THE TELEPHEMERA YEARS: 1991 - part 4

THE TELEPHEMERA YEARS: 1991 – part 4

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!

1991-92

As the 1991 Fall TV schedule was released, tears were no doubt shed when fans realised this would be the last time they would see such favourites as Who’s the Boss?, MacGyver, Jake and the Fatman, and The Golden Girls, although history no longer recalls how people felt in any respect about The Cosby Show. None of them were doing top ratings by the time they departed – one very good reason for such departures, obviously – but America was still wildly in love with Roseanne, Murphy Brown, Cheers, and Murder, She Wrote, as well as a brand-new show called Home Improvement about a man with a funny laugh.

Other new arrivals included The Commish on ABC, Evening Shade on CBS, the vastly underrated Herman’s Head on Fox, and a TV spin-off for Harry & The Hendersons, with Jay Leon easing into Johnny Caron’s seat on The Tonight Show ahead of everyone’d favourite David Letterman. Genre fans had it tough on the big four networks, with Twin Peaks having finished the previous year leaving Quantum Leap as the sole survivor, although Star Trek: The Next Generation was still airing new episodes in syndication. That’s what the grown-ups were watching, anyway, but what about the kids? This is the story of Saturday mornings in 1991…

Space Cats (NBC): Paul Fusco’s big break came when he surprised super-agent Bernie Brillstein with his ALF character at a meeting Brillstein didn’t even want to take, having Jim Henson already on his books. ALF was hilarious and irreverent, and Brillstein wasted no time in setting Fusco up with writer Tom Patchett to round out ALF’s story before pitching a show to NBC’s Brandon Tartikoff.

ALF ran for four seasons, and enjoyed two animated spin-offs between 1987 and 1989, its ninety-ninth and final episode airing on March 24^th 1990. NBC had originally greenlit a fifth season but withdrew their support, leaving a cliffhanger ending that was eventually tidied up in the 1996 TV movie Project ALF. The network didn’t completely abandon Fusco, though, and went ahead with a new show, this time aimed squarely at their Saturday morning kids TV block.

Produced in partnership with Marvel Animation (rather than DIC, who made the ALF cartoons), Space Cats was a mixture of Fusco’s puppetry and traditional animation, with a typical episode starting and finishing with the puppet characters topping and tailing the animated adventures of the titular cosmic felines. The Space Cats come from the planet Triglyceride-7 – which is ruled by a being named DORC (Disembodied Omnipotent Ruler of Cats) – and are under the command of Captain Catgut (voiced, like ALF, by Fusco).

Each episode would see the Catgut puppet receive his orders from DORC (the head of a green-skinned Charles Nelson Reilly, floating in a black void) and relay them to Scratch, Sniff, and Tom, his crew. Their missions included investigating why a beloved children’s clown is promoting violence on his TV show, why a has-been superhero has returned to action and is committing crimes, and why beautiful women are turning ugly, an adventure which introduced a female Space Cat, Yvette Meow.

A first season of thirteen episodes was produced, debuting in September 1991, but any prospect of a second season was scuppered when the network decided to abandon its commitment to Saturday morning programming. For a while, the show was seemingly lost, a rare occurrence for a 1990s show, and it has never received a home video release. With the advent of YouTube, some episodes have resurfaced, but three remain completely lost. That sounds like a case for the Space Cats?

Hammerman (ABC): Known primarily for his energetic dancing and his parachute pants, Stanley Kirk Burrell first adopted his MC Hammer alter-ego in 1986 when, having already established successful independent record label Bustin’ Records, he recorded his debut album, Feel My Power. Signed to Capitol Records two years later, his career was boosted by the release of his second album, Let’s Get It Started, before 1990’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em exploded him all over the globe.

The third album was accompanied by a movie – the imaginatively titled Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: The Movie – which saw him return to his former neighbourhood to sort out some drug dealers, but his clean-cut image and a rudimentary approach to sampling brought a backlash from critics and rival rappers. That didn’t seem to bother Hammer one bit and the next step was obviously a Saturday morning cartoon.

Produced by DIC Entertainment, Hammerman finds young Stanley Burrell working at a youth centre, where he finds a pair of magical dancing shoes that transform him into a superhero. The shoes formerly belonged to his “Gramps,” who used them to become Soulman; with Gramps’s advice, Hammerman faces such threats as Defacely Marmeister (who brings graffiti to life), Boss Grindenheimer (putting children to work), and Paula Bunion (shoe obsessive).

Even for a show aimed at children, Hammerman was panned by critics and didn’t attract viewers in enough quantity to survive beyond a thirteen-episode run, standard for the Saturday morning cartoons of its time. That’s a shame because if it had been a success, we might have got similar outings for NWA, Public Enemy, and 2 Live Crew, and you can only imagine what shape a Sir Mix-a-Lot cartoon might have taken…

Riders in the Sky (CBS): For many of us, a network passing on your idea for a sitcom for being too derivative of The Beverly Hillbillies would lead to a serious rethink about the events in our lives that brought us to that point. For Alan Sacks (co-creator of Welcome Back, Kotter and producer of skatesploitation yarn Thrashin’), though, it just meant retooling the idea for an even less-demanding audience and turning it into a Saturday morning children’s show.

Sack’s big idea was for a show based around Riders in the Sky, a cowboy-themed music and comedy act that had been performing since 1977 and whose long-running Riders Radio Theater was broadcast on NPR between 1988 and 1995. A three-piece consisting of Ranger Doug, Woody Paul, and Too Slim, the Riders were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1982 and enjoyed five seasons of their Tumbledweed Theater show, one of The Nashville Network’s foundation shows.

All Sacks had to do to convince CBS to sign off on his show was to invite them to see the Riders play live but the network – at least according to Sacks and the Riders themselves – then made a crucial error. Seeking some experienced hands to guide the project, CBS brought in Tommy Lynch, who oversaw eight seasons of children’s variety showcase Kids Incorporated that gave Stacy Ferguson, Martika, Mario Lopez, and Jennifer Love Hewitt their first breaks. Looking to steer Riders in the Sky towards “Pee-wee’s Playhouse meets the Wild West” territory, Lynch hired writer Pee-wee veteran George McGrath to write the shows, whereas all the Riders’ previous outings had been self-penned. Fred LaBour, aka Too Slim, would later say, “Everything we’ve had a hand in writing had been a success, we didn’t have a hand in that, and it wasn’t.”

Riders premiered on September 14^th 1991 and the group released a tie-in album, Harmony Ranch, named for their home on the show. A supporting cast of humans and puppets (provided by the Puppet Studio, more Pee-wee alumni) was introduced, but constant schedule changes didn’t allow the show to build a regular audience and CBS cancelled the show after just one season. The shows have never been released on home video due to a complicated rights situation, but Riders in the Sky still perform several times a month at the Grand Ole Opry.

ProStars (NBC): Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretsky are undoubted legends of basketball and ice hockey, respectively; household names who are among the first that come to mind when thinking of their sports. Bo Jackson, while not at the level of the other two, was a genuine two-sport superstar in baseball and football, and – thanks to Nike – appeared in just about every commercial break during 1989 and 1990 with their “Bo knows” catchphrase.

So, when DIC Entertainment’s Andy Heyward (together with actual British noble Douglas Booth) was putting together an animated show focussing on the four big US sports, the three stood out as natural contenders to become larger-than-life superheroes. The show was originally pitched to be part of a block of children’s programming on sports network ESPN, but when those plans were abandoned, NBC picked up the show for its Saturday morning schedule.

Debuting on NBC on September 14^th 1991, each episode of ProStars began with live-action footage of the stars, always seemingly filmed separately but with some effort made, at least, to make it look like Gretsky and Jackson were in the same room. The animated action would then proceed, passing on life lessons and solving Scooby Doo-style mysteries in the name of good sportsmanship, and with voice actors Dorian Harewood, Townsend Coleman, and Dave Fennoy performing the parts of Jordan, Gretsky, and Jackson.

Across the thirteen episodes that made up the first season, the ProStars fought mad scientists Clockwork Delorange and Dr Lobe, the Ghost Riders of St Vitus, rainforest destroyer Captain Nemo Ipanema, and wild biker Gargantus, all under the direction of Mom, their very Jewish mother stereotype boss and her assistant, Denise. Sadly, and unlike their pro-sports careers, ProStars was a one-season wonder despite decent ratings, another victim of NBC’s decision to focus on live-action shows such as Saved by the Bell on Saturday mornings.

Next time on Titans of Telephemera: We’re taking a deep dive into the works of Lou Scheimer’s Filmation studio!

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)