While most have us have been glued to their screens for the last year, one has to admit it’s a golden period for TV shows. When I think over the million hours I have spent watching TV, there are plenty of hours I desperately want back. But when it comes to really bad TV shows though, I do not find that time wasted. I can remember a friend calling me and saying “there’s this new show and it stars Sally Field– and she’s a nun that flies!” Or, “Have you heard about the show with a creature from outer space that lives with a family and it’s played by a puppet?” One cannot explain how horrifying and hilarious The Star Wars Holiday Special was. And unfortunately you’re probably too young to remember one of the most pitiful, humiliating and fabulously tasteless game shows of all time- Queen for a Day.
Now there are too many bad TV series to chronicle, but here’s a tribute to 10 of my favorite broadcast bombs.
My Mother the Car. In this notoriously reviled 1965 comedy series Jerry Van Dyke starred as an attorney who buys a 1928 Porter touring car only to find it is haunted by the spirit of his dead mother (Ann Sothern). Well, better that than a toaster.
Manimal. This 1963 show was about a shape-shifting doctor (Simon MacCorkindale) who used his powers to help the police solve crimes. See him turn into a hawk! A bear! A panther! A dolphin! See him cancelled after 8 episodes!
The Pruitts of Southampton. Phyllis Diller cackles her way into bad TV history playing a once wealthy woman now dead ass broke, trying to keep up appearances in her mansion. In the first episode Diller tried to roast a turkey in the washing machine. Kill me now.
Pink Lady & Jeff. Now here’s a novel idea for a musical variety show. Hire Japan’s number 1 musical act- two pretty Japanese singers named Mie & Kie– who can only speak 5 words of English. Pair them with an untalented comic (Jeff Altman), and then let the musical fun begin. Lots of glam outfits, bad jokes and nervous giggling made this last only five weeks on NBC in 1980.
Supertrain. Well, Love Boat was a hit, how about a train? Especially a nuclear-powered bullet train complete with a disco; a gym; a swimming pool; and a medical center. Because the trip from NY to L.A. takes 36 hours think of all the drama you can cram in each week. One of the more expensive flops for TV, this derailed pretty quickly, and came careening off the tracks after nine episodes in 1979.
My Living Doll. Oddball Desilu production starring smarmy Bob Cummings as (you’ll never guess) Bob, a psychiatrist entrusted with a beautiful android (Julie Newmar) by her inventor so as not to fall into the hands of the military. “Bob” tries to educate the buxom robot as to a woman’s duty like, “do what you’re told.” She can be controlled by certain beauty marks on her back. He teaches her piano; how to paint; she even enters a beauty contest. Bob Cummings left the show before the first season ended. One week his character had been assigned to Pakistan and that was that. The show was deactivated shortly after.
It’s About Time. Two astronauts (Frank Aletter & Jack Mullaney) get lost in space and end up back on earth during the cavemen era. Oh, and with dinosaurs too, further teaching kids to be moronic about prehistoric times. Imogene Coca plays a cavewoman named Shag and Joe. E. Ross plays Gronk. The tedious repetition of similar situations- dinosaur attacks, other angry cave people, volcanic eruptions- began boring audiences. So, after the 18th episode they reversed it. The astronauts fixed the spacecraft and returned to 1967 Earth (bringing along the goofy prehistoric people). It was even less groovy to audiences, who jettisoned this back to the stone age after the first season.
Woops! A post-apocalyptic sitcom with survivors of a nuclear holocaust holing up in a farmhouse in the middle of a wasteland. Laughing already? The narrator is Mark (Evan Handler), a schoolteacher who survived the blast because he was in his Volvo. There’s the jokey homeless man (Fred Applegate); a bookstore owner (Meagen Fay); a venture capitalist (Lane Davies); and an African American neurologist (Cleavant Derricks) who jokes when he walks into the house, “Tell me something, I’m the only black person here, aren’t I?” Think Gilligan’s Island but with radioactive sores.
The Hathaways. In this primitively unfunny 1961 comedy series, Jack Weston plays a real estate agent and Peggy Cass his whacky wife who ends up managing a trio of performing chimpanzees. Every week those poor Marquis Chimps had to get dressed in goofy outfits and were forced to perform zany antics to the amusement of no TV viewers. One television critic called this, “possibly the worst series ever to air on network TV.”
The Ugliest Girl in Town. Peter Kastner plays a 23-year-old assistant for Hollywood agents who dresses like a hippie for a photo shoot. He is mistaken for being a woman by a British modeling agency and decides to take the female modeling gig so he can visit his girlfriend (Patricia Brake) in England. To say he is unconvincing as a woman is an understatement, but everyone seems fooled by the gap-toothed, bewigged imposter. Remember how funny Some Like It Hot was? Were you a fan of the later sitcom Bosom Buddies, starring Tom Hanks in a dress? Well, this 1968 show is a different kind of drag. The theme song was by the Will-O-Bees: “Who owns that fabulous face? The ugliest girl in town…Whose clothes are setting the pace? The ugliest girl in town….Since the day she made the scene…She’s made the cover of every magazine…She’s got the whole world in a spin….She’s so far out, she’s in!”
This is a better way than coffee to start the day.
Oh my god I am singing the theme song to My Mother the Car now!