Several experiments have involved either a failed two-hour backdoor pilot movie, or two episodes of a failed series clumsily edited together. What other known series failures would you like to see riffed?
Mine would be the 1987 attempt at Bates Motel, the one that tried to position the iconic motel at the center of a horror dramedy episodic anthology. (Good premise, actually; dead wrong IP to pair with it.) Anthony Perkins was attached to that project for a while, but he wisely backed out once he realized its true nature.
With the new television season upon us here in the States, we could also open this up to the fresh crop of new series. Mine is going to be the first attempt at the MacGyver remake. Whatever your feelings on Mac Remake 2.0, there’s probably lots to riff with Mac Remake Beta, the original pilot that CBS wisely threw back.
I know it’s cliche, but c’mon! Cop Rock! Too easy? Maybe. What’s your pick?
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As previously mentioned… Gilligan’s Island
Shakespeare was once a commonly understood element of western culture, then came Gilligan’s Island. Instead of “Alas poor…” it became “Gilligan, you idiot!” I guess like most comedies it would be a terrible candidate for the Reboot, but just consider this concept posted on the MeTV web site –
GILLIGAN’S ISLAND IS HELL!!! Think about it. They can never leave. It is endlessly repetitive. Some of the castaways seem to represent the seven mortal sins – Ginger is Lust, Mr. Howell is Greed, and so on. Suddenly it all makes sense! Aaaagh!!
Every time I see people hooked on ” binging serial season arcs” of Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, I always tell them “People, you’re watching Dynasty in better clothes!”
You had some respect for Dallas because of JR, and Knots Landing was more of a cult thing, but ohh, was Dynasty the lowest in ratings cheese–In the late 70’s through the 80’s, when TV Guide said “Sweeps week”, you just braced yourself for what ABC would do.
(And as for whatever happened to TV Guide, I did a requiem on my own blog post: http://movieactivist.blogspot.com/2016/07/july-29-2016-tv-activist-pt.html )
Normally, I’d say Fantasy Island was hilariously sleazy, corny, overwrought and 70’s-campy–and I mean the plots and acting, not “the plane”–but I’ve too much respect for it. We don’t have good male role models in our modern “Mike & Molly” era of TV, and thirty years ago, you just wanted to be Mr. Roarke.
Robert Blake’s 1985 masterwork “Hell Town”.
That was a made for tv movie,not a series..
Heil,Honey,I’m Home!,which about Hitler and Eva Braun moving to the suburbs of Berlin..
Supertrain
Triangle..a soap opera about a British ferry.
Never heard of Automan before so I looked it up. Holy carp, what a pile of cheese! Sort of a reverse-Tron, slathered over with all the dreck that early 80s era TV could muster.
The Michael Richards Show…Michael Richards plays an awkward private eye…
Cavemen…(from the Geico Caveman commercials)
The Muppets (2015)
Quark. It was a sci-fi show from 1977-78, featuring Tim Thomerson of Dollman fame, about intergalactic garbage collectors. There’s a lot of jokes possible from just those two sentences.
Yeah, I was about to correct that too–70’s/80’s TV HAD to follow every single hit movie’s lead, and you wouldn’t think the networks could knock off Tron, but they found a way. (Automan doesn’t turn into a car, but he does produce his own cheesy lightcycle-car…Maybe the OP was thinking of Saturday morning’s Turbo Teen?)
And yeah, I noticed the header said “Failed” series, so have to change my vote:
Count me in the “What’s the big deal about Firefly apart from the fact that Fox cancelled it at the same time as Brisco County?” camp, but there is so much about Galactica 1980 that truly DESERVES riffing.
If you’re thinking “Space Mutiny jokes”, you just haven’t watched the danged mess.
Comedies and sit-coms, no matter how bad, don’t make good riffing. It takes shows that take themselves too seriously. Planet of the apes TV show and Logan’s Run would be good. Buck Rogers, yes.
Actually, I thought “Quark” was pretty funny.
They might’ve tried the two “Captain America” attempted pilots with Reb Brown. I’m sure the references to “Space Mutiny” would’ve been plentiful. (Actually, if my information is correct, Shout! has the rights to those movies now, so maybe they might turn up via RT or the revival.)
“Mann and Machine”. It was a short lived NBC TV show from the early 1990’s. Basically a detective is paired up with a female android (Yancy Butler of “Witchblade” fame)that was capable of learning and emotion. The show tanked so bad in the ratings it was pulled off the air by NBC after four episodes! The other five episodes that were filmed were shown as summertime “filler”.
and that counts just fine! damn i’d love to see them do ‘kiss’. and though it’d be fun to see them do ‘quark’, that was -just- a hair too well-done to be mstied, imho (plus as originally half-hour episodes, they wouldn’t really work as a stitched-together ‘movie’). now, ol’ gil gerrard ‘buck rogers’ – those were an hour long each, cheesy as all hell!
The Adventures of Superman would be at the very top of my list. I enjoyed RiffTrax doing the lost episode, and it makes me hungry for more.
i also wanna put in a second belated plug for them to try to get ‘salvage-1’ – probably just the first tv-movie pilot-epi and not the remaining however-many-epis they did of it, but it has its own odd place in ‘almost good but not good enough’ tv history. ;0
John Hanna says: “I would love to see them take on an episode of ‘Pink Lady And Jeff’, or maybe the infamous ‘Paul Lynde Halloween Special’ that starred Margeret ‘Wicked Witch Of The West’ Hamilton and the rock band KISS.”
daymn up till now, i thought i’d been one of the only few to see that paul lynde halloween show offa the yt! hats off sir…
and i don’t think i’d be blasepheming here much if i mentioned the two (two! count’em, TWOOO) ‘ewok adventures’ first done for tv… -that’d- be a coup for the crew!!
I bought The Paul Lynde Halloween Special! So cheesy good! It’s so bizarre it doesn’t need riffing. But it reminds me that Paul Lynde had a sit-com called The Paul Lynde Show, which seems to have been a rip-off of All in the Family. It was combined with another show, Temperatures Rising in the 73-74 season. Such a strange story! How great would it be to riff THAT???
A couple back-to-back episodes of this most recent “season” of the X-Files.
So Gilligans Island was the original ‘Lost’? LOL!
So, the definition of failed…does this necessarily mean a show quickly canceled, or can it mean a show that is a failure purely from its existence, whether it is for six episodes or six seasons? Using the latter perspective, I would love to see them riff “Pretty Little Liars”.
What a fun WDT. Casting my mind back to childhood, I’ll nominate the mid-’60s teen romp “Gidget,” Sally Fields’ first series, not to be confused with the “Gidget” movie starring Sandra Dee. It lasted one season.
But far, far better riff fodder would be the 1993-94 series “Space Rangers,” which lasted all of six episodes. My little boys loved it and were disappointed it was cancelled so quickly. Don’t remember it? Feast your eyes on the intro and part of the first episode here: http://youtu.be/5Aqn7ajCBCM Linda Hunt and Clint Howard were in it, God knows why. It could have been called “Band of Kooky Misfits in Spaaaaaaaace.”
Ohhh, I remember Space Rangers, MSTie! My son liked it, too, although I think he decided pretty quickly that it was kind of…what’s the word? Oh, yeah, silly. Still, he insisted we all sit down together to watch it. At least it was ONLY six episodes.
My knowledge of failed TV series is basically zero, so I’m just gonna say : “That ’80s Show” and “Do Over”. That’s all I got.
Anyone mention “AfterMASH” yet? It’s one of those sequels we didn’t need.
Also, remember “Stone Cold” with Brian Bosworth? Fox made a TV version called “Lawless”. Not a pretty sight.
Good thing someone mentioned “Viva Laughlin” which was like “Cop Rock” except it involved a casino. Hugh Jackman sang in it, a good thing. So did Melanie Griffith, which wasn’t a good thing.
And don’t worry about riffing “Firefly”. Fans did that at a convention ten years ago, with some of the cast. Just choose carefully.
Actually, why not the unaired pilot for Buffy? That could be fair game.
And presumably, the Skipper is Gluttony, Gilligan is Sloth, Mary Ann is Jealousy, Mrs. Howell is Vanity, and that leaves the Professor as….John Doe?
One of the Boys starring Mickey Rooney,Dana Carvey,Nathan Lane and Meg Ryan..
She’s the Sheriff with Suzanne Somers..
Baby Talk with George Clooney and the baby is voiced by Tony Danza…
I will also stand up for Quark. It was always at least decent, and over its short progression the writers learned how to stop writing for Dick Gautier and instead write for That Guy They Had Instead Of Dick Gautier.
Also I wonder if that opening credits bit where Joel leapt into an escape tube was a joke cribbed from Quark or if it’s parallel invention. Either way makes sense.
Ten speed and gumshoe?
Nighthawk?
LOL You only ever watched TV in 2002?
I liked Do Over.
Robocop the Series.
Not sure if ever aired but I had heard of a series based on Steel Magnolias.
There was a made-for-tv Alf movie in the mid 90s that from what I remember was a more serious Alf. It seemed like it was a setup for a series. The crew could have some fun with it.
I watched some Automan reruns on the Sci-Fi channel in the 90’s. One episode I remember guest starred Laura Brannigan as a pop star who gets kidnapped. She really throws herself into the damsel in distress role before Automan comes to her rescue. Even though he is her knight they have to remain just friends since he is a hard light hologram or some such thing. The series was rich with “You have got to be kidding me!” moments. Great riffing fodder.
I am the biggest STAR WARS fan I know, but I wouldn’t mind them riffing on the two STAR WARS animated shows that came out in the 1980’s, EWOKS and DROIDS.
I think that was based on the Anderson series “UFO” (an underrated show, I say), where the Interceptor pilots and whoever was flying Sky 1 got to their respective ships via chutes.
It’s by no means a “failed” series, but Airwolf would be pretty riffable, too.
In 1980, they actually released a TV series followup to the Westworld and Futureworld movies. The show was called Beyond Westworld, and it didn’t last long.
It’s an inevitability that you’d get a riff that says: “Can’t we just get BEYOND Westworld?”
IIRC Skipper is a twofer with Wrath and Gluttony, Mr. Howell is Greed (more properly known as Avarice), Mrs. Howell is Sloth, Ginger is Lust, the Professor is Pride, and Maryann is Envy. As for Gilligan, his red shirt and the way his bumbling always results in their escape attempts failing make him Satan.
A bit harsh, but I sympathize with the sentiment, as the more ardent Whedon Weenies can be quite grating. Though IMO it was Simon (and by extension River) and Inara who were the cast deadweights that the show could have done without.
It wasn’t that Mal and Jayne were dead weight; they were just annoying as all f**k. Especially Mal. He made Han Solo seem modest. I met Sean Maher [who played Simon] at a convention and he’s a very nice man. (Really cute too; his husband’s a lucky man.)
Star Trek (the original series)
OK, it’s hard to believe now since it has spawned an entire entertainment subgenre, but the original was, by ratings/longevity measures, a failure.
And when I think of the riffing possibilities for some of the goofier episodes…that’s gold, Jerry, GOLD!
PS – I’m a big TOS fan, but imagining Mike & the Bots riffing on “Spock’s Brain” is just Nirvana!
Nahhh, I can’t see M&tB doing jokes about specific 60’s-Trek episodes, it’s just not their thing…
Especially the final season with Barry Van Dyke *shudder*.
They…would…have…lots…of…time…for…riffs…between…Shatner’s…dramatic………………………………………………..pauses.