend to mankind and – in particular – one young man. Rather than Pete Darien and the crew of the Calico, this Godzilla “imprinted” on intrepid scientist Dr Nick Tatopoulos (voiced by Beverly Hills 90210’s Ian Ziering), following him and his crew around as they sought to mitigate the damage caused by monsters hatching all over the world.

The series was developed by former NBC executive Jeff Kline and Richard Raynis, who won six Emmys for his work on The Simpsons, and the two had previously worked on other film to TV transfers such as Jumanji and Men in Black. Their vision for Godzilla was one more faithful to the original movies than Emmerich’s treatment, which had been derided by fans of the property and has subsequently been banished to non-canonical status.

Their Godzilla always seems to know when Nick is in danger and is willing to fight the monsters on behalf of mankind, having no living relatives of his own species. He tussles with such kaiju as giant squids, mutant worms, robotic insects, and even Quetzalcoatl itself, created either a result of ecological disasters or by the sinister forces of Nick’s old college roommate Cameron Winter and his evil allies, including the alien Leviathans.

The first season of Godzilla: The Series premiered on September 12^th 1998 and did well enough that Fox commissioned a second series. However, the show was caught up in the ongoing battle for supremacy between Pokemon and Digimon, often finding itself tossed around the schedules for late-programmed Digimon marathons, and two of its forty episodes went unaired in first run due to this kind of messing around. Still, the show retains a solid fandom, although subsequent anime returns to the world of the big green monster have eclipsed its legacy.

Kong: The Animated Series (Fox, 2000-01): Eyeing the success of Godzilla: The Animated Series, which had been spun out of the Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich movie into two seasons of action on Fox Kids, the German company BKN International partnered with French animators Ellipse to produce this copycat show, featuring the giant ape from Merian C Cooper’s 1933 novel.

Sold initially to the French M6 network, BKN also managed to convince Fox Kids – which had just cancelled Godzilla – to carry their show, with a twenty-episode first season order. The premise of the show had Kong die from his injuries after falling from the Empire State Building, as in the original film, but a scientist Dr Lorna Jenkins managed to take DNA samples which she later used to recreate a clone of the beast. Many years later, she invites her grandson Jason to visit her on Kong Island but the invitation is unknowingly intercepted by an evil scientist bent on using Kong Island’s secrets for his own nefarious schemes…

As well as engineering a clone of a giant ape, Dr Jenkins has also invented the Cyber Link, a device which allows Kong and Jason to switch bodies, and they use this to not only stop the evil scientist but also fight off the forces of the demon Chiros! Yes, this is a busy show, full of densely plotted intrigue and small amounts of peril, and Ellipse (best known for Doug and Babar) did a good job, even if the animation reeks of its early-2000s origins.

A second season continued Kong’s adventures, allowing Jason to switch minds with other large animals, too, and unlike most series of its kind, there was a definite conclusion, although a 2005 movie which took Kong to Atlantis was produced to cash in on the release of Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. A 2006 sequel to that film followed but the limited success of the Jackson film meant that Kong returned to his island home once again.

The Great Grape Ape Show (ABC, 1975-76): William Hanna and Joseph Barbera created some of children’s television’s most memorable icons, from Fred Flintstone to Scooby Doo, but they had more than their fair share of great characters that didn’t become part of the popular zeitgeist, like Magilla Gorilla, Speed Buggy, and the giant primate, Grape Ape.

Grape Ape was a forty-foot purple gorilla, with a childlike personality, who travels across America with his canine handler, Beegle Beagle. Despite his massive proportions initially frightening everyone they come across, Grape Ape and Beegle stick around long enough to help out a town in trouble before moving on to the next location in/on their little yellow van.

Although complete conjecture on the part of this writer, it’s not impossible that, rather than be inspired by the upcoming 1976 feature King Kong (and, of course, Grape Ape ultimately does trace his lineage back to the original feature), the long lead-in for an animated show might mean that word of Hanna-Barbera’s new project reached Dino de Laurentiis, inspiring him to remake the 1933 Willis O’Brien spectacular. De Laurentiis claims he was driven by the sight of a King Kong poster in his daughter’s bedroom, while Michael Eisner claims he got the idea while watching the original in December 1974, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Initially a part of The Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape Show, the giant gorilla’s fifteen double episodes were later repackaged alongside Mumbly shorts and as its own attraction. The character appeared as part of the Yogi Yahooeys in 1978’s Laff-A-Lympics, and most recently turned up in Scoob’s post-credits scene, where he joins Blue Falcon’s Falcon Force.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: We’re off to 2007 and the outer limits of The Telephemera Years where we find… The Bionic Woman?!?

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telphemera Years: 1976 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1976-77

For some reason – the US’s failure in Vietnam is often blamed – the American public could not get enough of the rock ‘n’ roll era in the 1970s, a point never more heavily underlined than with the success of Grease in 1978. It started before that, of course, with George Lucas’s American Graffiti giving birth to the Fonz on TV. It was almost as if the whole country wanted to forget the last decade or so and that Happy Days was the number one show for 1976-77 is no surprise. That spin-off Laverne & Shirley is number two is perhaps a little more surprising, but there’s Korean War comedy M*A*S*H at number four to ram things home. Outside this yearning for the past but also making headway in the TV ratings were telefantastic Jiggle TV mainstays Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman, as well as The Six Million Dollar Man, Baretta, and Hawaii Five-O; if there was somewhere the US TV viewing audience wanted to be in 1976 it was not the 1976 outside their door.

Several big shows bade their farewells this season with The Streets of San Francisco finally running out of road, the departure of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis setting women’s emancipation back a few years, and Sanford and Son a victim of America’s disposable Capitalism. Coming in to take their places were interfering coroner Quincy, bear-worrier Grizzly Adams, and Roots, the first of the blockbuster mini-series that gave schoolchildren everywhere license to say Kunta Kinte. But those were all shows that adults liked, even if the kids did think Steve Austin was bostin. Let’s look at four shows especially made for kids…

Monster Squad (NBC): Sometimes the smartest concepts are hidden in the history of forgotten children’s shows and Monster Squad – one of three new series for 1976 from D’Angelo-Bullock-Adams Productions – is certainly up there with off the wall, fantastic origins for its characters. Criminology student Walter takes a job as a night watchman at a wax museum and vibrations caused by the super “crime computer” he builds to help pass the time bring waxworks of Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monsters to life. Burdened by their past misdeeds, the trio decide to become superheroes…

Yes, this is the Universal monsters crossed with Batman, unsurprising given William P D’Angelo and co-creator Stanley Ralph Ross worked on that series, bringing its camp charms to this delightful oddity, with a parade of supervillains that would have been very much at home in Gotham City. Anchoring things as Walter was Fred Gandy, perhaps best known at that point for a guest spot on Maude (or as Herman the German in Death Race 2000 to those with a different palate), and the monsters were played by Henry Polic II and ex-professional wrestlers Buck Kartalian and Mike Lane.

Polic had played Dracula in a commercial a year before landing the role on Monster Squad, while Lane also had previous as Frankenstein’s monster, both B-movie Frankenstein 1970 (1958) and an episode of The Monkees. Kartalian, who wrestled as The Perpetual Motion Man, was playing Frank W Wolf (the W stood for “Were”) for the first time. The first episode saw the trio go up against the dastardly Queen Bee (Bewitched‘s Alice Ghostley), with subsequent adventures pitting our heroes against The Tickler, The Ringmaster, Lorenzo Musica, the hermaphroditic Albert/Alberta, and The Astrologer, the latter portrayed with aplomb by Lost in Space’s Jonathan Harris. Each member of the Monster Squad had a utility built and they travelled in the Monster Van, keeping the city safe to the delight of Mayor Goldwyn and Officer McMacMac.

The series debuted on September 11^th 1976, running for thirteen episodes, the standard length for a Saturday morning network TV show. Despite its obvious charms, it never returned for a second season, a fate which befell most of DBA Productions’ shows (only 1974’s “dog as The Fugitive” show Run Joe Run came back for a sophomore outing). The show was released on DVD in 2009 but is long out of print; luckily the episodes are easy to find on YouTube and well worth investigating – just don’t invent a vibrating super-computer to do it.

Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (CBS): It’s difficult to explain the grip that decades-old heroes like Tarzan, Zorro, and the Lone Ranger had on the imaginations of yesterday’s kids, but they were staples of children’s television right into the 1980s, when space-going adventurers took over. It’s odd, then, that Filmation’s Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, which premiered in September 1976, was the first time Edgar Rice Burroughs’s jungle hero had been animated for the Saturday morning audience, although there’d been no shortage of big and small screen live-action fare over the years.

Of all the cinematic and televised Tarzans, the show was probably the most faithful to Burroughs’s original books, featuring several of the lost cities that were a running theme in Tarzan’s adventures. The animation, too, is close to the classic newspaper comic strip drawn by Burne Hogarth, using the rotoscope technique developed by Max Fleischer in 1915 and first used on his Out of the Inkwell cartoons. Tarzan was one of the first times rotoscoping was used for a TV cartoon, and Filmation would go back to the technique for future productions such as The Lone Ranger (1980), The New Adventures of Zorro (1981, told you!), and Blackstar, among others.

Filmation’s Tarzan was intelligent and well-spoken, accompanied – as in the books – by his monkey companion N’Kima. Cheetah – a creation of the Johnny Weismuller films – was nowhere to be seen, and Jane appeared just once in the season four episode “Tarzan and Jane.” The show premiered on CBS in September 1976, its first episode introducing Queen Nemone of Zandor, with subsequent adventures involving jungle Vikings, the Monkey People, the graveyard of the elephants, and more, with no shortage of Tarzan swinging from vine to vine, bellowing a famous cry that once rang out across playgrounds the world over.

Tarzan came back for a second season in 1977 as part of The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour, and third and fourth seasons in 1978 and 1979 under the title The Super 7 alongside The New Adventures of Batman, The Freedom Force, Manta and Moray, Superstretch and Microwoman, Web Woman, and the live-action Jason of Star Command. 1980 and 1981 also saw Tarzan on the schedules – paired with The Lone Ranger and Zorro – but no new episodes were produced for the latter two runs. Although big-haired live-action lord of the jungle Ron Ely is the first name most think of when they picture Tarzan, it’s Filmation’s version that holds a special place in the hearts of much of Generation X, and the world is a sadder place than if echoing his famous cry were deemed socially acceptable.

Big John, Little John (NBC): Besides Monster Squad, D’Angelo-Bullock-Adams Productions had two other shows debut in 1976 – McDuff, the Talking Dog and this show, probably the best remembered of the three, at least in the UK where it was shown on BBC1. William P D’Angelo flew solo on this one, partnering with Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz for the story of a middle-aged man – lead actor Herb Edelman was forty-two-years-old but appeared much older – who accidentally drinks from the fountain of youth while on holiday in Florida.

The magical waters turn Big John – and Edelman was 6’ 5” tall! – into Little John, his twelve-year-old self, but only temporarily. Unfortunately for John, it happens randomly and – because this is a sitcom – often at the most inopportune times, leaving wife Marjorie and son Ricky (who both know his secret) to explain Little John away as Big John’s nephew. Joining Edelman in the regular cast were Robbie Rist (hated as Cousin Oliver in The Brady Bunch) as his younger self, Joyce Bulifant (Schwartz’s first choice for Carol Brady) as Marjorie, and Mike Darnell – who would become the king of reality TV at Fox, with such hits as When Animals Attack! under his belt – as Ricky.

Scrapes involving the Big/Little Johns included being cast as both Captain Hook and Peter Pan in the school play, a poor Sheriff getting in hot water for jailing a child he thought was an adult, and Big John speaking with Little John’s voice (and vice versa). It was farce, of course, but it had an undoubted charm that should have outlived the customary thirteen episodes, any thoughts of a second season put paid to by the big ratings garnered by The Krofft Supershow on ABC in its timeslot.

DBA Productions tried again in 1977 with The Red Hand Gang but the three-man writing team that scripted the final episode of Big John, Little John would perhaps be the show’s greatest gift to comedy. Four years later, Jerome Zucker, James S Abrahams, and Davis Samuel Zucker wrote and directed Airplane!, giving Joyce Bulifant a part as the mother to a seriously ill girl on the misbegotten flight.

The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour (ABC): Although Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (and The New Scooby-Doo Movies that followed) was in constant rotation on Saturday mornings and in syndication throughout the western world, there had been no new episodes of the canine detective’s adventures produced since 1973’s “The Haunted Carnival.” In September 1976, however, The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour not only gave the world new tales featuring Scoob, Shaggy, and a bunch of no-goodniks who would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids, it also introduced a brand-new dog character.

Dynomutt had the obligatory “created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears” credit but it’s clear to those with an interest in such things that the robotic dog and his superhero master the Blue Falcon were very much designed by Alex Toth, the man responsible for creating Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and Birdman for Ruby-Spears’ previous employers Hanna-Barbera. Blue Falcon was secretly millionaire socialite Radley Crown (voiced by Space Ghost’s Gary Owens), who created Dynomutt (Frank Welker) to help him fight crime in Big City.

The first two episodes of Dynomutt, Dog Wonder featured the Scooby gang, who were also present in their own adventures on haunted building sites, at frightful fiestas, in spooky swamps, and with eerie electrical eidolons. The Scooby gang was swelled by the arrival of Scooby-Dum, the Great Dane’s bumpkin cousin, whose appearances were few enough that he didn’t become an annoyance (the debut of Scrappy-Doo was still three years away). The cast from the final season of Scooby Doo, Where Are You! and The New Scooby-Doo Movies returned to voice the characters in these new episodes, which retained the classic flavour, something noticeable – or rather not – when the format was expanded by half-an-hour in December 1976 to accommodate re-runs of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! alongside the 1976 vintage.

In 1977, both Blue Falcon and Dynomutt and The Scooby-Doo Show became part of the two-hour Scooby’s Laff-a-Lympics block, alongside Laff-a-Lympics itself, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, and re-runs of classic Scoob. Just four new episodes of Dynomutt were produced to go along with the sixteen from season one, while The Scooby-Doo Show added forty new mysteries to the original series’ forty-one (and twenty-four New Scooby-Doo Movies). Since their original show, Blue Falcon and Dynomutt have made several guest appearances in other Hanna-Barbera productions, notably the meta-adventures of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, and had a significant role in the otherwise dreadful 2020 movie Scoob!, where it was revealed the superhero had formed Falcon Force with Atom Ant, Jabberjaw, Captain Caveman, and Grape Ape, the kid of mythology they really should teach in schools.

The Kids from CAPER (NBC): Although it was created by Romeo Muller, the scriptwriter for the beloved Rankin/Bass Christmas Christmas Specials, the fingerprints of Stanley Z Cherry and Don Kirshner were all over The Kids from CAPER. The pair had worked on The Monkees, for which Cherry was a writer and Kirshner the music supervisor, and the same madcap energy and musical numbers were seeded throughout this later show, produced by Alan Landsberg Productions (later responsible for That’s Incredible!, The Krypton Factor, and Kate & Allie).

The titular Kids from CAPER were PT (the cool one, played by Steve Bonino), feisty Bugs (Cosie Costa), food obsessed Doomsday (Biff Warren), and Doc (John Lansing), the brains of the operation. They were agents of the Civilian Authority for the Protection of Everybody, Regardless, based in the fictional city of Northeast Southwestern, helping the local police solve mysteries with the aid of the Caperband radios (actually repurposed Mego Star Trek communicators, as were those used by the Monster Squad).

Each episode not only saw the Kids from CAPER pressed into action to save the world from very silly peril, but they also contained a song, played out in short and long form during the episode, and a soundtrack album was released on Kirshner records, although – curiously, perhaps because it was not written by Kirshner – it omits the theme music. The Kids from CAPER debuted on September 11^th 1976, as part of a three-hour block of live-action shows on NBC that also featured Big John, Little John, Land of the Lost, McDuff, the Talking Dog, Monster Squad, and Muggsy, an experiment which largely failed in the face of animated opposition, although the network did try a ninety-minute block (with all new shows) a year later.

Thirteen episodes of The Kids from CAPER were produced but only eleven were shown during its initial run. The final two were shown as part of a re-run of the series a year later but that’s the last the world heard from these musical crimefighters and largely the people who portrayed them, although John Lansing did go on to work as a writer and producer for shows such as Renegade and Walker, Texas Ranger.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: To celebrate the blockbuster success of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, we take a detour to the Saturday Morning shows featuring the pair!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telphemera Years: 1976 (part 1, 2, 3)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1976-77

For some reason – the US’s failure in Vietnam is often blamed – the American public could not get enough of the rock ‘n’ roll era in the 1970s, a point never more heavily underlined than with the success of Grease in 1978. It started before that, of course, with George Lucas’s American Graffiti giving birth to the Fonz on TV. It was almost as if the whole country wanted to forget the last decade or so and that Happy Days was the number one show for 1976-77 is no surprise. That spin-off Laverne & Shirley is number two is perhaps a little more surprising, but there’s Korean War comedy M*A*S*H at number four to ram things home. Outside this yearning for the past but also making headway in the TV ratings were telefantastic Jiggle TV mainstays Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman, as well as The Six Million Dollar Man, Baretta, and Hawaii Five-O; if there was somewhere the US TV viewing audience wanted to be in 1976 it was not the 1976 outside their door.

Several big shows bade their farewells this season with The Streets of San Francisco finally running out of road, the departure of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis setting women’s emancipation back a few years, and Sanford and Son a victim of America’s disposable Capitalism. Coming in to take their places were interfering coroner Quincy, bear-worrier Grizzly Adams, and Roots, the first of the blockbuster mini-series that gave schoolchildren everywhere license to say Kunta Kinte. But those were all shows that actually made it to air – what of the ones that were killed before they reached that hallowed ground? This is the story of four unsold pilots…

Gemini (ABC): Adopted as babies by a Methodist minister and his wife, Jim and Jon Hager started singing in church, displaying some talent which was encouraged when they joined the US Army, where they performed at officers’ clubs. After leaving the Army, they moved to Los Angeles and began singing in nightclubs, attracting the attention of country singer Buck Owens, who signed them to a contract and had them open for him on tour.

Owens’ patronage led to a record contract with Capitol and a regular role on country-themed variety show Hee Haw, on which they appeared for seventeen years, also appearing in the second issue of Playgirl in 1973. In 1976, their charm and unique twin appeal were noticed by Charles Fries, who had recently formed his own production company after leaving Metromedia, where his hits included The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.

Fries stock in trade was in slightly unusual TV pilots, although his early record of getting them taken to series was not encouraging, having already failed to find a buyer for Strange Homecoming (with Robert Culp), Peter Graves starrer Where Have All the People Gone?, and Last Hours Before Midnight, featuring Ed Lauter, amongst a slew of others. With the Hagers on board, though, he couldn’t possibly fail, especially with a script written by Robert Specht, who had created the ambitious The Immortal  in 1969.

In Gemini, the Hager Twins starred as Tony and Shep Thomas, a pair of private detectives looking to take down a ring of phony psychics, only to wind up in the middle of a murder investigation. Fries managed to get Lillian Gish – the first lady of American cinema – to make her first appearance since the 1969 TV remake of Arsenic and Old Lace with Helen Hayes, and hired TV veteran Robert Day to direct.

Sadly, after expressing earlier interest, ABC passed on a full series featuring the brothers using their identical charms to solve crimes, but did show the pilot as a TV movie in May 1976 under the title Twin Detectives. The Hager Twins returned to Hee Haw and to their singing careers, although their last single – 1975’s “Hot Lips” – had failed to chart. In 1978, they were cast as cloned alien detectives Verm and Dier on an episode of The Bionic Woman, but otherwise the world remained untroubled by their slightly creepy charisma until their deaths in 2008 and 2009.

Bell, Book and Candle (NBC): Based on a 1950 Broadway play, the 1958 movie Bell, Book and Candle starred Kim Novak as a witch who casts a love spell on neighbour James Stewart in contemporary Greenwich Village. Bewitched creator Sol Saks claimed the film inspired the story of Samantha and Darrin and in 1976 TV producer Bruce Lansbury decided that the time was right to try a series directly taken from John van Druten’s play.

Lansbury, the brother of actress Angela, had cut his teeth producing The Wild, Wild West and Mission Impossible, and had created The Magician for Bill Bixby in 1974. Lansbury set Richard de Roy, who’d done the same movie to TV adaptation for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? a year earlier, to work on the script, and secured his leads in Yvette Mimieux and Michael Murphy.

From her breakout role in The Time Machine in 1960, Mimieux had been one of the most sought-after actresses of the 1960s but an earlier attempt to cross over into TV with The Most Deadly Game in 1971 had lasted just twelve episodes. Unhappy with the roles she was offered, she wrote a script of her own featuring an almost immoral assassin. Aaron Spelling agreed to produce Counterpoint, as it was then titled, and cast Mimieux in the starring role, but the ABC network insisted on a number of changes, softening some of Mimieux’s edges and retitling it Hit Lady before airing it as a TV movie in October 1974.

By 1976, Mimieux was back doing guest roles and TV movies as work for hire but Lansbury thought her perfect for the role of witch Gil Holroyd and was impressed with her chemistry with Murphy, a regular in the films of Robert Altman. A thirty-minute pilot was directed by M*A*S*H veteran Hy Averback and shown on NBC in September 1976 but attracted poor reviews and no interest from the network as a full series. After the failure, Lansbury took work as a supervising producer on Wonder Woman and Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century but would eventually achieve telephemera nirvana in 1985 when he created Street Hawk.

Stranded (ABC): If I were to describe a TV show where a group of people struggle to survive on an island in the South Pacific after their airplane crashes during a routine commercial flight, you’d probably think I was talking about Lost, right? To be fair, I do talk about Lost a lot, but in this case I’m talking about Stranded, a 1976 pilot starring Kojak sidekick Kevin Dobson.

The title had earlier been used for a 1966 unsold pilot starring Lloyd Bridges that was retooled as Lost Flight for another unsold pilot in 1970 – given a limited theatrical release a year later – and some of the footage from that film was used in the 1976 pilot, which also approximated its setting and its basic plot. In this Stranded, written by The Sixth Sense creator Anthony Lawrence, Dobson played New York detective Rafe Harder, whose flight to Australia comes down on a mysterious island, forcing him to take the lead and organise his rag-tag fellow survivors in the hope that they will be discovered.

Joining Dobson on the island were brash young woman Crystal Norton (Dark Shadows‘s Lara Parker), a housewife widowed in the crash (veteran B movie actress Marie Windsor), a young black stowaway (unfortunately named Ali Baba), a retired engineer, and teenage siblings played by Devon Ericsson and Jimmy McNichol. It’s this motley crew that Harder has to corral but does the island harbour more threats?

Directed by TV veteran Earl Bellamy, Stranded aired in May 1976 in the Saturday night slot usually reserved for SWAT, but there wasn’t enough interest in the pilot for ABC to take it to series, just as their hadn’t been when producer Frank Price had tried in 1966 and 1970. The 1976 Stranded was his last try with the concept and he left TV two years later to become head of Columbia Pictures, where he would greenlight Kramer vs Kramer, Gandhi, and Ghostbusters.  He continued working until 2001, three years before Oceanic Flight 815 left from Los Angeles, bound for Sydney…

Alias Sherlock Holmes (NBC): After finishing up on Dream of Jeannie in 1970, Larry Hagman struggled to find another show for his considerable comedic and dramatic talents. 1971’s The Good Life lasted for just fifteen episodes, with Here We Go Again two years later faring even worse, and efforts to break into movies in Harry and Tonto and Mother, Juggs and Speed met with mixed success, even if his directorial debut Beware! The Blob does retain a certain B-movie charm.

Inspired by the 1971 movie version of James Goldman’s play They Might Be Giants, writers Dean Hargrove and Roland Kibbee – who began working together on It Takes a Thief and continued their partnership with Columbo – created the character of Sherman Holmes, a motorcycle cop for the Los Angeles Police Department who is not cut out for a life on two wheels. After receiving a blow to the head when his motorcycle falls on him while he is reading Sherlock Holmes, he starts to believe he is the fictional detective.

Hagman was cast as Sherman, who soon adopts a deerstalker and cape, setting out to solve a murder accompanied by his social worker and psychiatrist, Dr Joan Watson (newcomer Jenny O’Hara), possessing deductive skills he did not have as an inept patrolman. Hargrove directed the pilot, in which Holmes neatly wraps up a series of crimes and exposes a case of judicial corruption, and the chemistry between he and O’Hara boded well for the inevitable series that would follow.

For whatever reason, that wasn’t to be. The pilot was shown in June 1976 as The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective and was reviewed favourably, but NBC passed on a series and, within two years, Hagman was cast as JR Ewing on a five-episode mini-series called Dallas that few expected to go anywhere, with even its creator admitting he should have called it Houston…

Next time on The Telephemera Years: It’s Saturday morning in 1976 – what are the kids watching?

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telphemera Years: 1976 (part 1, 2)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1976-77

For some reason – the US’s failure in Vietnam is often blamed – the American public could not get enough of the rock ‘n’ roll era in the 1970s, a point never more heavily underlined than with the success of Grease in 1978. It started before that, of course, with George Lucas’s American Graffiti giving birth to the Fonz on TV. It was almost as if the whole country wanted to forget the last decade or so and that Happy Days was the number one show for 1976-77 is no surprise. That spin-off Laverne & Shirley is number two is perhaps a little more surprising, but there’s Korean War comedy M*A*S*H at number four to ram things home. Outside this yearning for the past but also making headway in the TV ratings were telefantastic Jiggle TV mainstays Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman, as well as The Six Million Dollar Man, Baretta, and Hawaii Five-O; if there was somewhere the US TV viewing audience wanted to be in 1976 it was not the 1976 outside their door.

Several big shows bade their farewells this season with The Streets of San Francisco finally running out of road, the departure of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis setting women’s emancipation back a few years, and Sanford and Son a victim of America’s disposable Capitalism. Coming in to take their places were interfering coroner Quincy, bear-worrier Grizzly Adams, and Roots, the first of the blockbuster mini-series that gave schoolchildren everywhere license to say Kunta Kinte. But those were all hit shows – what about those shows that didn’t hang around, that didn’t make much of an impact on the 1976 public? This is the story of four failed TV shows…

Lanigan’s Rabbi (NBC): The ongoing search to find that unique angle on the detective genre has touched on some strange corers, with blind detectives, fat detectives, woman detectives, and more all given a shake of the stick. In 1976, however, NBC decided to take inspiration from the man upstairs and bring a man of God to the table, foisting Lanigan’s Rabbi on a nation of Jew-curious gentiles.

Based on a series of books by Harry Kemelman, a former New England college professor whose first hit novel starred a New England college professor as its gumshoe principal. He hit gold with his series of novels featuring Rabbi David Small, beginning with 1964’s Friday the Rabbi Slept Late which saw him use Talmudic wisdom to find the real culprit of a crime it appeared he’d committed. Kemelman’s books were heavy on the traditions of conservative Judaism, often bringing Small into conflict with less observant types, although Kemelman seldom comes down on one side or the other.

After Stuart Margolin had played him in the pilot, Bruce Solomon stepped into the Rabbi’s shoes, fresh off over a hundred episodes of satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and he was joined in the main cast by The Honeymooners’ Art Carney as Paul Lanigan, local police chief and a practising Catholic with whom the Rabbi often discusses religion between cases. After that pilot film – an adaptation of Friday the Rabbi Slept Late – was a hit, the show continued as a series of ninety-minute films, all written by Don Mankiewicz, who’d adapted Ironside from that series of novels.

“Corpse of the Year” aired in January 1977, followed by three more films – “The Cadaver in the Clutter,” “Say It Ain’t So, Chief,” and “In Hot Weather, the Crime Rate Soars” – in March and April as part of the NC Sunday Night Mystery Movie wheel format, replacing Quincy, ME, which had been spun off into its own series. There would be no spin-off for Lanigan’s Rabbi, though, as NBC discontinued the format and cancelled the show, alongside McCloud and McMillan & Wife, although Columbo was given one more series before it, too, got the axe.

Mr T & Tina (ABC): A spin-off of popular remedial education comedy Welcome Back, Kotter, Mr T and Tina was one of the first shows on American TV to have an Asian lead, admittedly one born and raised in California. Pat Morita – for it is he – had made a career out of guest appearances as the token Asian character on shows such as McCloud, Columbo, The Odd Couple, and Sanford and Son, and was starring as Arnold on Happy Days when he got the call from Mr T creator James Komack.

Morita’s character of Taro Takahashi had appeared in Kotter’s season two opener “Careers Day,” where he offered Gabe Kaplan’s character a job with his company at three times his school salary, and reaction to Morita from viewers was enough that he was brought back for a turn of his own just two days later. Of course, TV doesn’t work like that but who would I to be to suggest that his Kotter appearance was nothing but a cynical marketing ploy?

In Mr T and Tina, Takahashi is a widowed inventor sent to Chicago to run a new branch of his family company, Moyati Industries. To look after his children, he employs madcap free-spirit Tina Kelly as a nanny and it doesn‘t take long for her liberal ways to clash with his uptight Japanese traditions. Of course, that’s where the comedy – and the possible “Will they? Won’t they?” – lay, and Arnold was written out of Happy Days in anticipation of the show being a hit.

Unfortunately, even after the pilot was re-written eight times, viewers hated the show, even if they loved Morita, and the show lasted just five episodes, with Kotter writer Mark Evanier later claiming that the decision had been made to cancel the show before the pilot even aired. Morita went back to being Arnold on short-lived Happy Days spin-off Blansky’s Beauties, returning to the main show for its final two seasons in 1982. Luckily, writers hadn’t taken Tom Bosley’s suggestion that Arnold be killed off by “some crazy kamakazi (sic) pilot…”

The Andros Targets (CBS): In the wake of Woodward and Bernstein breaking the Watergate scandal, crusading newspaper reporters were all the rage in the mid-1970s, with All the President’s Men -starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein themselves – nominated for eight Oscars alone. TV was quick to pick up on the craze, with Lou Grant blazing a trail on The Mary Tyler Moore Show for CBS, and it was the Tiffany Network that also dipped its toes into more dramatic fare with The Andros Targets.

James Sutorious, with just medical drama The Doctors of any note on his résumé, was Mike Andros, an investigative reporter for the New York Forum specialising in tackling corruption and uncovering miscarriages of justice. With the aid of young assistant Sandi Farrell (newcomer Pamela Reed), Andros joined a list of people doing the police jobs for them, alongside coroner Quincy and lawyer Petrocelli.

Creator Jerome Coopersmith, a former writer on Hawaii Five-O and The Streets of San Francisco and probably best known for Sherlock Holmes musical Baker Street, based Andros on Nicholas Gage, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times who wrote two bestselling books about his investigations into the Mafia. Gage is given a credit as “journalistic consultant” but whether he ever had to investigate cases involving the pornography-linked death of a young stress, a doctor administering illegal amphetamines, or a brainwashing religious cult is unknown. Andros, did, though, in episodes one, four, and six.

The Andros Targets debuted in January 1977 as a replacement for the cancelled Executive Suite on Monday nights but struggled to find a consistent audience opposite football and movie presentations on the rival networks, ending its thirteen-episode run in May with an average rating that placed it eighty-fourth for the year. There was no second season and Lou Grant was given his own eponymous show a few months later instead.

Future Cop (ABC): Given that Holmes &Yoyo had lasted just thirteen episodes on ABC before being cancelled in December 1976, quite why the network decided to go ahead with Future Cop is anyone’s guess. Both shows featured uptight policemen saddled with robot partners prone to malfunctioning, although the pilot of Future Cop – shown as a TV movie – predated the other show by a few months so who knows what was going on at ABC that year!

Anyway, the Future Cop pilot starred Ernest Borgnine and John Amos as veteran patrolmen Joe Cleaver and Bill Bundy, who are given a new rookie partner in the shape of handsome young John Haven. Haven, though, is more than he seems – he’s possibly the future of law enforcement! – and the two crusty old flatfoots need to learn to embrace the future even as they impart valuable life lessons to their new android pal.

Future Cop was less slapstick than Holmes & Yoyo and not without pathos: it must have been this that convinced ABC that it could succeed where the earlier show had failed and a full series began in March 1977, in the same Saturday night slot as H&Y. The first episode saw Haven go undercover as a boxer to uncover a crooked betting operation and subsequent adventures saw the odd trio – although it was very clearly the Borgnine and Shannon show – tackle revolutionaries, drug pushers, and kidnappers.

Although viewers gave Future Cop even shorter shrift than Holmes & Yoyo, two people who did notice the show were sci-fi writers Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova, who had written a short story called “Brillo” in 1970 about a policeman and his new robot partner, later adapting their story as a pitch for a TV show. The pair claimed significant similarities between their story and Future Cop and launched legal action, finally being awarded over $300,000 in damages when the lawsuit was settled in 1980.

In the meantime, ABC employed writers John T Dugan, Dawning Forsyth, and John Anthony Mulhall to retool the concept as Cops and Robin, shooting a pilot with pretty much the same cast in 1978. This was aired as a TV movie in March 1978 although, this time at least, more sensible heads prevailed and there was no subsequent series for Borgnine’s cantankerous old cop with a heart and Shannon’s synthetic rookie (also with a heart).

Serpico (NBC): Al Pacino was nominated for an Oscar for his 1973 performance as Frank Serpico, a real-life New York cop shot in the face after blowing the whistle on police corruption, possibly at the orders of his fellow officers. Sidney Lumet’s movie was a blockbuster hit, turning Peter Maas’s book on which it was based into a bestseller but Serpico’s story – he retired in 1972 with a begrudgingly given Medal of Honor – was a one and done, and Pacino and Maas turned to other projects.

Nothing is ever truly done in television, though, and the success of Serpico’s debut on terrestrial TV in 1975 set wheels in motion at NBC, where Police Woman creator Robert L Collins was tasked with developing a series based on Frank Serpico’s general demeanour, if not his real-life exploits. A pilot film – Serpico: The Deadly Game – aired in April 1976 and was well-received enough that a full series was greenlit, debuting on Friday nights in September 1976, with The Rockford Files as a lead-in.

Playing Frank Serpico in both the pilot and the subsequent series was David Birney, a stage actor whose TV résumé featured a ton of guest appearances and one lead role, the 1972 sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie with Meredith Baxter. Birney was a decent actor but also looked a little bit like Pacino in a certain light, and was given solid back-up from Tom Atkins as his boss, Lieutenant Sullivan, the only other regular cast member in a show that featured its principal mostly undercover in a different scenario each week.

Soviet defectors, loan sharks, crooked union bosses, and more crossed Serpico’s desk but viewers just didn’t buy into the continuation of his story, even with veteran directors Collins, Reza Badayi, and Paul Stanley on board. After just fifteen episodes, NBC pulled the plug, replacing the show with Quincy, ME, and it would be six years before Birney found another starring role, as Dr Ben Samuels in the first season of St Elsewhere. As for Frank Serpico himself, he’s still alive and still speaking out about police corruption but not getting shot in the face for it.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: More of 1976’s misses, including another Happy Days spin-off and Playboy‘s favourite rock star!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears