Starz
1950
- No new series premiered this week in 1950.
1960
- January 25 — Variety series The Kate Smith Show premieres on CBS. The series starred singer Kate Smith, who had previously hosted The Kate Smith Evening Hour on NBC during the 1951-1952 TV season. After smith’s manager Ted Collins suffered a heart attack in 1956, Smith cancelled all of her engagements and was determined to leave television permanently. She spent months at the hospital praying for Collins’ recovery. More than a year after he recovered, the pair launched her new series with the theme song ‘When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain’ instead of her signature ‘God Bless America’. Unfortunately the timing was bad for Smith’s comeback as her style of music was being replaced by rock and roll, and not even decent reviews were enough to draw in viewers. The show was cancelled after six months on the air. There is no complete list of guest stars on the series, with Hank Williams is erroneously listed in some places even though he died seven years before the show premiered. The show was last broadcast on July 18, 1960 after producing an estimated 25 episodes.
1970
- January 21 — Sitcom Nanny and the Professor premieres on ABC. The series starred Juliet Mills as Phoebe Figalilly, a magical British nanny taking care of a family in need of guidance (a thinly veiled, modern version of Mary Poppins), although unlike other magical shows of the era, Nanny Phoebe’s ‘magic’ was less overt and only implied. Richard Long co-starred as single father Professor Harold Everett, with his three children played by David Doremus, Trent Lehman and Kim Richards. Elsa Lanchester joined the series in the recurring role of Aunt Henrietta in Season 3. The show hinted that Nanny was psychic, and vaguely suggested she may have been more than several hundred years old after the children found a picture of her that seemed to have been taken a century earlier. Midway through the first season, Nanny and the children restored a 1930 Model A Ford which Nanny named ‘Arabella’, and for some reason the car’s radio could only pick up broadcasts from 1930. The series featured some notable guest stars as Nanny’s relatives including John Mills (Juliet’s father), Ida Lupino and Ray Bolger. The show enjoyed some success during its first two seasons when it aired on Fridays between The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, but ABC moved the show to Mondays during its third season against Gunsmoke on CBS and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In on NBC. The series was cancelled midway through its third season with the last episode airing on December 27, 1971. In all, 54 episodes were produced. Two animated adaptations, Nanny and the Professor and Nanny and the Professor and the Phantom of the Circus aired as part of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie series with members of the original cast providing voices for their characters. It had a brief run in syndication and was one of the first shows to be rerun on the FX Network in 1994.
1980
- January 22 — Sitcom Goodtime Girls premieres on ABC. The comedy is set during World War II and centers around four women in Washington DC who share a small attic apartment due to a regional apartment shortage. In the beginning, three of the women, played by Annie Potts, Lorna Patterson and Georgia Engel, agreed to share the tiny space, but things got more cramped when a holier-than-thou reporter (Francine Tacker), who had been covering the apartment shortage, was forced to join them after losing her own apartment. She clashed with the others but they did learn to get along. There were also two single men in the building played by Adrian Zmed and Peter Scolari, who often joined the girls escapades around the city. Merwin Goldsmith and Marcia Lewis played the owners of the building. The series was from the same team behind ABC’s popular Happy Days, which Goodtime Girls followed on Tuesday nights, although it was not connected in any way to that show or any of its spin-offs (although Scott Baio and Michael McKean guested as different characters). ABC kept the show on the air though the February sweeps then pulled it from the schedule until April, when it returned on Saturday for three consecutive weeks. It was pulled off the air again and officially cancelled during the May 1980 upfronts. Five more episodes turned up in August, with the last broadcast on August 29. 13 episodes were produced, but ABC opted not to air the show’s third episode for unknown reasons.
1990
- No new series premiered this week in 1990.
2000
- January 22 — Action-comedy Jack of All Trades premieres in syndication as part of the ‘Back2Back Action Hour’ along with Cleopatra 2525 which debuted on January 17. Both shows were notable for being the first non-animated action series to be produced in the half-hour format since the 1970s. The show was set at the turn of the 19th century with Bruce Campbell playing Jack Stiles, an American secret agent sent to the French-controlled island of Pulau-Pulau in the East Indies by President Jefferson. There he met his British contact, and love interest, Emilia Rothschild and the two worked together to stop Napoleon Bonaparte (Verne Troyer) and others from threatening the United States. To the public, Jack is seen as Emilia’s attaché (and other times the roles are reversed), and to protect his identity, Jack often adopted the identity of the legendary (but fictional) masked hero ‘The Daring Dragoon’. The show contained many ongoing gags, such as historical inaccuracies, Jack being responsible for important historical events (but not receiving credit), and sexual puns and innuendos. The show also parodied historical figures — Jefferson, Blackbeard, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Lewis & Clark, King George III and Catherine the Great — some of whom had been dead before the show’s 1801 time period. The series was cancelled midway through its second season on December 2, 2000 after airing 22 episodes.
- January 24 — Game show Hollywood Showdown premieres on both PAX and Game Show Network. Seven contestants competed against each other over the course of five episodes. At any time, one contestant was in control of the game while the other six waited in a gallery holding an envelope. Five envelopes contained cards with dollar amounts from $100 to $1000 while the last had the ‘Box Office’ card. The contestant in control would select one of the gallery members to play against, and if the question was answered correctly, the dollar amount on the card was added to the Box Office Jackpot, which started at $10,000. If the person with the Box Office card was selected, the winner of that question would advance to the Box Office round where they had to answer five questions correctly from one of two categories. The first four questions were worth $500 each. If they answered the fifth correctly, they won the Box Office jackpot. The contestant could quit at any time and keep the money won. A wrong answer lost whatever winnings they had to that point. If the contestant chose to quit, the Box Office Jackpot would continue to grow. When time ran out on Friday’s episodes, the gallery players would open their envelopes and the player with the Box Office card would compete in the final question round for the week. The winner could take $1000 and leave or return the next week to play against a new gallery of contestants. The jackpot would also re-set to $10,000. The show’s first season aired from January 24, 2000 to November 2000 on both networks, then returned solely to GSN on January 1, 2001. The show ended after two seasons and 165 episodes on March 30, 2001. Todd Newton served as the show’s host.
2010
- January 21 — Legal drama The Deep End premieres on ABC. The show focused on five recent law school graduates from different backgrounds working together at prestigious Los Angeles law firm Sterling, Huddle, Oppenheim & Craft. The five are thrown into ‘the deep end’ and are forced to deal with court cases that conflict with their personal beliefs and ethics. The five quickly bond under pressure and learn to make tough ethical decisions. The series starred Matt Long, Norbert Leo Butz, Ben Lawson, Tina Majorino, Clancy Brown, Billy Zane, Mehcad Brooks, Leah Pipes and Nicole Ari Parker. The series was faced with criticism from real attorneys who felt the show was unrealistic due to numerous violations of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct by the fictional attorneys. The show was also criticsized for showing the young associates performing tedious research with hard copy books in a law library; a firm the size of the one depcited on the show would have had a subscription to an online database. Critics also said the show lacked originality, and noted it was obvious the series was not shot in its actual Los Angeles setting (to keep costs down, ABC filmed the show in Las Colinas, a community in Irving, Texas. Six episodes were produced and aired, with the last broadcast on February 25. ABC officially cancelled the show in May 2010.
- January 22 — Sci-fi series Caprica premieres on Syfy, a spin-off prequel to the network’s popular Battlestar Galactic reboot. The series takes place 58 years before the events that launched the parent series, showing how humanity first created the Cylons who would later turn against their masters. Among the main characters were the father and uncle of William Adama, the man who became the senior surviving military leader of the fleet holding the remnants of the Twelve Colonies. Series creator Ronald D. Moore said Caprica was specifically designed not to repeat what had already been done on Galactica, giving the new show a different tone, content and style. Unfortunately, fans of the original seemed to expect more of the same and Syfy aired only 14 of the first season’s 19 episodes (although Space in Canada aired the entire series). Syfy cancelled the show on October 27, 2010. The complete series was released on DVD on December 21, 2010, and Syfy finally aired the entire series in a burn off marathon on January 4, 2011. The cast included Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson, Alessandra Torresani, Sasha Roiz and Polly Walker.
- January 22 — Historical drama Spartacus: Blood and Sand premieres on Starz. This is the first season of the ‘Spartacus’ series starring Andy Whitfield as the Thracian gladiator. The show focused on the events of Spartacus’ obscure early life leading up to the beginning of historical records. Each episode was preceded by a warning of the show’s graphic content including bloody violence, nudity and sexual scenes. The show was a success and renewed for a second season, but star Whitfield was diagnosed with early-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Starz postponed production of a second season and produced a six-episode prequel series, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, allowing Whitfield to undergo medical treatment. The prequel was headlined by John Hannah and Lucy Lawless with Whitfield providing a brief voice-over. Season 2’s production resumed in June 2010 when Starz announced Whitfeld was cancer-free, but the cancer returned and Whitfield bowed out, replaced by Liam McIntyre for the second season, now titled Spartacus: Vengeance. Sadly, Whitfield died on September 11, 2011. The first season consisted of 13 episodes and also featured Manu Bennett, Peter Mensah, Jai Courtney, Antonio Te Maioha, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Katrina Law, John Hannah and Lucy Lawless.
- January 25 — Comedy series La La Land premieres on Showtime in the US, BBC Three in the UK and SBS One in Australia. The show featured comedian Marc Wootton playing three different characters: fake psychic Shirley Ghostman, wannabe actor Gary Garner, and documentary filmmaker Brendan Allen. The series ran for a single season of six episodes, ending on March 1, 2010.
- January 25 — Live action/animated interactive series Team Umizoomi premieres on Nickelodeon. The musical children’s television series placed an emphasis on preschool mathematical concepts such as counting, sequences, shapes, patterns, measurements and equalities. 78 episodes were produced over four seasons. Nickelodeon cancelled the show on February 20, 2014. Nick Jr. still airs reruns.
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