#1
Johnny Staccato
John Cassavetes played a Greenwich Village jazz pianist who solved crimes between sets at Waldo’s. Universal gave him ink-black shadows and genuine smoke, while Elmer Bernstein supplied the brassy, nervous score. The 35mm film looked like raw velvet under low-wattage studio bulbs. Network brass panicked because it smelled too much like real Manhattan basement air instead of polite living-room television. NBC killed it after twenty-seven weeks, robbing us of prime-time beatnik noir at its most dangerous.
#2
The Westerner
Sam Peckinpah cut his teeth on this half-hour gem for Four Star Television. Brian Keith played Dave Blassingame as an illiterate, drifting cowhand alongside a mongrel dog who refused to do circus tricks. It carried the smell of wet wool and cheap whiskey across every stage set. The soundstages felt windy and lonely, stripped of Hollywood polish. Thirteen episodes were all NBC tolerated before pulling the plug, scared off by a Western that dared to look authentically miserable.
#3
The Green Hornet
William Dozier tried to bottle lightning twice on ABC, but he abandoned the campy pop-art captions for stern melodrama. The real wonder was Bruce Lee moving across our clunky cathode-ray sets with blinding speed. His kicks routinely blurred the orthicon camera tubes because video sensors simply could not track him. The scripts lacked the camp humor that suburban viewers expected in 1966. One season of twenty-six episodes was all the network allowed before burying Kato in the archives.
#4
Captain Nice
Buck Henry cooked up this lovely farce right in the slipstream of Batmania. William Daniels played Carter Nash, a mild chemist who swallowed a bubbling formula to become an anxious, flying bumbler. His mother sewed his cape, and the cheap wire-rigging practically showed through the phosphorus screen. It possessed the dry, neurotic wit that made sixties comedy brilliant. NBC shoved it against CBS rival Mr. Terrific, panicked at the ratings, and pulled the plug after fifteen weeks of pure studio fun.
#5
He & She
CBS had lightning in a bottle with real-life spouses Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. They occupied a stylish Manhattan apartment set that pointed the way toward the modern workplace sitcom. Jack Cassidy stole every scene as the vain, cape-wearing superhero actor next door. The multi-camera timing was razor-sharp, captured on gleaming film without relying on canned gags. Critics fell in love, but the network got cold feet after a single season because quiet sophistication terrified the suits.
#6
My World and Welcome to It
Mixing live-action domestic comedy with James Thurber’s whimsical line drawings seemed downright impossible for 1969 broadcast standards. William Windom played cartoonist John Monroe with a gentle, world-weary sigh that felt completely human. The optical effects were primitive yet magical, dropping animation right onto the living room plaster walls. It earned two Emmys, including best comedy, yet NBC cancelled it after twenty-six episodes anyway. Commercial networks never did know what to do with eccentric, melancholy literature disguised as prime-time sitcoms.
#7
The Magician
Bill Bixby insisted on performing every single sleight-of-hand illusion himself on camera without cuts or optical trickery. His Anthony Blake lived aboard a custom private jet, solving mysteries with velvet capes and hidden doves. Watching an actor actually palm coins under harsh studio lights was an honest delight of 1970s episodic television. NBC reshuffled the format halfway through, dumped the jet, and killed the show after twenty-one episodes. We lost a genuinely honest demonstration of real stagecraft.
#8
Whiz Kids
CBS rushed this onto the schedule right after WarGames swept theaters. Matthew Laborteaux sat in a messy bedroom surrounded by bulky CRT monitors, acoustic-coupler modems, and whirring floppy drives. It captured the strange dawn of home computing when hacking required telephone receivers and green-phosphor screens. Dan O’Herlihy brought wonderful veteran warmth as the grizzled newspaper reporter. Eighteen episodes were all we got before the network flinched, unsure how to sell microcomputers to family audiences on Saturday nights.
#9
Otherworld
A normal suburban family visits the Great Pyramid of Giza and accidentally slips through a dimensional portal into an authoritarian world divided into strange provinces. Roderick Taylor built a remarkably ambitious sci-fi concept on standard CBS backlots and soundstages. The plastic armor and studio smoke looked wonderfully theatrical, anchored by solid character acting. The network buried it on Saturday nights and canceled it after eight weeks. It remains a fascinating relic of mid-eighties high-concept television that deserved room to breathe.
2 critics · 3 lists →
#10
Starman
Picking up where John Carpenter’s film ended, Robert Hays stepped into the title role with boundless charm and wide-eyed gentleness. The show turned into an episodic road journey across blue-collar America, with an alien father getting to know his teenage son in dusty motels. It possessed the patient pacing of classic mid-eighties broadcast drama, shot on location with warm sunlight and genuine dust. ABC moved it across multiple time slots before canceling it after twenty-two episodes, cutting short a beautifully decent journey.
2 critics · 4 lists →
Watch in US
fuboTV
fuboTV
#11
Shannon's Deal
Written and created by John Sayles, this legal drama felt like an off-Broadway play accidentally broadcast across network lines. Jamey Sheridan played Jack Shannon, an ex-corporate lawyer rebuilding his life in Philadelphia after losing everything to a gambling addiction. The dialogue had a rhythmic, street-level bite that cut right through typical courtroom artifice. NBC gave it sixteen episodes across two abbreviated seasons before pulling the plug. It was simply too literary and bruised for the slick dawn of the nineties.
0 / 11
