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We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a special presentation...

 

 

 

Are You Being Served? The Next Generation

The BBC has released the first picture from the set of the new Are You Being Served?

 

We previously featured the new cast at this link.

Saturday Nights with Roseanne

Stung by its embarrassing and expensive late night failure with Chevy Chase, Fox was eager to get something going on late nights. Saturday Night Live was coming off a lackluster season and almost found itself completely canceled. NBC had insisted that Lorne Michaels fire nearly everyone and retool if he wanted the show to continue. Fox saw an opening, but instead of choosing one potential comedy show, it chose to put two into production. The first show it considered had built in name recognition. Based on the famed satirical magazine, Mad TV would get the first shot at taking down Saturday Night Live.

 

The most 1990's picture you'll ever see outside of Friends.

The show would make great inroads against SNL. Since FOX was able to clear an 11-Midnight time slot, viewers could sample a full half-hour of the show before SNL even started. Successful but not quite a knockout punch, FOX chose to give its other show a shot- Roseanne Barr's Saturday Night Special.

 

In the mid-1990's, Roseanne Barr could pretty much do anything she wanted. Flush with success and cash from her eponymous sitcom, anyone and everyone in Hollywood would drop everything to speak with her about anything she liked. And in 1996, Roseanne Barr liked sketch comedy. Featuring future standouts Jennifer Coolidge and Kathy Griffin, the show was hyped by Roseanne as being an SNL killer. It wouldn't live up to Roseanne's lofty claims; in fact, it wouldn't live up to Mad TV. By the end of the season the choice was clear. FOX would renew Mad TV and cancel Roseanne Barr's Saturday Night Special. Roseanne Barr's show, which she insisted would kill SNL actually had the opposite effect; Mad TV would not be able to maintain the momentum it was building before Roseanne's show took over its spot. Lorne was able to comfortably rebuild without Mad TV nipping at its heels for the second half of the season.

All in the Family Ruse

 

The Famous Mr. Eds

 

A Five Year Journey

 

WKRP Regrets

 

SNL DOA?

When Lorne Michaels started up Saturday Night Live in 1975, he had assumed it would be a stepping stone to bigger and better things. NBC had only given him the time slot because it had been airing reruns of The Tonight Show on Saturday nights and it needed to find something else to show. Johnny Carson had felt that the reruns were cutting into the future syndication value of the show and wanted NBC to show something else. They brought in Lorne and gave him the opportunity to put something together with minimal interference. He put together a show that became an instant sensation- Saturday Night Live.

NBC was thrilled with the show's success, but it had made a glaring error. Unsure of the show's potential, it had only locked in the show's talent for five years. (The standard is usually seven.) The show had made Lorne and his cast household names and they became impatient towards the end, waiting for their contracts to expire. Chevy Chase, who would only agree to sign for one season was the first to leave, quickly taking on huge projects. With none of the original cast onboard with going past five seasons, Lorne Michaels decreed that as far as he was concerned, the fifth season would be the last one. NBC had other plans.

 

The network hired Jean Doumanian, one of the show's writers, to keep the show going. With no returning talent, she recast the show completely. The new cast would have huge shoes to fill. When the show returned in Fall of 1980, a large audience greeted its return. They were terribly disappointed. It wasn't that viewers wouldn't accept change- the show was just awful. NBC began to think it had made a mistake.

 

Things came to a head when Charlene Tilton of Dallas fame hosted the show. The infamous "Who Shot J.R.?" storyline had captivated the country. Having one of the young, attractive stars from television's hottest show would certainly bring back viewers. NBC felt certain that this episode could turn the show's fortunes around. It would actually have quite the opposite effect.

The writers decided to have a corny recurring sketch in which it is announced that Charles Rocket, the Weekend Update anchor, was "shot" like J.R. The show wound down to its eventual conclusion with some time to kill at the end. During good nights, Ms. Tilton was asked to stretch things out, so she decided to ask him how he felt like to be shot. His response included an F-Bomb. NBC had toyed with the idea of canceling the show before and this incident was the last straw. Doumanian was dismissed as was Charles Rocket.

 

Enter Dick Ebersole. He had wanted the producer position when Lorne left the show, but he was passed over for Doumanian. While NBC merely expected him to just wind things down, he sought to convince them that he could fix things if given at least one more season. NBC just wanted him to get the last two scheduled episodes completed. (It had canceled the rest of that season's shows.) Ebersole decided to highlight the two strongest comedians on the show- Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy, who had been shamefully underused by Doumanian. Things seemed to improve and the network was ecstatic about Eddie Murphy. They were certain that he could be a breakout star. 

When the season ended, Ebersole won out. NBC would give the show at least one more season to prove itself. Everyone except for Piscopo and Murphy were fired and a new cast was brought in. NBC's risk paid off. Eddie Murphy became a sensation. This show was saved.

Laverne & Shirley: Behind the Scenes

 

On this day in 1983, the classic Happy Days spinoff aired its final episode. A rare case of a program that surpassed the show it spun off from, there was a time when it was truly 'must see TV'. A spinoff cartoon was commissioned that placed the girls in the army. Unlike other cartoons of the time, the animated Laverne and Shirley actually featured the voices of the original actresses.

 

The show was so popular, it even spawned a record album.

 

Despite its initial success, the show flamed out early, in part due to the infighting on the show. Producers originally planned to end things after five seasons, but eked out two more seasons at the urging of ABC.

The Brady Bunch Hour

It was a weird idea- take the Brady Bunch and put them into a variety show. Bright, tacky and loud, variety shows were all the rage in a decade in which much of fashion was bright, tacky and loud. The idea was so weird that ABC and Paramount didn't even bother to ask show creator Sherwood Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz could have put the kibosh on the enterprise, but he knew the Brady kids really needed the money. The Brady Bunch Hour went into production.

 

For Sid and Marty Krofft, this would be the project that put them on the map. Well, the one that would cement their place on the map at least. Sid and Marty Krofft were known as the kings of kids TV, but they wanted to make something for families. They had spent time working on other variety shows, but this would be one created by them from the ground up. Featuring a water follies troupe called the Kroftettes, the show was supposed to be the biggest variety production ever. ABC had signed the entire family except for Eve Plumb. Contrary to popular belief, Eve did want to participate, but she didn't want to commit to five seasons of thirteen episodes apiece. Instead they recast her with Geri Reischel, who became miserable after fans of the show rejected her. The biggest surprise of all was Robert Reed's participation. He had been a thorn in Sherwood Schwartz' side for years, rewriting scripts and hassling producers about the show's hokiness. For this Variety Show, he was a model employee. He loved the music, the dancing and the theatricality.

 

To round out the cast, ABC brought in Rip Taylor who bizarrely served as the Bradys famous neighbor. They hosted guests like Donny and Marie, the kids from What's Happening and even Redd Foxx.

 

The show would go onto infamy. In a world of tacky, garish variety shows, the Bradys hosted the tackiest most garish one of them all. Before the Bradys could settle into their variety home, the show was roundly rejected by viewers. Perhaps the show was too much for even the tackiest decade to handle. It would only last half a season, but would live on in infamy.

"The Challenge of the Superheroes!"

In 1979, Hanna Barbera decided to stretch out from animation into live action. It used its DC Comics license to produce a bizarre two part special- The Challenge of the Superheroes!

Stepping into roles they created a decade before, Adam West, Burt Ward and Frank Gorshin returned to form, battling each other yet again. Undoubtedly inspired by the wild success of Superman, this bizarre spectacle brought together cast off DC characters in a tacky, tawdry two part special. The first part was an overlong 1966 Batman episode with the second half a bizarre spoof of Dean Martin's Celebrity Roasts which were already on life support by that time. Would the kids of 1979 understand the joke? Would their grandparents, the primary audience for Dean Martin's rickety roasts, appreciate the cheesy superheroes? No and no. Hanna Barbera's short lived live action adventure would fail, becoming a seldom seen fiasco that DC Comics would disavow. The program has finally gotten a home video release as part of Warner's Archive Collection, nearly three decades after its release.

A Motivational Speaker

An Undercover Sith

"Happy Days" Guest Star Week: Crispin Glover

Best known as George McFly from Back to the Future, Crispin Glover has been creeping out nearly everyone for quite some time now.

During the last season of Happy Days, he was a thieving student named "Roach". It was during the show's last season. 

"Happy Days" Guest Star Week: Ed Begley, Jr.

Ed Begley, Jr. is known as an environmentalist and a prolific actor today.

On Happy Days, however, he played a young street tough who was in a gang that Richie Cunningham wanted to join. After accomplishing a series of dares, he and Potsie are accepted into the gang only to refuse the invitation.

"Happy Days" Guest Star Week: GW Bailey

Long before GW Bailey played a detective on TNT's The Closer and Major Crimes, he had a guest starring role on the television classic Happy Days.

On Happy Days, he played a skeevy photographer who tried to take advantage of Joanie Cunningham.

Malcolm and the Coincidences

The sitcom Malcolm in the Middle was a big hit for the Fox network in the early 2000's. While many sitcoms featured a relatively sane family whose peace was often interrupted by their wacky neighbors, the family in Malcolm in the Middle was the wacky family. When the family's annual vacation is abruptly canceled, they discover that others in the neighborhood threw an annual block party purposely scheduled for a time when it was believed they'd be out of town.

After the show concluded, actress Jane Kaczmarek was given her character's wardrobe as a gift from the network. She was wearing one of the outfits one day when she happened to catch a rerun of the show. She was wearing the same outfit that her character was wearing on the rerun.

Actor Aaron Paul had auditioned for the role of Francis, Malcolm's oldest brother. He desperately wanted the role so that he could work with Bryan Cranston, but it was not to be- yet. He would later co-star with Mr. Cranston in Breaking Bad.

Happy Thanksgiving

"As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"

MST3K: Wild World of Batwoman

"The devil made this movie for you!"

BANNED by SNL Viewers: Andy Kaufman

While many guest stars have gotten banned from SNL by show producer Lorne Michaels for their various transgressions, one guest was banned by the audience themselves- Andy Kaufman.

While Andy's sense of humor was not everyone's cup of tea, he had always been a source of irreverent humor for the show. In 1983, having used then new 1-900 numbers to decide the fate of a lobster and to choose a host for the show, Dick Ebersole, decided to let the audience decide whether Andy should be banned forever from the show or not. Viewers could call one number to vote yes and one to vote no. The show's actors and actresses were obviously trying to sway the audience to keep Andy and not ban him. The audience had different plans and he became the first and only person banned from the show by the viewers themselves. Was it another Andy Kaufman con job? Possibly, but he never appeared on the show again.