Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Strange Saturdays: Picture Gary Dead


I can picture the discussion at NBC- “Kids love that Gary Coleman, don’t they? Why don’t we kill him off and make it a cartoon?” Crazy, right? Can you believe it actually happened?


The Gary Coleman Show premiered in 1982 on NBC and was based on the made for TV film The Kid With The Broken Halo in which Gary portrayed a kid who died and must help still living people to earn his wings. It was a strange role for an actor who had severe health problems for most of his life. It was even stranger that Hanna Barbera and NBC thought that a show about a dead kid was appropriate children’s programming. The show never caught on and lasted just one season.