THE TELEPHEMERA YEARS: 1985, part 2

Written By:

Alan Boon

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!

1985-86

The NBC sitcom juggernaut kept on rolling into the Fall 1985 season, with The Cosby Show and Family Ties flying high, joined in the top ten by Cheers and new arrival The Golden Girls, with Night Court, You Again, and another new show in 227 finding spots in the top twenty. CBS put up the best opposition, with Jessica Fltcher nosing around in third, 60 Minutes telling the world about Live Aid in fourth, and perennial favourite Dallas beating out ABC’s Dynasty to sixth place. ABC were in transition, with Benson, The Fall Guy, Hardcastle and McCormack, and The Love Boat all entering their final seasons, although The Colbys, Growing Pains, MacGyver, and Perfect Strangers were all debuting on the alphabet network.

Over on CBS, new arrivals included The Equalizer and a reboot of The Twilight Zone, while NBC took Diff’rent Strokes from ABC to add to its sitcom line-up, and premiered Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories. It was once again another year of thin gruel for genre fans, though, with Knight Rider ending its run and only the earthbound angel drama of Highway to Heaven bringing anything in the way of paranormal drama to TV screens. Those were all shows that people talked about for mostly the right reasons, though; what about the less-remembered and outright failures? This is the story of four more unsuccess stories from 1985…

Hell Town (NBC): Someone at NBC must have been very pleased with themselves when the Fall 1985 schedules were released showing that Highway to Heaven would be followed by Hell Town, a new drama series starring Robert Blake. Actually, the two shows had more in common than it might have first seemed, with Blake playing a priest, spreading the word of the God that sent Michael Landon back to Earth to help out those in trouble. His priest – Father Noah “Hardstep” Rivers – was a different kind of priest, though, a former criminal who enjoyed billiards, his down-to-Earth approach was perfect for the crime-ridden neighbourhood in east Los Angeles that gave the show its name.

Blake began his career at the age of three, taking the stage alongside his siblings as The Three Little Hillbillies in an act overseen by his parents. His childhood was a nightmare, full of abuse from both parents, despite starring in forty Our Gang shorts as one of the Little Rascals between 1939 and 1944, and a series of other movies that continued after he left home at fourteen. In 1959, he turned down the role of Little Joe Cartwright in Bonanza that eventually went to Landon and continued to gain small roles in film and on TV until his breakout role as murderer Perry Smith in an adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in 1967.

It was Baretta, though, that made Blake a household name. Created by Stephen J Cannell, Tony Baretta was an unorthodox police detective and a master of disguise who spent four seasons keeping the streets of an unnamed fictional city safe, quipping catchphrases like “You can take dat to da bank” and “And dat’s the name of dat tune.” Blake earned an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a People’s Choice award for his endeavours, and the show breached the top ten in the ratings for 1976-77’s third season, after which Blake announced that he’d only do one more, as per his contract, feeling he’d done all he could do with the character.

After Baretta ended, NBC poached Blake, giving him carte blanche with one of his own creations, private eye Joe Dancer. A modern take on the kind of rugged, hard-boiled flatfoot that made Humphrey Bogart famous, Dancer debuted in The Big Black Pill on January 29^th 1981 as part of NBC Thursday Night at the Movies, returning in The Monkey Mission two months later. A third film, The Big Trade, was to follow, but ratings for the first two were less than they hoped for, and NBC shelved it, eventually airing it as an NBC Sunday Night Movie in June 1983 under the title Murder 1, Dancer 0.

Despite the failure of the Joe Dancer project, NBC were still keen to work with Blake, and chief executive Brandon Tartikoff himself handled negotiations. At the time, Blake was in talks to take the role of David Addison in a new show named Moonlighting, but he preferred to work on something he had a personal stake in, and the role was given to second choice Bruce Willis instead. Blake gave NBC Father Hardstep, like Dancer, created by Blake himself using the alias Lyman P Docker, a name Baretta occasionally used for undercover work. Blake co-wrote the script, originally called Father of Hell Town, with former Baretta scripter E Nick Alexander and Brian Cassidy, and it was something ABC had already passed on, but NBC agreed to take it to pilot. Nevertheless, Blake was initially downbeat about his chances of success because, as he said, “Never in the history of radio and television has there been a successful priest show.”

The movie was retitled Hell Town shortly before it was broadcast in March 1985, and established Hardstep as a man who wasn’t afraid to use his fists to ensure that the peace was kept in his parish, something perfectly illustrated by his motto of “sometimes the Lord is busy, so take a baseball bat with you.” Directed by Baretta’s Don Medford, the pilot also introduced Hell Town’s supporting cast of nuns and misfits, including Whitman Mayo’s One Ball, Jeff Corey’s Lawyer Sam, Tony Longo’s Stump, and Sister Indigo, played by Blaxploitation veteran Vonetta McGee. Up against Dynasty and Hotel, Hell Town did an 18.2 rating, beating the latter, and the success buoyed Blake, who – when offered a six-episode run – demanded twice that, arguing that it would take at least that long to overhaul Dynasty in the ratings!

With a theme song by Sammy Davis Jr, who had sung the theme for Baretta, Hell Town debuted on September 11^th 1985, two weeks before Dynasty premiered its sixth season, with an episode dedicated to Hardstep’s efforts to help a prostitute reconcile with her jailbird mother, followed by the story of a miracle goat a week later. Unopposed, Hell Town easily won its timeslot in its first two weeks, but the return of Dynasty blew it out of the water and relegated it to a distant second place. In the ensuing weeks, as Hardstep prevented a gang war from escalating and helped one of his nuns overcome the trauma of a rape and unwanted pregnancy, the gap closed, and NBC were encouraged enough to extend the show’s initial twelve-episode order to sixteen.

Blake was suffering from a nervous breakdown, though, and was becoming increasingly difficult to work with. The decision was made to cancel the show on December 18^th, leaving just one more episode to air a week later, in which One Ball made a deal with a ruthless gambler to raise the money for a child who needed a heart transplant. After Hell Town was cancelled, Blake entered a period of self-imposed exile from TV, only returning in 1993 to play John List in a TV movie, Judgment Day: The John List Story. He appeared in two more films – Money Train and Lost Highway – and spent the rest of his life embroiled in relationship turmoil, peaking with his 2005 acquittal on the charge of murdering his wife.

Fast Times (CBS): If you ever thought the plot of 21 Jump Street or Never Been Kissed – at heart the story of a twentysomething posing as a high school student to break a drugs ring/kiss teachers – was outrageous, you’ve never read about how Cameron Crowe wrote his debut novel, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Crowe was an aspiring journalist who, after graduating early from high school, joined the staff of Rolling Stone magazine at the age of fifteen, soon enjoying a wild life interviewing – and partying with – some of the hottest bands of the mid-1970s. The story of that part of his life was fictionalised in the movie Always Famous, but when Rolling Stone moved offices from Los Angeles to New York, Crowe stayed behind, feeling that the excitement of rock journalism was wearing thin.

Instead, he decided to write a book about the modern high school experience, and particularly the parts he never got to experience due to his early graduation. Simon & Schuster were interested and so Crowe moved back with his parents in San Diego, enrolling at the local Clairemont High School under the name Dave Cameron. As the story unfolded in front of him, Crowe concentrated on six main tropes/characters: the hustler, the surfer dude, the hot girl, the nerd, and a middle-class brother and sister. Early on, he opted to leave himself out of the story, feeling that a pure tale of the American high school in the late 1970s stood on its own without his undercover angle.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out in 1981 and was already optioned for a movie before it hit bookstores. Universal recommended David Lynch, who had just finished The Elephant Man, as director, and Crowe met with the auteur, who passed despite liking the script. Instead, twenty-six-year-old Amy Heckerling, with just the short film Getting It Over With under her belt, was given the nod after Crowe was impressed with her knowledge of the novel, accepting her suggestions that several of the book’s scenes be added to the script.

With a cast that included Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, and Ray Walston, and with Eric Stoltz and Forest Whitaker in early roles and Nic Cage (billed as Nicolas Coppola) making his film debut, Fast Times at Ridgemont High opened on August 13^th 1982, but only after cuts had been made to secure an R rating after previously being given an X for sex scenes and full-frontal male nudity. The movie eventually grossed ten times its $5 million budget and although it was initially regarded as the latest in a line of teensploitation sex movies that included the likes of Porky’s and Meatballs, it has become something of a cult classic over time, with Penn’s Jeff Spicoli a slacker icon.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High was released on VHS in 1984, bringing it back into the zeitgeist and catching the attention of Universal Television and CBS. Eager to tap into the MTV generation, they commissioned a series based on the movie, with Crowe agreeing to act as a consultant. Heckerling was more involved; alongside The Sure Thing’s Jonathan Roberts, she acted as executive producer and shepherded the writing team, also signing on to direct the pilot. Four years on from the film’s release, the main cast had moved on, with Penn marrying Madonna and preparing to star with her in Shanghai Surprise, Reinhold hitting it big alongside Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, and Cates fighting little monsters in Gremlins.

That meant an all-new cast of teens was needed, with Dean Cameron (who originally auditioned for the role of the wheeling and dealing Mike Damone in the movie) stepping into Penn’s shoes as Spicoli, newcomers James Nardini and Courtney Thorne-Smith as Brad and Stacy Hamilton, Back to the Future’s Claudia Wells as Stacy’s best friend Linda, Wallace Langham (credited as Wally Ward) as nerd Mark Ratner, and Patrick Dempsey in his first major role as Damone. Walston and Vincent Schiavelli did reprise their roles as teachers Mr Hand and Mr Vargas, and they were joined by a new character, Kit McDonald’s Miss Mellon, whose laissez-faire attitude resembled that of the original novel’s Mrs George. Moon Unit Zappa, who had just graduated high school herself, was hired to give insight into current teenage slang and fads, also appearing as Barbara, one of the wider cast of schoolkids.

A midseason replacement for the cancelled Mary (an ill-fated return to TV for Mary Tyler Moore after six years), Fast Times launched with a shorter title and a theme song written by Oingo Boingo, leading off Wednesday nights on CBS alongside fellow debutant Tough Cookies. Heckerling co-wrote and directed the first two episodes, with the pilot shown as episode two for some reason, and right from the off, the show’s major problem was apparent in that it couldn’t decide whether it was a continuation or reimagining of the original movie. Several scenes took events in the movie for granted, while others replayed them, and this – together with an attempt to make an R-rated film suitable for a family audience, fatally holed the show before it found its feet.

Well-beaten by Highway to Heaven over on NBC, and edged out by ABC’s MacGyver, the first episode came third in its timeslot, a position it never escaped. Just seven episodes of Fast Times were aired, and Fast Times and Tough Cookies disappeared from schedules at the end of April, replaced by news magazine show West 57^th. Unlike the movie, the TV show didn’t get to explain what happened to the kids after high school, although Crowe explored this territory himself in The Wild Life, his 1984 pseudo-sequel to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which starred Penn’s brother Chris. Crowe would go on to direct Say Anything and Singles, both exploring the familiar territory of the complicated lives of teens and twentysomethings. Perhaps wary of his experience with Fast Times, he turned down the chance to adapt Singles as a TV show.

Canned Film Festival (syndication): The man behind Dr Pepper was not actually a doctor, or called Pepper, but in fact Texan pharmacist Charles Alderton, who gave his formula for a fruit-based drink that “aids digestion and restores vim, vigor, and vitality” to store owner Wade Morrison. It was Morrison who gave the drink its name in 1885, a year before Coca-Cola was introduced, and oversaw its nationwide distribution after a successful launch at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition. Despite its early popularity, Dr Pepper soon fell way behind rivals Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and by the early 1980s the company was insolvent, prompting a group of investors to take the company private.

In an attempt to restore the brand’s fortunes, a new slogan – “Out of the Ordinary” – was introduced, accompanied by a series of commercials developed by the Young & Rubicam agency that featured a space cowboy and his alien sidekick seeking something different than a cola, and one that included the denizens of a small Japanese town offering Godzilla some Dr Pepper as an alternative to trashing their buildings. Young & Rubicam also came up with a new idea, one that – like all the best ideas – was based on an old concept. In the early years of radio and television, product and company sponsorship was common, with many shows even bearing the name of their patrons, and Young & Rubicam proposed that Dr Pepper sponsor a series of late-night syndicated broadcasts of cult films of the “so bad they’re good” kind.

The thirteen-part syndicated series, to be shown in the Summer of 1986, would be dubbed the Canned Film Festival (in honour of the more prestigious yearly affair held on the French Riviera) and feature legendary B-movies and drive-in favourites such as The Terror of Tiny Town, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, They Saved Hitler’s Brain, Bride of the Monster, and The Slime People. What’s more, these features would be wrapped by comedy sketches set in an old movie theatre named The Ritz in the fictional town of Limekirk, Texas. It’s owner – and sole usherette – was played by Saturday Night Live’s Laraine Newman, and she both presented the movies and interacted with the theatre’s five patrons: Becky, Doris, Fitzy, newspaper film reviewer Jack, and the silent Chan. Sketches would top and tail the movies and also appear during commercial breaks, and were filmed in an actual disused theatre in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Canned Film Festival aired in almost three-quarters of the country between June and September 1986, and plans were made for a second season, with the final episode credits asking viewers to submit suggestions for movies to be featured. However, a merger between Dr Pepper, Inc and the 7 Up Company in May 1986 put paid to future plans, although the arrival two years later of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which premiered on Minneapolis station KTMA-TV and featured many of the same movies, shows that the idea had legs, even if MST3K creator Joel Hodgson denies the show influenced his long running series.

Misfits of Science (NBC): When Brandon Tartikoff took over from Fred Silverman as president of entertainment at NBC in 1981, he was just thirty-two-years-old. He’d been at the network for five years, during which time it had fallen well behind ABC and CBS in the ratings, and his appointment was seen as a new brush sweeping through the station’s schedules. By 1984, Tartikoff was beginning to turn things around with a hands-on approach paying dividends in the form of The Cosby Show (developed after Tartikoff was impressed with Cosby’s guest-hosting of The Tonight Show) and Miami Vice (which stemmed from a memo Tartikoff wrote, headlined “MTV Cops”). A year later, Tartikoff’s creative juices were flowing again when he came up with the title Misfits of Science and a rough outline that suggested it be a Ghostbusters-inspired show that relies “on the National Enquirer for story ideas.”

After Stephen J Cannell passed on the assignment, James D Parriott was the man tasked with turning Tartikoff’s notes into a fleshed-out show, having worked under Kenneth Johnson on The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk before being given the chance to helm his own show in 1982’s Voyagers!, a show that held its own when scheduled against 60 Minutes but which was cancelled when NBC decided to air a news show in that slot instead. Working with staff writer Donald Todd, Parriott crafted Tartikoff’s basic concept into a light-hearted superhero show set at the Humanidyne Institute, which specialises in human anomalies.

The titular misfits were led by Dr Billy Hayes, an eccentric young research scientist played by Dean Paul Martin, son of the famous actor and singer who had several minor hits as part of the trio Dino, Desi & Billy in the 1960s, before embarking on a professional tennis career. He moved into acting in 1979, playing a tennis pro opposite Ali McGraw in Players, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. Hayes and co-scientist Dr Elvin Lincoln (former professional basketball player Kevin Peter Hall), a very tall man who is able to shrink down to eleven inches tall thanks to hormonal treatments, are fired from Humanidyne when they protest against a decision to experiment on a man found still alive after fifty years frozen in ice.

They assemble a team of super-powered oddballs to stage a rescue, including newcomer Mark Thomas Miller as Johnny Bukowski, a rock star who developed electrical powers after being electrocuted on stage, and Gloria Dinallo, a troubled teen with telekinetic powers played by Courteney Cox, a year after she appeared in the Brian de Palma-directed video for Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” After successfully preventing Iceman (also known as Beef due to legal rumblings from Marvel Comics), Hayes and Ellison are reinstated under the direction of Max Wright’s Dick Stetmeyer, with the cast filled out by Diane Civita Cary as Miss Nance (the secretary who keeps everything running) and Jennifer Holmes as Jane Miller (Gloria’s probation officer and potential love interest for Billy). Both Holmes and Civita Cary worked with Parriott on Voyagers!, though he knew Civita Cary better as his wife.

Although Iceman only appeared in the double-length pilot, the gang retained the ice cream truck originally used for transporting him and embarked on a series of cases that included searching for buried Mayan treasure beneath Los Angeles, helping a primitive tribesman free the spirit of his dead child, and saving a scientist who is kidnapped by cocaine smugglers in the belief he can instruct dolphins to smuggle their wares. Throw in a trio of senior citizens given superpowers from irradiated hamburgers, a bionic government agent who accidentally loses the “nuclear football, ” and a clip show set in an alternate reality, and it’s clear that viewers were treated to a weekly dose of hyper-normal fun.

Writers on the show included Mark Jones (who would go on to write and direct the Leprechaun series of films), future Heroes creator Tim Kring, and Saturday Night Live’s Pam Norris, as well as a Parriott, Todd, and producer Morrie Ruvinsky, an unusually small team for a network show. They had to overcome obstacles such as Holmes’s unexpected pregnancy (her character is only filmed from the chest up in later episodes), hokey special effects, and a tough spot in the schedules. Misfits of Science was given a prime Friday night slot, sandwiched between Knight Rider and Miami Vice in an attempt to create a three-hour action block to counter ABC’s sitcoms and the glitzy soaps on offer at CBS. The two-hour pilot debuted on October 4^th 1985, narrowly finishing behind Webster and Mr Belvedere in its first hour and losing heavily to Dallas in its second.

After a pre-emption for football, subsequent episodes did decent ratings, on a par with lead-in Knight Rider but against much tougher opposition. From the last week of December, the shows were switched, with Misfits of Science moving to 8pm, but its ratings did not improve, despite not having to go up against Dallas. The show was given an initial order of thirteen episodes and despite ratings remaining at pretty much the same level for its entire run, a level that would have seen any other show cancelled, it a stay of execution. When numbers dipped below a 12.0 rating, though, even Tartikoff’s patronage couldn’t prevent the axe falling after episode fifteen had aired, leaving one more finished adventure in the can.

The show was later released on DVD but only in Germany (where it is known as Die Spezialisten Unterwegs, or “the specialists on the go”) and France, although English audio is included on the German disc, as is the unaired final episode. After Misfits, Cox would later find fame on Friends, Wright would play host to cat-eating alien ALF, and Kevin Peter Hall would play both a bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons and the Predator. He died in 1991 from AIDS-related illnesses, four years after Martin was killed while piloting an airplane as part of his service in the California National Guard.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: 1985’s unsold pilots, including supernatural soaps and overheating superheroes!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

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

The Telephemera Years: 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)