This time around in Balladeer’s Blog’s recurring feature Forgotten Television we’ll take a brief look at some dumb attempts at launching sitcoms.
MCGURK (1979)
Stars: Barney Martin, Hamilton Camp, Sherry Lynn
Premise: Five actors dressed up as dogs hung out and joked about their human owners. The dogs’ owners, that is. Believe it or not the talented Peter Bonerz directed this unsold sitcom pilot and Brandon Tartikoff was executive producer. How either of them had the nerve to show their faces in public again is beyond me. (ORIGINALLY TITLED A DOG’S LIFE)
WHERE’S MOMMA? (1974)
Stars: Richard Mulligan, Michele Carey
Premise: Mulligan starred as a widowed real estate agent who was so ill-prepared to raise his twin children that his wife, played by Michele Carey, returned from the afterlife to help him out. Only Mulligan’s character could see the wife’s ghost, leading to the usual “comedy” set pieces. Continue reading
LIGHT SPEED ESPER (1967-1968) – This overlooked Japanese television show was titled Kousoku Esupâ in its nation of origin. If you enjoy live action programs like Ultraman or other shows from the tokusatsu subgenre of entertainment then Light Speed Esper will certainly appeal to you. 
Hikaru’s parents are killed in this intergalactic accident, filling the extraterrestrials – called Alien Espers or Esper Seijin – with immense feelings of guilt. They possess and animate the dead bodies of Hikaru’s mother and father to make amends. Very morbid amends, I grant you, but amends nonetheless. 
Balladeer’s Blog’s recurring feature Forgotten Television goes way back this time around with a look at the state of the new broadcasting technology in 1940. Great Britain and the Soviet Union had been making as many, if not more, milestone achievements in tv programming through 1939. However, World War Two brought an end to BBC television broadcasting at 12:35PM on September 1st of that year. The Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey’s Gala Premier was the last item broadcast via television in the U.K. until 1946, when the BBC resumed programming with that very same cartoon. 
JANUARY – The FCC holds hearings on potentially licensing television broadcasting. It will not finalize its actions until April 30th of 1941, but in the meantime stations around the country continue pioneering tv programming. 
AGON: ATOMIC DRAGON, also called Phantom Monster Agon and Giant Phantom Monster Agon, is an overlooked miniseries from Japanese television. It was produced in 1964 but due to legal action over the monster’s similarity to Godzilla its creator’s old Toho contract was invoked to prevent the miniseries from being televised until 1968. This black & white miniseries ran just four half-hour episodes and aired on four consecutive nights, from January 2nd – 5th, 1968. 
When an irritating reporter named Goro Sumoto aka “the Suppon” arrives to report on the police and the Atomic Energy Authorities scouring the beach for the lost uranium, Agon rises up from the sea in the exact same “bubbling waters first” technique favored by Godzilla. Goro photographs Agon, who vogues for a while, then submerges again. The reporter also meets Monta, the obligatory wise-ass little kid character so common to kaiju stories. 
A.D.A.M. (1973) – Written by Donald Jonson and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, this made for British tv item served as an episode of ITV Sunday Night Theater on April 8th, 1973. The story is part science fiction and part horror with the A.D.A.M. of the title being an acronym for a super-computer called an Automated Domestic Appliance Monitor. 
Wontkins sounded like Oscar the Grouch crossed with either Statler or Waldorf and came complete with a Bert-style nose and perpetual frown (and no wonder). Wilkins, on the other hand, looked like a phallic object with arms and a face. 
What started as a team of spokes-puppets for Wilkins Coffee morphed into greater things as surely as Barry Manilow’s old commercial jingles paved the way for his singing career! 
Thank you to those Balladeer’s Blog readers who reminded me that I hadn’t provided a post with the links to ALL my reviews of the episodes of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. That was a 1971-1973 British television series which adapted Victorian Age and Edwardian Age stories about detectives other than Sherlock Holmes.
A MESSAGE FROM THE DEEP SEA – R Austin Freeman’s police surgeon detective Doctor John Evelyn Thorndyke (created in 1907) uses his unique talents to investigate the murder of a London prostitute. Click 
WORLD OF GIANTS (1959) – Don’t confuse this program with Land of the Giants, the later Irwin Allen series about normal-sized people trapped in the title land. For that matter, don’t confuse it with the old spy series Man in a Suitcase, either. World of Giants involved secret agent Mel Hunter (Marshall Thompson), who was accidentally shrunk down to six inches in height by radiation while on a mission behind the Iron Curtain.
Previously here at Balladeer’s Blog I covered YT Channels that featured what I considered the very best of the emerging subgenre of Analog Horror or “Unfiction” as a lot of people have labeled it. Those descriptive terms have been coined to help keep these creative efforts distinct from pure ARGs (Alternate Reality Games). 
RAFFLES (1975-1977) – A. J. Raffles, the master thief and star Cricket player was created by E.W. Hornung – the brother-in- law of Arthur Conan Doyle. As all Raffles fans know, A.J. and his bumbling assistant Bunny Manders were intended as a tongue in cheek criminal answer to Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. 
Raffles was portrayed by a long line of suave, debonair actors, from John Barrymore in Silent Movies on up through David Niven and others in Talkies. In my opinion, this 1970s British television series served up the best rendition of the iconic character. 
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