Obscure TV Shows.

[NYLIBUD]

All time favorite show has got to be Barney Miller.Been watching that show for years.

[ranma]

Fast Times ran a whole 7 episodes and gone: Based on the Movie Fast Times at ridgemont High Only two Actors from the movie were on the TV show.. Mr Hand and Mr. Vargas.

[Rob Hall]

I remember Salvage 1 and Quark.  I really liked Project UFO. 

[JollySipper]

There was an SNL character called Ed Grimley...... He was played by Martin Short. The character was featured in a cartoon, voiced by Short...... One of my Favorite characters, I believe I've seen all 13 episodes of the cartoon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Completely_Mental_Misadventures_of_Ed_Grimley

 

[Can-Con]

2 hours ago, JollySipper said:

There was an SNL character called Ed Grimley...... He was played by Martin Short. The character was featured in a cartoon, voiced by Short...... One of my Favorite characters, I believe I've seen all 13 episodes of the cartoon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Completely_Mental_Misadventures_of_Ed_Grimley

 

Yes, Short first brought the character to life on SCTV. Love the segment he did spoofing the original "The Nutty Professor" , "The Nutty Lab Assistant". It's on YouTube,  I suggest you check it out.

Super funny who he changes into but I won't ruin the surprise. 😉

Edited April 9 by Can-Con

[Can-Con]

On 4/8/2025 at 2:06 PM, NYLIBUD said:

All time favorite show has got to be Barney Miller.Been watching that show for years.

Then you know about the spinoff, "Fish". I vaguely remember seeing an episode. 

[slusher]

26 minutes ago, Can-Con said:

Then you know about the spinoff, "Fish". I vaguely remember seeing an episode. 

I remember Fish, seem like there was some kids didn’t last long…

[Lunajammer]

An excellent comedy satire of television news was "LateLine" with Al Franken as a bumbling reporter for a late night network news show similar to Nightline. I was in television news at the time and I was tickled pink with all the newsroom insider humor. Very perceptive. 12 episodes aired on network TV. 

[NYLIBUD]

6 hours ago, slusher said:

I remember Fish, seem like there was some kids didn’t last long…

Yes I remember Fish.Obviously a much obscure show than Barney Miller was.The thing that was great about the show,besides being hilarious ,was its realism.Ask any cop,and 9 out of ten times,they’ll say that BM was the most accurate cop show ever on tv.Sure beats Cagney and Lacey.Lol

[Mike C]

On 4/6/2025 at 11:55 AM, Tim W. SoCal said:

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

was an American satirical soap opera that was broadcast on weeknights from January 1976 to July 1977.

I remember that show, we used to watch that when I was in college, same with Fernwood Tonight.

Another show I just remembered from Fox I saw a couple of years ago again on Tubi was Brisco County Jr.

Edited April 11 by Mike C

[stavanzer]

On 4/6/2025 at 8:55 AM, Tim W. SoCal said:

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

was an American satirical soap opera that was broadcast on weeknights from January 1976 to July 1977.

I remember one line from Mary Hartman.

Instead of saying "Good Morning", she said "Fair Morning". It seemed funnier then than it does now.

I liked Quark! Only Thing I remember was Ficus, the Vegeton Sentient Plant. Like Spock, only a vegetable.

[bobss396]

I've been watching a ton of old movies on TCM and some on my old westerns cable channels.

One guy keeps popping up, Fred McMurray, as in the dad in My 3 Sons.

He plays quite the bad guy. Double Indemnity from 1944, I just saw part of a western from 1957. Starts with a Q...

He plays a desperato type, running with some other bad guys, heading to Mexico. Of course every one of these has to have eye-candy in it. This had Dorothy Malone 

[JollySipper]

How about an obscure TV character? You guys ever hear of Ernest P. Worrell? He was a character invented by Jim Varney. There were several movies that were pretty much made for TV that the character starred in....... It was good, clean humor, and as a teen I had a similar sense of humor..... Silly but with a straight face!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_P._Worrell

 

[ranma]

1 hour ago, JollySipper said:

Ernest P. Worrell?

Hey Vern, It's me Ernest ... Used to do dairy commercials , Then :Ernest caught on and became a series of movies: Ernest goes to Camp, Earnest scared stupid, Ernest goes to Jail, and Ernest saves Christmas. and five more as well. Last one was Ernest goes in the Army  made 2 years before Jim's death....

Edited April 16 by ranma

[slusher]

5 hours ago, JollySipper said:

How about an obscure TV character? You guys ever hear of Ernest P. Worrell? He was a character invented by Jim Varney. There were several movies that were pretty much made for TV that the character starred in....... It was good, clean humor, and as a teen I had a similar sense of humor..... Silly but with a straight face!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_P._Worrell

 

 

4 hours ago, ranma said:

Hey Vern, It's me Ernest ... Used to do dairy commercials , Then :Ernest caught on and became a series of movies: Ernest goes to Camp, Earnest scared stupid, Ernest goes to Jail, and Ernest saves Christmas. and five more as well. Last one was Ernest goes in the Army  made 2 years before Jim's death....

that guy was funny he played Jed clampet in the Beverly hillbillies movie inn the 90’s  a guy that you could enjoy his Commercials..

[Brian Austin]

One show that has stuck in my mind forever was Supertrain.  IIRC It ran for a whole nine episodes or so in 1979.  I still have the article I ripped out of TV Guide showing the promotional behind the scenes pictures.  Fun stuff.

You can find episodes on YouTube, but the best bits can be found on the clipreel video showing all the scenes involving the train itself.  Two miniatures were used for the making of the series, one in 1:16 scale, riding on 12" gauge track, and the other at 1:8 scale on 24" track.  The smaller one was recently unearthed and found to be in fair condition.  If my math is correct, the track gauge scales out to 16 feet, which would seem to be rather impractical.  The show was NBC's most expensive, and nearly took the network down after the 1980 Olympic Games they were contracted to cover were boycotted.

 

 

[Brian Austin]

Lots of promotional pictures and info here:

http://nbc_supertrain.tripod.com/

[Mike C]

It's on Tubi now and it was remade in 2009 which I had watched back then.

[Bugatti Fan]

Seeing Mike's post about a satire on news casting reminded me of a similar British one named 'Drop the Dead Donkey' that aired some time ago now.

Also looking at the last post about the Prisoner rehash made in 2009. Unfortunately not a patch on the original series from the sixties with Patrick McGoohan playing the main character. The original series was filmed at the Italianate Village at Portmerion in North Wales UK. The village is open to the public. I have visited it a couple of times and it is very impressive. There is a small Prisoner merchandise shop on site. A few changes have been made since the Prisoner was filmed there, mainly just to the garden landscaping.

Edited April 17 by Bugatti Fan

[Mike C]

This British comedy show.

 

[bobss396]

I think it was ABC, in the early 1970s that experimented with 45 minute shows, back to back.

One was called The New People. It was about a group that was stranded on a deserted island from the Cold War era. 

The island was set up as a nuke test site that was never nuked. It had everything, less people. I don't think it went as far as 26 episodes.

[Brian Austin]

Super obscure is the Mad Magazine TV Special of 1974.

The first segment spearing the US auto industry of the era is fun.

 

[Mike C]

On 4/15/2025 at 7:06 PM, JollySipper said:

How about an obscure TV character? You guys ever hear of Ernest P. Worrell? He was a character invented by Jim Varney. There were several movies that were pretty much made for TV that the character starred in....... It was good, clean humor, and as a teen I had a similar sense of humor..... Silly but with a straight face!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_P._Worrell

 

He started out as a an annoying neighbor character he did in a commercial for an electronics retailer called Brick Church. I used to see those ads when I lived on L.I., N.Y.

[JollySipper]

2 hours ago, Mike C said:

He started out as a an annoying neighbor character he did in a commercial for an electronics retailer called Brick Church. I used to see those ads when I lived on L.I., N.Y.

He definitely had his own sense of what comedy was! What I liked about the 'Ernest' movies the most was, between scenes there was a small skit of sorts where Jim played ALL of the characters...... They would 'break the 4th wall' during those skits........