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!
2001-02
Although they were still experiencing difficulties finding the right show for their 8.30pm slot, NBC’s Must-See Thursdays continued to dominate the TV ratings in in 2001-02, with Friends and ER occupying two of the top three spots and Will & Grace and Just Shoot Me not far behind. Their chief competition came from CBS, whose CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was entering its second season and threatening to topple Friends from its perch. Monday Night Football was ABC’s sole top-rating show and the Alphabet network also said goodbye to two sitcom stalwarts when both Spin City and Dharma & Greg began their final runs in Fall 2001.
ABC did have JJ Abrams’s Alias and insane dating show The Bachelor on deck for the new season, though just two of a handful of notable new arrivals that also included 24, Scrubs, Six Feet Under, and Star Trek: Enterprise, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer moved from The WB to UPN for its sixth season. Genre fans were well served by new shows in 2001, with Roswell and Smallville coming on board, although The X-Files would reach the end of its conspiracy trail by May 2002. Those are all shows that people remember, though; what about the ones that left less of an impact on the collective memory? This is the story of four more flops from 2001…
That ‘80s Show (Fox): When That ‘70s Show debuted in August 1998, viewers couldn’t get enough of the 1976 exploits of Eric Forman and pals, and the show became a mainstay of the Fox schedules. After the network announced they were renewing That ‘70s Show for its third and fourth seasons, co-creator Mark Brazil joked that they would soon have to rename the show to That ‘80s Show as the characters moved forward in time. In the end, it took eight seasons for That ’70s Show to reach December 31st 1979 and the show ended just one second away from the new decade.
Although season two’s ratings had fallen to just under six million viewers from a season one average of seven, season three saw almost a million new viewers a week turning into That ‘70s Show and Fox were keen to capitalise on their hit. In August 2001, Fox asked Brazil and Terry Turner to repeat the formula for a spin-off show set a decade later and they tasked producer Linda Wallem with developing That ‘80s Show for real.
It was decided that the show would not be a direct spin-off of That ‘70s Show and would be set in 1984 in San Diego, California, rather than Point Place, Wisconsin, with an all-new set of characters unrelated to Eric, Donna, Kelso, and company. Rather than High Schoolers, That ‘80s Show would focus on the lives of twentysomethings who frequent record store Permanent Records and Club Berlin, led by struggling musician Corey Howard. Newcomer Glenn Howerton was cast as Corey, living at home with his Valley Girl sister Katie (Tinsley Grimes) and divorced father RT (Geoff Pierson from Unhappily Ever After).
Corey’s main foil is June Tuesday, a punk rocker played by Chyler Leigh who also works with him at Permanent Records, with members of their gang also including wannabe yuppie Roger, Corey’s ex-girlfriend Sophia (who now has a crush on his sister), and Margaret, the ex-hippie owner of Permanent Records who has some wild stories to tell.
Episode one – written by Brazil, Turner, and Wallem, and which aired in January 2002 as a mid-season replacement in a slot previously running Malcolm in the Middle repeats – ends with Corey and June going out for coffee, and it was “will they/won’t they?” from that point on. Critics were less than kind to That ’80 Show from the off, but the more helpful pointed out that the show missed its target audience, depicting the experiences their older brothers and sisters had in the 1980s rather than their own teenage years.
Still, the premiere attracted over eleven million viewers, dropping to nine a week later for a Valentines’ Day mix-up yarn and tumbling steadily thereafter. By episode eleven, ratings had dipped beneath five million and the decision was made to cancel the show after it had finished its run of thirteen episodes, the last one including a subplot built around the last episode of M*A*S*H, a show whose longevity That ‘80s Show could only dream of.
Tales from the Neverending Story (HBO): The process of adapting a novel for TV or movies is never a simple one and often ends up with either the original author or his fans railing at the result. That’s certainly true of The NeverEnding Story, 1984 German/American adaptation of Michael Ende’s 1979 novel, although that’s probably news to fans of the film, for whom it is a delightful fantasy adventure with a nice Limahl theme tune.
Ende worked on the script for The NeverEnding Story with director Wolfgang Peterson, but Peterson later made so many changes that Ende asked him to not release the film or at least change its name. They did neither and a subsequent legal challenge went the way of Peterson. Peterson’s film adapted the first half of Ende’s book, with the second taken care of by 1990’s The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter. A third film, The NeverEnding Story III, followed in 1994 but was based on an original story.
In 1995, Canadian animation studio Nelvana produced a twenty-six-episode series, The Neverending Story: The Animated Adventures of Bastian Balthazar Bux, which told stories of Bastian’s further adventures in Fantastica, at least getting the name right from Ende’s novel, even if it was again only loosely based upon it. Ende died shortly before it premiered on HBO in December 1995, but he may have been more accommodating towards it than the films, which he dismissed as “gigantic melodrama made of kitsch and commerce, plush and plastic”.
Five years later, Dieter Geißler, who had produced the three movies Ende hated so much, partnered with Canadian production company Muse Entertainment for Tales from the Neverending Story, a thirteen-part series loosely based on Ende’s novel but departing even more from key parts of the narrative than before. The series begins with a diverged origin story for Bastian’s discovery of Fantasia (the name used in the movies) and introduces new characters such as Lucas, Marley, and female adventurer Fly Ry, with events from the novels often out of sequence (when they are included at all).
Newcomer Mark Rendall starred as Bastian, with Tyler Hynes as Atreyu and Audrey Gardner as the Childlike Empress, and the bulk of the writing duties were divided between Leila Basen and David Preston, who’d recently worked together on several period dramas. The thirteen episodes were shown on the Hallmark Channel in the UK from August 11th 2001 and recut into four two-hour movies to be shown monthly on HBO in the US from October 1st that year.
Reactions were divided between those who thought it anathema to Ende’s novel (just as they had the movies), those who loved the movie but regarded Tales from the Neverending Story as a cheap imitation, and those who enjoyed it as a cheaply produced children’s TV show despite its obvious shortcomings. Recently, with rights back in the hands of Ende’s estate, plans have been revealed for a series of films based on the book, this time hoping to capture its charms in a more faithful manner.
Greg the Bunny (Fox): Greg the Bunny started as a character on the cable access TV show Junktape, hosting a segment where clips from various films were edited together to make it seem like they were from the same movie. Created by friends Dan Milano, Spencer Chinoy, and Sean Baker because none of them wanted to appear on camera themselves, Greg’s role expanded to street interviews, soon becoming a cult hero among the alcoholics, the unemployable, and angry loners who made up the bulk of New York public access TV viewers.
The Independent Film Channel, a spin-off from cable TV channel Bravo, approached the trio with an offer of Greg becoming the channel’s mascot, but they turned the offer down, instead – through Chinoy’s brother Kevin, an independent film producer – signing a deal for a series of short films, beginning in 1998. In the features, Greg would enjoy little adventures while his pal, Warren the Ape, would supply trivia about the movies IFC were showing.
After two years of doing the shorts, they shopped Greg around Hollywood and caught the attention of Neil Moritz, who had just produced his first film, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Although Moritz didn’t really do TV, he came on board as a co-producer and sold the Fox network on a half-hour sitcom starring Greg as the co-host of a fictional kid’s TV show called Sweetknuckle Junction.
In the world of the sitcom, puppets like Greg – and Warren (the Ape) DeMontague and Count Frederick Blah – are living creatures, a minority who prefer to be known as “fabricated Americans.” Greg’s co-host on Sweetknuckle Junction is an anti-puppet bigot named Jack Mars (The Shawshank Redemption‘s Bob Gunton), who nevertheless enjoys drinking with Warren and the Count. Off-air, Greg shares an apartment with Seth Green’s Jimmy Bender, son of Sweetknuckle Junction’s put-upon producer Gil (the wonderful Eugene Levy)
Also featuring Sarah Silverman and Dina Waters, Greg the Bunny debuted in March 2002 with a run of thirteen episodes planned, but only eleven aired before Fox pulled the plug. Low ratings were the official reason, although Greg the Bunny did better than Temptation Island, Futurama, and Family Guy, all of which were renewed. The real reason probably lay more in the conflict between Greg’s creators and the network over the direction of the show, which was marketed as an edgy, adult puppet show but with showrunner Bill Freiburger keen on a more traditional family sitcom feel.
In August 2004, IFC began re-airing Greg the Bunny, complete with the final two episodes of the Fox series. A DVD release in October 2004 led to Fur on the Asphalt: A Greg the Bunny Reunion Special on IFC in June 2005, followed by two seasons of movie parody shorts, bringing the character full circle to his public access TV origins. IFC continue to show the shorts and in 2010, MTV gave Warren the Ape his own show, with Greg, Seth Green, and Sarah Silverman as guest stars in a storyline continuation from the Fox show.
Andy Richter Controls the Universe (Fox): The son of a kitchen cabinet designer and a Russian language lecturer from Chicago, Andy Richter got his start with the city’s Improv Olympic, where he went from student to “house performer” within a year. Moving onto the Annoyance Theatre, he caught a lucky break when their production of The Real Live Brady Bunch – a word-for-word recreation of episodes of the famous sitcom – transferred to New York and the actor playing Mike Brady didn’t want to go. Richter asked if he could take the role and moved to the Big Apple with the rest of the cast in 1991.
While The Real Live Brady Bunch was playing in New York, two of the cast – Beth Cahill and Melanie Hutsell – were hired as cast members on Saturday Night Live and Richter began to mix socially with SNL’s cast and crew. Two years later, when SNL writer Robert Smigel landed the job of producing NBC’s new late-night talk show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, he hired Richter to be the comedian’s sidekick.
Richter stayed with Late Night with Conan O’Brien until May 2000 when he left to pursue other opportunities. Mindful of friends who’d left TV and been swamped with offers from Hollywood, he left for Los Angeles but struggled to find the right opportunity until he was introduced to Victor Fresco, a former ALF writer who’d just created the soon-to-be-cancelled The Trouble with Normal for ABC.
Immediately bonding through mutual friend Paget Brewster (who’d starred in The Trouble with Normal and would go on to appear in Andy Richter…), the pair developed Fresco’s idea of Andy Richter as a character, an unreliable narrator. With an ambition to become a short story writer, fantastic stories would spin out of Andy’s job as a writer of technical manuals, including conversations with the long dead founder of the company he works for and a sandwich man he accuses of being Adolf Hitler.
Alongside Richter and Brewster (who played Jessica, his former colleague and now his boss) were Jonathan Slavin, musical theatre actress Irene Molloy, and soap opera veteran James Patrick Stuart, with guest stars including O’Brien, Cedric Yarbrough, Jon Cryer, and model-turned-actress Molly Sims. A short first season of seven episodes ran on Fox from March 19th to April 23rd 2002 and was successful enough that a second season was ordered, to begin in December that year.
Never afraid to push the envelope, season two upped the ante, a tough proposition when Richter fought a real-life kangaroo in season one, but ratings fell to the point that Fox cancelled the show after just eight episodes, the final five episodes going unaired. All nineteen episodes did eventually get shown on cable channel HDNet in 2004, by which time Richter had moved onto his next Fox project as the father of father troublesome teens in Quintuplets, a barely remembered single-season affair. It’s Andy Richter Controls the Universe, though, that pops up in lists of shows cancelled before their time and with very good cause.
Next time on The Telephemera Years: 2001’s unsold pilots, including the return of Electra Woman & Dyna Girl!
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: 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: 1991 (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: 2001 (part 1)
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: 2007 (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: Filmation (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: Rankin/Bass