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 actually made it to air, though; what about the ones fell at the final hurdle, rejected concepts that might have been better than what did air? This is the story of four unsold pilots from 2001…
Constant Payne (Nickleodeon): After attending the University of Arizona, where he graduated in creative writing and both wrote and performed with a sketch comedy troupe, Micah Wright moved to Los Angeles to break into television. He joined Nickelodeon as a writer and script supervisor on The Angry Beavers, while also developing his own show, a steampunk adventure affair with an aesthetic inspired by anime, pulp magazines, and Soviet propaganda posters.
Wright’s concept was centred around the Payne family, a series of knights, monster hunters, policemen, and adventurers who have protected the world from the forces of evil for generations. Doc Payne, the incumbent defender, not only has to deal with the fact that his arch-nemesis – Welton Payne-Smythe – is his brother, but he is also forced to contend with the heroic ambitions of his daughter, Amanda, who wants to follow in his footsteps, much against his advice.
An eleven-minute pilot titled Constant Payne was produced by Madhouse, a Japanese animation studio best known for anime movies Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Perfect Blue, as well as a string of popular anime TV shows. The voice cast was led by David Keith and Fred Tatasciore as the warring brothers, with debutant Aspen Miller as Amanda. Shown to test audiences in the Summer of 2001, the pilot rated highly, but news soon broke that the show had not been picked up to series.
Officially, Nickelodeon opted not to continue with Constant Payne due to concerns about airing violent shows in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but Wright has always contended that the real reason had more to do with his activism during a drive by Nickelodeon writers to unionise. Wright would later point the finger of blame at Nick Executive Vice-President Cyma Zarghami, who he accused of illegally harassing, firing, and blacklisting staff who were members of the Writers Guild of America. Zarghami, he said, accused Constant Payne of “promoting terrorism.”
Subsequent efforts by Wright to sell Constant Payne to Warner Bros, and as a feature film to overseas producers, came to nothing, and he instead moved into the world of comic books after a meeting with DC imprint Wildstorm editors at the 2001 San Diego Comic Con. The result was Stormwatch: Team Achilles, a critically acclaimed but low-selling book that was cancelled short of completing Wright’s planned 26-issue arc.
Nevertheless, Wright began work on Vigilante, a title set in the mainstream DC Universe, but also had a collection of his anti-war posters – You Back the Attack, We’ll Bomb Whoever We Want – collected in the wake of the second Gulf War. Some editions of the book included an introduction by Wright where he told of his experiences as an Army Ranger, but it was discovered – by some hostile to his message – that he only served in the reserves, and the ensuing fallout was huge. Wright was privately told he was blacklisted by both DC and Marvel and subsequently moved into video games and combined his interests by leading the WGA’s video game caucus.
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (The WB): The original Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was created by Sid and Marty Krofft in 1976. Sixteen short episodes aired as part of the first season of The Krofft Supershow, a ninety-minute variety show on ABC that was hosted by rock band Kaptain Kool and the Kongs.
After a quick flash of light known as the ElectraChange, Newsmaker Magazine journalists Lori and Judy (Deidre Hall and Just Strangis) would transform into Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, fighting crime using a host of gadgets and their ElectraCar, all under the direction of Frank Helfin, a scientist who stayed back at the ElectraBase and monitored criminal activity with his CrimeScope computer. After dispatching some nefarious threats as The Sorceror, The Empress of Evil, Ali Baba, Glitter Rock, and the Spider Lady, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl did not return for the second series of The Krofft Supershow, which was cut down to an hour for its sophomore outing.
Although it obviously wasn’t popular enough for a second season and soon faded from popular memory, it did stick in the memory of those who saw it and in 1992 writer Bryan JL Glass and artist Michael Avon Oeming created Lycra Woman and Spandex Girl, their comic book tribute to the show in Spandex Tights: The Adventures of the Aerobic Duo. After threats of legal action by Du Pont Chemical, who owned the trademark to Lycra, Lycra Woman became Flex Woman (Spandex is apparently a generic term, an anagram of “expands”), but the affectionate parody still stood.
Glass and Oeming were not the only ones who loved the show as kids and then grew up to be in a position to do something about it, and in 2001, Warner Bros announced that they were producing a new Electra Woman and Dyna Girl pilot, to be scripted by Vegas Vacation‘s Elisa Bell and Extreme Ghostbusters creator Jeff Kline. Cocking a snoot at the original show and superheroes in general, the pilot starred newcomer Anne Stedman as Judy, a lifelong fan of Electra Woman (Night Court‘s Markie Post) who tracks down her hero in Las Vegas.
A hot, drunken mess, Lori has been living in a trailer since her divorce – her husband ran off with the original Dyna Girl – but Judy not only manages to convince her to come out of retirement, but she also becomes the new Dyna Girl! The pilot ends with Lori deciding to continue being Electra Woman and finish her college studies, joining Judy in her university dorm, and there were apparently plans to bring back some of the original series villains and have Strangis reprise her Dyna Girl role as the show’s arch-villain. All that was moot, though, as NBC decided against a full series. The 2001 pilot can still be found in the deepest recesses of the internet, but it would be another fifteen years before the property was rebooted again, this time by Legendary Pictures as a series of eight eleven-minute webisodes in 2016, later released on DVD.
Invincible (TBS): From the moment identical twins Chad and Carey Hayes appeared in a Doublemint commercial as kids it was clear that a career in Hollywood beckoned, even if it did take them a few years to land their first feature roles, as twin BMXers in Hal Needham’s Rad in 1986. Chad took a few more roles, but they began to dabble in scriptwriting; Carey got his first credits on 21 Jump Street spin-off Booker in 1989 before the two collaborated on a movie script, 1990’s The Dark Side of the Moon, the sole feature by music video director DJ Webster.
From there, a series of TV movies – including Crowned and Dangerous and First Daughter – led them to Jefery Levy, an interesting character who’d written and produced Ghoulies straight out of UCLA in 1985. In 1991, Levy directed his debut feature, Drive, and became the youngest associate professor at USC’s School of Cinema-Television, later delivering slacker cash-in SFW and then moving into television.
After working on shows such as Sliders, Levy directed a series of unsold pilots, including Hollyweird and Freakylinks, becoming a go-to man for slightly outré concepts. This made him perfect for Invincible, a spec script sold by the Hayes twins that went into production in 1999, by which point it had been rewritten by Levy and future 2 Fast 2 Furious writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. The bones of the Hayes’ story remained, however, a story of warring races of immortal beings known as the White Warriors and the Shadow Men.
Billy Zane starred as Os, a Shadow Man offered a path of redemption by a White Warrior; find the five elemental warriors who can save the world and stop the Shadow Men and their leader, Slate (Australian actor David Field). Field’s casting was convenient as the pilot was shot over 23 days in Australia, also belying the presence of executive producer Mel Gibson, who brought Lethal Weapon 4 co-star Jet Li on board to oversee wire work on the film.
After the pilot was completed, work began on trying to find a home for the project. Zane would not be part of any future series – the climax of the pilot has him sending the four surviving elemental warriors (Tony Kittles, Byron Mann, Stacy Oversier, and future Prison Break and Legends of Tomorrow star Dominic Purcell) off to find more of their kind, which presumably would have formed the backbone of the subsequent series.
By 2001, the cast had all gone their separate ways and it was clear that there would be no Invincible series. A deal was made with the TBS Superstation to air the pilot as a TV movie, with a DVD release following two years later, marketed with Jet Li’s name front and centre. The Hayes would eventually strike gold with The Conjuring in 2013, while Levy largely faded from the business in the mid-2000s, roughly around the time he was scammed by wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan, the subject of the 2016 documentary Sour Grapes.
Earth Angels (NBC): It might be uncharitable – if fair – to describe Anne Rice as a one trick pony, so tied is she to her Vampire Chronicles series, but that’s not to say she hasn’t attempted to branch out, albeit with decidedly mixed results. Rice roared out of the gate with 1976’s Interview with the Vampire, spawning a cross-media empire built around the dashing vampire Lestat that would later include a big budget film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and a 2022 AMC TV adaptation.
After two historical in 1979 and 1982, Rice returned to Lestat in 1985 and again in 1988, before trying her hand at other genre staples with 1989’s The Mummy and the first of the Lives of the Mayfair Witches series a year later. During the 1990s, Rice wove between vampires and witches, and the success of Neil Jordan’s 1994 movie adaptation of Interview with the Vampire saw her courted by Hollywood, for whom she delivered a story outline for a proposed series, Rag and Bone, in 1997. The resulting pilot starred Dean Cain and Robert Patrick but was not picked up for series and instead aired as a TV movie in 1998.
As well as Rag and Bone, two other Rice adaptations were in production (Servant of the Bones and Feast of All Saints, the latter of which was made into a TV mini-series in 2001), as well as another pilot based on an original story by the author. The basic conceit behind Earth Angels was an ongoing war between good and bad angels, with the focus on five such beings who live secret lives on Earth. Primarily, they act as a police force of sorts, their assignments coming through prayer, ready to combat demons – and their own kind – with righteous fury.
The show was set in New York and – being an Anne Rice story – made much of the temptations of the flesh on offer to our angel heroes, particularly the main character, the curious and rebellious David. Toni Graphia, creator of the short-lived 1997 show Orleans (set in Rice’s beloved home city), was tasked with writing a script for a presentation pilot, which was filmed under the direction of Bronwen Hughes in Toronto in March 2001 with a cast including The X-Files’ Nicholas Lea and The Walking Dead’s Lynn Collins in an early role.
Contemporary reports in Variety and other records of note reveal NBC were quite excited about Earth Angels, but that excitement obviously faded since they declined to pick up their option on the series. There was talk that they might adapt Lives of the Mayfair Witches instead, but that came to nothing, too, and it would be 2023 before we got to see a live-action Rowan Fielding, courtesy of AMC. As for Earth Angels, portions of Rice’s original treatment for the story were included as bonus material in the 1999 Sicilian Dragon Press comic book Anne Rice’s Tales of the Body Thief, but the publisher closed down before the series was finished.
Next time on The Telephemera Years: What were the kids of 2001 watching? Sumo wrestling, apparently…
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, 2)
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