Best Tv Shows That Never Were - Unsold Pilots
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- čas přidán 26. 06. 2015
- The 2004 TV special that I wrote and produced, based on my book... www.leegoldberg.com/the-best-o.... It features some of the best and worst rejected TV series ideas ever developed by the networks.
- Zábava
I love how Lori Loughlin's line was "you got into Harvard!" oh the irony.
Ouch! Cruel!
Burn😀!
Ouch, ouch, ouch!!!
She got DJ into Stanford
Kaboom
The original UK "Red Dwarf" is one of the greatest shows ever.
Agreed! The characters make for the best Halloween or convention costumes too!
But the UK one added Rimmer, Cat and the robot, giving Dave more people to interact with, and it made the show funnier as a result.
Julian Richards s pop
@@dhenderson1810 US version had them too (Cryten was even played by the same actor), the video just ignored it.
Julian Richards Ahh you're a waffle man!
80's:"This concept would never work."- some Tv exec
Now:Netflix original series
Exactly my thought. It wasn't the concepts that were bad but the execution in many cases. Years later with bigger budgets, many of them actually worked.
@Gary Daniel Well, that's because, in America, a moron is born every second! They have to have something to watch on TV between their puffs of "pot" and video game plays.
Those Netflix original series are rather tedious. Watching them feels like work.
@@lazybelphegore6748 LOL. I feel the same way. Thats why I don't watch them. They seem to be written by 20 year old morons.
@@markypolo55 : Only "seem to be"?
John Denver beating up bad guys is the most amazing thing ever
Amen to that ! Seeing that footage was a trip !
John Denver was actually quite good in movies. Oh,God springs to mind. And there was one where he tried to save a town from developers at Christmas. I really lived him singing with Muppets!
@@krystalireland7951 : Yeah, but in "Oh, God", all he had to do was play a goofy milquetoast goody-two-shoes doofuss. It wasn't exactly a stretch. And George Burns was the star, NOT John Denver! Wasn't the sequel called, "We've Been Here, Yawn, Before"? Yawn, get it? Like John. Yawn. John Yawn. MUAHAHAHA!
Maybe John Denver would have in another country.
@@krystalireland7951 l
I'd rather watch the worst of these than the "reality" tv crap we have today.
Annihilater sounded a lot like an episode of SpongeBob where SpongeBob was watching a movie about alien robots. Then he was convinced that Mr. Krabs was a robot!
Me too. TV today is such garbage after they drop the the sensor of what could be said and what they could show. Sure we had Roseanne, Home Improvement, Married With Children and other shows like that shows like that. Today they have laugh tracks they put them in at times when it's not even funny. I take an old shows and recycle them like Full House Fuller house and so on. Lots of crime and reality shows. Thank goodness for Netflix and CZcams I can see shows I grew up on
@@lynn1464 the spin-off Young Sheldon doesn't have a laugh track.
@@melissacooper4482 thanks I'll have to see if I can find it maybe Netflix how old is the show
@@lynn1464 not very old. It's currently on season three.
I've always been fascinated by obscure films and television shows especially ones that were never produced. Thank you so much for posting this on CZcams as I remember watching both this special and the other based on your book.
There is another class of shows you should look for: shows that were canceled after a few episodes. Some of them had already made more episodes than shown in the US and ended being sold in foreign markets cheap. Worst is, some were good and resulted in confused viewers who were wondering why there were no more episodes of their popular series.
Some of these ideas actually did become shows just not the first time they tried.
Johnny Carson once called Maclean Stevenson the man who's been in more pilots than an Air Force proctologist.
LMFAO!!!!!
Why he left MASH I will never know.
@@waynejohanson1083 "...STARDOM!!!!!!!!!!!"
@@waynejohanson1083 Short Answer... When he was approached to do the part, his Character was more like Sgt. Bilko or LC McHale (a Oddball Unit, with the Commander always saving the day!) 7 what he got was 'the continuing adventures of Capt. Pierce'!
possibly funniest zinger of all time!
NOW we know why Tom Selleck grew a mustache.
😄He looks cute both ways
I think he looks cuter with a mustache! ❤
Cuz he stole it from Woody Johnson.
@dev null Remove?
@@isabellep.461 I think it was a joke.
"Just Friends" was also done. They moved it to Boston, stuck Ryan Reynolds in it and called it "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place."
Then condensed the title to just "Two Guys and a Girl".
The amazing thing is that these pilots got made at all. That takes a budget and industry professionals and talent and all kinda people who got to get paid. Incredible. Fun show, Lee.
And one of these came the GOAT producer Norman Lear! It's crazy how the same guy that was a staple of 70s TV also made a show... for dogs? lol
+Andrew Williams *from
Was watching your ytps and saw the Norman Lear one then looked that up then clicked this video and here you are
Penquin hockey game
absolute legend you are
I remember Generation X being aired as a TV movie. So it was probably made to be a pilot that never got picked up, but it did sell and air on television.
Since then, shows Mutant X and The Gifted have become TV shows about mutants.
"The Questor Tapes" was a good TV movie and was bought by NBC to become a series, but the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry ("Star Trek") killed the series rather than make all the changes NBC wanted. They insisted that Questor's human friend (and teacher about humanity) be dropped, and the show be turned into a robot on the run, pursued by the people who built him.
Roddenberry changed Questor's name to Data and plugged him into Star Trek: the Next Generation.
...and not only that, a part of the theme Gil Melle wrote for that pilot became the theme for "KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER" in the fall of 1974.
The creator of this special thought it would be funny to quote mine Questor to make him look like a horndog that would explode from sex. Total misrepresentation.
I.likedthis and was wondering why it never made it to the screen...🤔😐☯️
They even reused the "android in a casino" scene in the Next Generation episode called "The Royale" (I think), if I recall they both used the loaded dice gimmick. I had the paperback novel of "The Questor Tapes", it was as good as or better than the TV movie pilot.
They didn't even mention Genesis II or its semi-sequel, also Roddenberry pilots for a new series.
Questor in many ways became Data. Also some of the ideas from Genesis II made it into the Next Generation like the comm badges. I actually think that all the Rodenberry pilots could have been good shows. Maybe Netflix will grab the rights to Assignment Earth recast it and do some digital magic like in Trials and Tribbulations to make a reconed pilot. With Mad Men being so popular they could keep it in the late 60s early 70s.
Too bad they didn't mention that the pilots for Daredevil and Thor were both Incredible Hulk TV movies.
...and there were plans for more of them as well, including a proposed "She-Hulk" TV series, but Bill Bixby's cancer diagnosis put paid to most of them being made. In fact, the last one was called "Death Of The Incredible Hulk", and it had Banner's love-interest was a woman called Natasha Rusomoff, who is better known as Black Widow (though she is never referred to as Black Widow in the episode), but she is a Russian spy and looks closer to the comic version than ScarJo does.
@@dhenderson1810 What about Mandrake, was it a spin-off of Hulk too? BTW, is Mandrake Marvel or DC? I can't remeber.
That's the first thing I thought of, glad you said that too, but were they using excerpts of that show to show they were going to be individual shows or is it a fake rumour?
I remember the original hulk movie with thor in it the same actor as that pilot. Don't remember a daredevil one tho.
@@animaltvi9515 Thor was in "The incredible Hulk returns" and Daredevil was in "Trial of the incredible Hulk".
"People in dog suits! What were they thinking?"
Hey, it seemed to work for the show Wilfred.
People wore silly outfits in The Banana Split show.
Twice!
@@hydrolito That was a children’s Saturday morning show. You could get away with being a bit more silly and over-the-top for obvious reasons.
And it's not like Alf was that far off from a dog suit. That show was total crap and I don't even remember how many seasons it had.
Furries
British "Red Dwarf" was awesome....there are LOTS of those shows...season after season!
I remember seeing Bates Motel and The Omen on TV. During the 1980s in the summertime, the major networks always showed the pilots of TV shows that never got picked up as a series in lieu of summer reruns.
I wonder if someone DID inform the guys from the show that Red Dwarf was actually an attempt to reboot an english show of the same name that got to TEN-FREAKING-SEASONS, plus one movie, four books and one RPG. Hardly "Didn't make it", hmm? Of course, the american version was an unbelievable flub, but hey, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't...
"In Living Color" sat idle in the vault for 2 years before someone at Fox watched it. Must have been a HUGE surprise to the Wayans brothers when they got the call after 2 years of patience.
one dollar...
A show like that sadly in today's area of political correctness would never get passed.
i am one never watched in living colour found it gross and in bad taste .
What a great show, loved it!!!
@@dantasticmania8728 the show still airs today, I figure it would be fine being made now because the African American humor being presented would really only piss off conservatives and they’re the ones that supposedly hate cancelling things.
Ryan Stiles impersonating Robin Williams attempting to channel the Swedish Chef.
sounds more like he's channeling Balki from perfect strangers
Haha this show looked ok.
I mean, it's pretty much in keeping with the quality of any of his attempted foreign accents on Whose Line Is It Anyway.
Would it have worked without the accent?
I'd love to see a more recent version of this with the addition of streaming apps.
Where's Wheels and The Legman when you need them?😂
The hits they missed, the misses they actually spent time and money on. Amazing.
There WERE no hits.
When he sees corruption he gets Rocky Mountain mad
I’d rather watch these “duds” than today’s “hits”.
They're not "hits"...they're the networks highest rated! TV shows....for what its worth.
Mark Foster what’s your favorite “network highest rated tv show” on now?
@@jvgilyard1126 LOL You still got Cable bruh? wtf?
Fermifire hell no lol
A few of these actually had some potential, like "Annihilators". Yeah, the execution was cheesy and stupid, but it was a neat concept, sort of like an Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Terminator meets Blade Runner type of thing with what could be a compelling mystery at its core if handled right.
I've been looking for this for YEARS! thanks for uploading it.
In addition to _The Questor Tapes,_ Gene Roddenberry (creator of _Star Trek_ ) also wrote _Genesis II_ in 1973 and _Planet Earth_ in 1974 and pitched them as pilots. Both were essentially the same show ( _Planet Earth_ was a re-do of _Genesis II_ ) but neither one of these sold, either.
Actually, you could say that, since Roddenberry's _first_ pilot for _Star Trek,_ "The Cage", didn't sell THAT was a failed pilot as well. Fortunately, NBC gave him a second chance and he made "Where No Man Has Gone Before" which _did_ sell. And the rest is history.
There was even a 3rd incarnation of 'Genesis II' called 'Strange New World'! & all 4 would have effectively been 'the Fugitive' with a Sci/Fi backdrop!
As Thrashpondo mentions there was a third episode. The three did get recycled much later as "Andromeda" set in the far future main character even had the same name Dylan Hunt.
I still remember both Genesis II and Planet Earth after all these years. That kind of tells you those are pilots that should've launched! Oh well...
It did launch John Saxon's career
1980s: People in dog suits! What were they thinking?
2019: People in cat suits! What were they thinking?
bob C It’s fággy garbage, homeboy.
bob C Otay 👌🏿
@bob C "Classic" to a bunch of elitist snobs. Much of Weber's work was either "love it or hate it". There was no in between.
Did you know that there was a pilot called "The Art Of Nick", which was a "Family Ties" prequel which shows Mallory's future boyfriend, Nick Moore, before he met the Keatons? It was quite funny, and co-starred a pre-Seinfeld Julia Louis Dreyfuss, but the show never got picked up. I think they had the episode on CZcams.
I remember that in a vague way. I think the problem with the Nick character was he had been boxed in by his "Family Ties" characterization, which was a bit one note. They couldn't have an arc where his character showed growth in the prequel, as that meant he would be too different from "FT" and would go backwards as a character. That's sort of what I remember reading. It was the 80's so everything is a bit cloudy lol...
WOW😮
Can't hold a candle to the one that made it on TV - "My Mother The Car!"
I watched that show as a kid in the 60s ! Silly stuff...but then a lot of TV shows then were silly (Gilligan's Island, Green Acres, Hogan's Heroes, etc) ! I even remember the plot line of one of the episodes: Jerry Van Dyke's wife wanted to go to the drive in to see a "Sonny Tufts Film Festival" (he was a minor leading man in the 40s) and Sonny even made a guest appearance on the episode !
😄As a kid I liked that show! Ann Sothern just has such a fun voice
I loved that show! I was a little kid, though.
had one of the best theme songs
everyone hated it...except little kids
poor jerry van dyke...took years for him to get into a hit show
"Acting Sheriff" looks legitimately hilarious and Goulet was a treasure
I agree! I actually wanted to see more footage of that.
I can't get enough of these, thanks Lee!
"People in dog suits...what were they thinking?"
Well, I'm sure if this came out today it would be a huge hit to the furry community.
It'd be an anime.
Hahahaha! True!!
Yeah, it’s just fucking weird and cringe 😬 all in one
It's called Wilfred
Wilfred got remade too in the US
This special is amazing. Can't believe how awesomely non-pc the narration was just back in 2004. Most of these shows look better than anything currently airing...especially Chameleon. That babe is out of this world.
The Chameleon aired as 3 TV movies.
So the future Captain Archer of Enterprise invents a transporter and says “Beam me up Scotty”. No wonder he got the part.
Well, Scott Bakula is originally from St. Louis, Missouri, with its Gateway Arch monument (and Museum of Westward Expansion). No wonder his Star Trek character was named ARCHer!
Yes, too bad Enterprise was a ‘Quantum’ failure !
Some of these are good pilots. Some people just don't know a good show.
I did like the idea about the man being able to read the dog's mind after having a computer chip implanted in his brain. The rest of the pilots are too ludicrous!
None of them were listed.
21:10 -- "Just Deserts" is spelled correctly.
"Dessert" (with two S's) is the sweet course at the end of a meal.
"Desert" (with one S, but pronounced the same) means a punishment or reward that is deserved.
"Desert" (with one S, but accented on the first syllable instead of the second) means barren land.
That's certainly an interesting fact. But I must say that I'm dissapointed as it kind of spoils my joke posted earlier.
"Desert" also with one S, and also pronounced like 'punishment' and 'sweet course' also meaning abandon:
_"He deserted his family, so he got his just deserts. But it left their lives barren like a desert. Enough talk - what's for dessert?"_
NICE! SO few people ever use that correctly. It's one of my pet peeves...and i have many!!
41:24 - Wow, I could actually hear the network tell Graham Chapman; "Stop that; I think it's silly!"
what a missed opportunity. heartbreaking.
Stop that
Stop that
It started off alright but now it's gotten silly
Oh! My Python fails me!.....And not for the first time.....
I'll just settle for the Department of Silly Walks.
I remember seeing a few of these on "CBS Summer Playhouse" in the late '80s which was an anthology series that aired these never picked up pilots. The only pilot I saw on that program that I really wanted to see picked up for a series was called "The Pretenders" staring Amanda Pays and Roger Wilson. It had a "Miami Vice" grittiness with the witty repartee of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd from "Moonlighting'.
16 Meg? That wouldn't run a coffeemaker today....lol
Not coffee & a clock.
Umm is that Lori Laughlin at 38:14 talking about how hard it is to get into college???
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Aunt Becky was hustling her whole life. 😆
GARY 7 would have been brilliant.
Wow, no mention of Red Dwarf originally being a British sitcom or any mention of Kryton, Rimmer or the Cat. Do your research, guys.
I remember watching this special when it aired. I can't believe I finally found it and it was on CZcams this whole time! Even though I could have sworn I looked for it here just a year or two ago? Anyway, thank you for uploading it! Of the pilots, The Chameleon interested me the most back then. Now that I've learned they were apparently made into TV movies, I will be looking for those next.
Glad to see David Rappaport came back after Nick Derringer, P.I. and starred in a series that actually got on the air, The Wizard.
Sadly, he committed suicide soon after The Wizard was cancelled.
I still remember him from movies like Time Bandits and the Bride.
@@Mato1970 If only he'd hung on. He'd love what became of Warwick Davis.
So they attempted an American version of Red Dwarf, and they completely left out three major characters from the show? No wonder why it failed!
The Cat was in it. They just didn't show her in the clips. Yes, her. Terry Farrell. Don't know what happened to Rimmer.
Most of those unsold pilots are filled with dark humor (black comedy), satire and parodies all rolled up into one
we have a channel here called the horror channel that puts pilots on as films during the day
Man, I'm intensely curious why you blurred the faces of the two guys in the jail cell in the Robert Goulet show. Also, were you completely unaware that 'Red Dwarf' was originally a very successful (and hilarious) Britcom?
Perhaps the 2 actors begged to not be associated with the show! Lol!
@@JLvatron Since as actors they want to be noticed, it must have been just horrid! lol
The Questor Tapes never gained traction, despite Gene Roddenberry's best efforts (neither did his "Genesis II" series about a NASA scientist accidentally buried in a cave-in during an earthquake in Carlsbad caverns during a suspended animation experiment, who is discovered about 150 years in the future after a nuclear war devastates Earth) BUT, the idea of a machine exploring humanity would come around again and be incorporated into his next successful series, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as the character of Commander Data... Data was basically a reboot of the idea behind Questor, a mysteriously created android attempting to understand and become more human.
Later! OL J R :)
And Roddenberry discovered that if he wanted to make a successful show, to avoid the networks and go direct to syndication.
IIRC, the televison series was going to jettison the Jerry Robinson character and make other changes Roddenberry couldn't live with, so killed it. Not sure if this qualifies as an unsuccessful pilot or not.
The same way Genesis II was rebooted as Andromeda.
I saw a are pilot of a show staring Elvira as a witch and the one played her mother was the grandmother on "Who's the Boss" Only had 3 shows. They never aired it. The setting was very similar to "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" that came on TV a few years down the road. I thought it was better than Sabrina.
I've seen it here on YT. Katherine Helmond, also of Mary Hartmann, ary Hartmann.
Great peek into the world of actors (both famous and unknown) and some of the things they do between the popular TV hits we know them for! A job's a job, and actors go out on auditions and shoot pilots on a fairly regular basis. Most of the actors we see here...the famous ones, anyway....wish these clips weren't so readily available! Which makes these clips all the more delicious! Thank you!
This special came out in 2004? It looks like something that was made in the late 1990s.
Early 2000s were pretty much the same as the late 90s...
@@snc0023 Yup. Happens with all decades if you take a look. Latter half of one inspires the first half of the next. Mid to later changes things and the cycle begins again.
@@snc0023 Everything changed after 9/11 happened. Almost like flipping a switch.
@@DoctorInk20 Well I can say from my memories that 2004 certainly did NOT feel like the 90s. 2000, early-2001? Sure. But by 2004 most people would've recognized the 90s as an era of the past with growing nostalgia value. After all, almost *15* whole years had passed since the decade started. Similarly I don't think 1994 would be considered to be '80s-like. Four years is enough for a recognizable cultural shift. (And when there has been a change ALSO in century and millennium, it's even more undeniable.)
Yeah, my "Fusion Furnace" used to overload when I watched "Battle of the Network Stars"
I remember reading about the Blazing Saddles sitcom they evidently made for a few years with no intention of airing it just so they could keep the rights, hoping to convince Mel Brooks to make a sequel.
Black Bart. I think you can find the pilot here on CZcams.
Strange how those '80s tv execs have amazing concepts than today's lazy studio execs.
Cocaine
@@andommangum No kidding. I felt like I got a second-hand massive cocaine high just watching all this footage, lol. But you gotta give one thing to them: they were really working their creative and imaginative juices, for better or worse. Ok, mostly worse. But you don't see any off-the-wall creative risk-taking nowadays, or ANY risk-taking. Quite the opposite.
Amazing? How about drug induced.
the majority of the time they paid other people to come up with the concepts and in the case of red dwarf they basically just hijacked the show off the original creators who made it a success in the UK and fucked it all up making a US version.
I was at the taping for the pilot of A Dog's Life. In the live audience. Charles Martin Smith was also in the show. The taping was, I think, at CBS (Los Angeles) . IF not - it was KTTV
I had weetabix for breakfast, tomorrow I'll have rice krispies!
And it wound up on NBC - in their worst days.
I always liked Charles Martin Smith. I remember one tv movie called Cotton Candy. In the 70s I think. It was directed by Ron Howard, maybe one of his first.
@@krystalireland7951 Yep. I remember that too. Cotton Candy was their band
I stopped watching television after the first time that Taxi was canceled. I haven't missed anything.
You missed 24 episodes of Taxi
You missed three great shows featuring or starring Bryan Cranston? Well now it's four.
How would you know?
Thor and Daredevil were backdoored through tv movies in the Incredible Hulk tv series.
Didn't see the Thor one, but I remember the Daredevil one... It's been 20 years since I saw it, so I can't remember if it sucked or not.
Trial of the Incredible Hulk (Daredevil) and The Incredible Hulk Returns (Thor) are both on the Tubitv.com free streaming service if you are curious.
Both of them weren't too bad.
@@josephnicolino8529 Pretty much anything connected to O.G Hulk tv series was worth watching.
@@marcelmoreau2733 I agree
We actually taped "Fuzzbucket" off The Magical World Of Disney the night it aired as a TV movie, not knowing what the hell it even was. 30+ years later, we're still not even sure what the hell it even was.
That was amazing!!
Powers to be also passed on a young brunette, thinking she couldn't carry a show: Sandra Bullock!
Thanks for uploading this! Some of this stuff looks like it could have been really good. Poor Scott Bakula was really hitting the pavement. I'm glad he finally got "Quantum Leap". I think I would have actually watched "Acting Sheriff". 😄
Ugh, hated quantum leap. They also keep subjecting this lame show on us as well
The Gary Seven one was a stealth pilot. It was an actual Star Trek episode that they hoped would serve as a pilot. It's a shame it didn't get picked up.
that was also known as a backdoor pilot episode, they've done that before, carried a possible spin off series of a current series, like The Facts of Life which tried to do a couple of spin offs but failed......NCIS was formed from backdoor pilot within JAG..... the successful spinoff series called NCIS:LA tried with one called NCIS:Red, but failed too.... but currently rumors of one possible spinoff is underway.
The Questor tapes was a Gene Roddenberry pilot too
The Thor and Daredevil pilots were backdoor pilots, as they originated from "Incredible Hulk" TV movies.
That's Robert Lansing as Gary along with Teri Garr in the second season of "Star Trek" (1967-1968).
Laughed so hard with the narrator's delivery of each show! Good job!
Where was Remo Williams?
That was a pretty cool movie! Fred Ward and Joel Grey right?
@@krystalireland7951 There was also a tv pilot with different actors. Pretty good.
3:48 must be pretty bad when the extra's faces are pixelated. lol
+Floyd Looney It's probably because those actors' contracts had limited rerun use, or royalties involved. When the show was made, nobody imagined these shows (or parts of them) would ever end up available 24/7 via computer.
I imagine that is true.
Spenser & Magnum ?!? 🤯 Just a sign of things to come.
"Not even a quarter inch of plaster can stop him...but the network could." lol
I thought I remembered the Bates Motel being a series. 20:00
Pilot movie then it because an anthology show where the "guests" made up the stories.
The People (26:10) was a "Movie of the week" which was also a fine place to screen pilots.
NBC's version of "BATES MOTEL" traded on the name and "ambiance" of "Psycho" only (yet another of Brandon Tartikoff's attempts to schedule an "MTV-styled" drama on Friday nights in the mid-1980's).
I remember looking forward to the show. I think it would have been like a twilight zone-type thing. Jason Bateman was in the tv movie.
I read the book The people no different flesh... excellent. s.trek assignment Earth also could have been great good pilot ☯️
Yet, 2 broke girls got the green light...
Or, Mom's
How I Met Your Mother that is the worst ever that should not have been on
@@lynn1464 I think the '60s show "My Mother the Car" is the worst show that made it.
@@ddivincenzo1194 I have never seen so good to know I didn't miss anything
Two Broke Girls--Rich girl loses money, moves in with obnoxious, gap toothed girl who wears way too much lipstick who stands around yelling stale jokes while waiting for someone to laugh. It really was terrible.
Hilarious, at 12:10, that space show's 'city space-scape' was used in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I can't believe I know that. These shows are still so much better than what's on now.
Two things: 1st - Red Dwarf is a classic British TV show, original is always best (that goes for The Office too). 2nd - I'd be happy to watch Marilu Henner paint her front room.
Wonderfully fun to watch ! Thanks so much for sharing ! Most of these pilots looked pretty dang lame & I can understand why they weren't picked up - but some actually looked MUCH better than many of the shows that DID run on the networks ! I bet that sitcom with the elephant didn't cost much...after all, that peachy pachyderm worked for peanuts ! CHEERS !! :-)
Anyone remember "Salvage One" ? It went like this - pre Matlock Andy Griffith owns a junkyard and decides to build and launch a single stage rocket and fly it to the moon where he collects "all that stuff the astronauts left behind" and brings it back to Earth to sell. Then . . . It gets worse. He flies around in his vertically landing spaceship . . . solving crime. And this was actually broadcast every week something like two or three months. I would rather watch a sitcom about a clown who leads children into the showers at Auschwitz concentration camp run by those ever so lovable but misguided Colonel Klink type germans.
Believe it or not look up the Jerry Lewis movie the clown in the kids it's just about what your post said
I couldn't believe this but checked it out on Wikipedia. If MST3k ever lampooned a TV series this would be perfect.
Can't forget "Heil Honey, I'm Home!" (although that was a British pilot, not an American one) where Hitler and Eva Braun were a Lucy and Desi-type couple in a '50s sitcom parody. The pilot was the only episode of that series shown on television, although it's said that there were more episodes that had been filmed but never saw the light of day.
"The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer," on the other hand, aired for six episodes on UPN before being cancelled in the late 1990s. Basically, the show revolved around the titular Desmond Pfeiffer, President Abraham Lincoln's black British slave who served as the only sane man, and was supposed to be social commentary on the Clinton administration (yes, really). The only notably good thing to come out of it was it being referenced on "Clerks the Animated Series."
"Red Dwarf" was successful in the UK Of course the "DareDevil" reboot I remember the "Gary 7" episode
Most of the others are better off dead!
It was a different cast in the UK for Red Dwarf. And, as it happens, they still make those www.reddwarf.co.uk/news/2019/10/18/red-dwarf-special-announced/
I saw "THE PEOPLE" (the one with the "Amish Aliens") and, strange as it sounds, the original story was written about 20 years before the pilot. The series of short stories were fairly good. The only outsiders were the teacher and the doctor (Shatner)
yes, the USA knockoff of Red Dwarf was a failure, and it should have been. However the original BBC series was damn good. Someone should have just brought THAT over to the USA... oh, wait, um PBS anyone???
very cool . i saw a similar special staring faith ford in the 1990s and thought what a great idea. i always wished they made more of them. since there had to be hundreds if not thousands of hours of material
Thor: I NEED TO DRINK!!!!!! Me: I hear you, brother!
The Mighty Thor was a spin off of one of The Original CBS Incredible Hulk TV movies, and Daredevil was on The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.
@@timwenburg6134 Actually they both appeared in the same episode of Incredible Hulk
That "Bates Hotel" related pilot, starring Bud Cort, made it to air. I remember watching it. Bud Cort is pretty hard to forget!
In 2013 there was a tv series "Almost Human" that is very similar in premise to the Condor pilot in this video. Law enforcement officer who doesn't like tech returns to duty after losing partner and is teamed with a humanoid robot partner. 1985's Condor can be seen on Amazon prime under movies.
Scott Backula says "Beam me up Scotty." And years later played on Star Trek Enterprise. He never did get to say that iconic phrase though.
Kirk never said those exact words
It’s funny because that’s a prime example of Mandela effect, as that exact line was never said on Star Trek but somehow became a common pop culture phrase.
A phrase that actually never was said then, in so many words.
In The Voyage Home he said "Scotty, beam me up." That's as close as he got.
@@mastermonarch Jan Brady only said "Marcia Marcia Marcia" ONCE in five years...LOL And I believe that "Robot" on Lost in Space also only said "Danger, WIll Robinson" exactly one... Crazy how the public makes a non-catch phrase a catch phrase....
A Dog's Life = horrifying (no wait - Fuzzbucket = horrifying)
but Poochinksky is worse.
It's amazing to watch these and pick out which ones were crap, which ones could have been good but got axed by the execs anyway, and which ones had elements or characters that became quite successful years later. I, for one, always wondered how "Assignment: Earth" and "The Questor Tapes" would have turned out.
I remember the "Daredevil" & "The Mighty Thor" "pilots"...they were part of "The Trial of the Incredible Hulk" & "The Incredible Hulk Returns"...attempted spinoffs of the Bixby/Ferrigno classic.
No worse than the garbage on now.......kartrashians, real housewives, etc
What about Mel Brooks' " When Things Were Rotten" a forerunner to "Men in Tights."
That pilot actually sold though. I think the series only aired for six episodes.
Yeah, that pilot actually got picked up. I remember watching that show as a kid. I thought I saw more than 6 episodes, but that's probably just bad memory from childhood.
when things were rotten got picked up...was too advanced for the audience
i loved it
I remember in the late 70s seeing several episodes on AFN tv in Europe while serving in Augsburg, W. Germany
@@bradtorville5526 Actually , it had 13 episodes...
Something about those two good-looking "Bunco" kids tells me that if they just stick with the TV thing, they'll eventually make out just fine -- maybe even snag a starring role or two (or twenty) somewhere down the line....
Hell of a video, a lot of real interesting stuff there!
That was...interesting. 13:00 What the announcer didn't say was that this pilot was adapted from a SUCCESSFUL British TV series that also featured a hologram of a member of the dead crew, a humanoid that was evolved from cats and an android with 2 back-up heads! They also made a second pilot that cast Terry Farrell as The Cat! I wonder if that can be found on CZcams...
***** No question that they did, and I'm among them! I was just pointing out that this wasn't an original concept and it was done better "across the pond."
Red Dwarf is it ?
Many of these seemed to inspire other series or were inspired by other series
Yeah I find it on that at least two of the show's mentioned were actually incredible hulk reunion movies.
@@WigglyWolfProductions which rejected pilot inspired a popular tv show.
@@michaelguerrieri3486 The Thor and Daredevil ones were both Incredible Hulk tv movies.
@@WigglyWolfProductionsanything else.
Probably the people who worked on these shows went on to work on other shows and movies and are still working today.
"Hello. Yeah, I'm the guy with the elephant." lol
Isnt that Officer Shiflet from Newhart?
Agent 86 talks to Chief with his shoe (cell phone) in 1960's..., Chief talks back with normal phone, cord and all...lol
Where did 99 keep her phone again...?
I remember Generation X (have it on VHS), Condor and Mandrake
_"People in dog suits...what were they thinking?"_
They were thinking of the success of Lloyd Webber's "Cats" musical, maybe?
Both shows grossness pandering to the furrie freaks.
Jeez, how many shows was Scott Bakula in before he became a star? These are definitely some pretty wild show ideas.
Probably not as many as Robert Urich. Back when they were putting out a new edition of the Book of Lists every year, Urich was credited as having the most series where he was a main or featured player, most of which were very short-lived before Vega$ and Spenser for Hire. I think Tim Conway came in second.
there's a channel called "RwDt09" that compiles the 'Opening Credits' for a Given Season's New shows,(all the new series of 1988) or Night's line up from a Given year (ie Sunday 1978) this only includes Picked up series (even if they were canceled in under 5 episodes) Bakula appears rather often... and Urich as cited by @Dadoctah actually gets his own Video because he was so 'prolific)
@@dadoctah He WAS on 37 episodes of SWAT before those other two...SOMEWHAT short-lived, but SOMEWHAT successful. At the time, it was Urich and usually Harry Morgan who were mentioned as being in the most attempted series. There are also two actors who seem to have taken up the mantle of the "FAILED SITCOM GUY" - David Walton is the king - six or seven failed shows in 10 years...and Kyle Bornheimer is a close second. They even co-starred TOGETHER in one flop called Perfect Couples in 2010.
And Criag Bierko had good (bad) run in the 90s...
Assignment Earth had real potential.
Now I'm missing my lovely black kitty.
"Red Dwarf" is proof not all British shows work well as stateside versions. "Acting Sheriff"? "The People"? That should tell you absolutely everything. And "Channel 99" sounded like a reverse UHF.
An American version of Red Dwarf could work if they did it right.
That John Denver cop show ROFL!
He did a great job in Oh, God, but he wasn't cut out to play a cop. That looked like unintentional comedy.
True. It was better he stuck to singing.
John could arrest the criminal, then sing a duet wid’em!
I remember the first failed pilot of a show I watched was called “1000 Ways to Lie” which was on the then-Spike network.
It was a planned spin-off to their hit show “1000 Ways to Die” and had an entire season apparently filmed but after the pilot was a total disaster in ratings and reviews they immediately scrapped the show. And it never aired on TV again.
There’s no way to even find the episode anywhere online, just a trailer and the intro.
The commentary is worthy of a TV show on its own. Best comment at 34:57 "And the computing power of a digital watch." Hilarious.
How many of these pilots were hamstrung by Executive Meddling?
Ah, we have a cynic!