Roscoe Productions
A handful of new series premiered this week over the span of three decades, most of them instantly forgettable. However, 1984 gave us a very popular, long-running and Emmy-winning sitcom, 2004 gave us a popular, Emmy-winning, profanity-laden Western, and 2014 gave us a popular, Emmy-nominated, long-running and slightly controversial sci-fi drama whose episode count matched its title. Scroll down the list to learn about these shows and others, and tell us if any of your favorites are celebrating anniversaries this week!
1954
- No new series premiered this week in 1954.
1964
- No new series premiered this week in 1964.
1974
- No new series premiered this week in 1974.
1984
Alan Landsburg Productions
- March 19 – Kate and Allie (CBS, Six seasons, 122 episodes)
- March 20 – Shaping Up (ABC, One season, 6 episodes, 1 unaired)
Kate and Allie began as a mid-season replacement with only six episodes ordered for the first season, but the show’s near instant popularity — the first episode ranked 4th in the Nielsen ratings that week — made it a very easy decision for CBS to order a full season for the Fall of 1984. The show ranked in the Top 20 until its fifth season, and Jane Curtain won two Emmy Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, while Susan Saint James was nominated three times in the same category. Viewers lost interest in the series when producers committed the cardinal sin of marrying off Allie, while still keeping Kate in the picture by having her move in with the newlyweds.
The original title for the series was Two Mommies, which Saint James jumped on so she wouldn’t have to relocate her family from their Connecticut home. Curtain wasn’t initially interested in doing the show, but a talk with the director convinced her to sign on. The series was taped on soundstages constructed at the Ed Sullivan Theater and at Teletape Studios, which was the production facility for Sesame Street. The opening sequences were filmed on location in areas around Manhattan. CBS demanded the two women be shown entering separate bedrooms at the end of each episode so viewers wouldn’t think they were a lesbian couple. The pressure from the network may have contributed to the story of an episode where they did pretend to be a couple when faced with a large rent increase. Saint James was pregnant during production on Season 4, with her pregnancy hidden creatively behind a desk, under a sheet or in a bubble bath. The one exception was a flashback episode that showed both women pregnant. One episode in 1987 was produced in cooperation with the Coalition for the Homeless and taped almost entirely outdoors as Allie struggled to find a way home after leaving her keys and money in a taxi. The episode was created while Saint James was hospitalized with kidney stones.
A sort-of spin-off of the series titled Roxie aired two episodes on CBS before disappearing. The show starred Andrea Martin, who had played a similar character on Kate and Allie named Eddie Gordon. A second spin-off, Late Bloomer, based on the Season 3 episode of the same title with guest star Lindsay Wagner, was cancelled the day before it was to air with an encore presentation of the Kate and Allie episode, which had served as a backdoor pilot.
Shaping Up starred Leslie Nielsen, Jennifer Tilly, Shawn Weatherly and Jake Steinfeld. Tim Robbins was originally cast in the role of Ben, but the network replaced him with Michael Fontaine.
1994
- No new series premiered this week in 1994.
2004
- March 17 – The Stones (CBS, One season, 10 episodes)
- March 19 – The D.A. (ABC, One season, 4 episodes)
- March 21 – Deadwood (HBO, Three seasons, 36 episodes)
- March 21 – Animal Face-Off (Discovery Channel/Animal Planet, One season, 12 episodes)
The Stones received terrible reviews and wasted a cast that included Robert Klein, Judith Light, Lindsay Sloane and Jay Baruchel. The series also had a strong producers pedigree with David Kohan and Max Mutchnick (Will & Grace) and Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black) behind the scenes.
The cast of The D.A. included Steven Weber, Bruno Campos, J.K. Simmons and Sarah Paulson.
Deadwood starred Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane as real-life Deadwood residents Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen, and used actual diaries and newspapers from 1870s Deadwood residents as reference points for the series, which mixed historical fact with substantial fiction. The series earned 28 Emmy nominations, winning eight. It also won a Golden Globe. The series ended without a proper finale, and after several years of fan demand and discussions with HBO, Deadwood: The Movie went into production in 2018 and was broadcast on May 31, 2019. The series was the subject of controversy over the use of profanity, with the work ‘fuck’ said 43 times in the first hour of the show. Over the course of the 36 episodes the word is said 2,980 times, or 1.56 utterances per minute.
2014
Alloy Entertainment
- March 17 – Lords of the Car Hoards (Discovery Channel, Two seasons, 12 episodes)
- March 17 – The Fabulist (E!, One season, 8 episodes)
- March 18 – Chasing Maria Menounos (Oxygen, One season, 10 episodes)
- March 18 – Barry’d Treasure (A&E, One season, 8 episodes)
- March 19 – The 100 (The CW, Seven seasons, 100 episodes)
- March 23 – American Dream Builders (NBC, One season, 10 episodes)
Barry’d Treasure starred Barry Weiss and was a spin-off of Storage Wars. Some of Weiss’ Storage Wars sidekicks also made appearances on the show.
The 100 was pronounced The Hundred, and is loosely based on the young adult novel series of the same name by Kass Morgan. The series was filmed in and around Vancouver. David J. Peterson, who created Dothraki and Valyrian languages for Game of Thrones, created the Trigedasleng language for The Grounders on The 100, which was similar to Creole English. The series faced widespread backlash after killing off the Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) character in Season 3, which many critics and fans considered a continuation of the ‘bury your gays’ trope in television in which LGBTQ characters are killed off more often than others, implying they are disposable. The fact that Lexa was killed immediately after having sex with Clarke (Eliza Taylor) only heightened the criticism, forcing showrunner Jason Rothenberg to issue an apology. The death of Lexa also forced the death of Debnam-Carey’s concurrernt character on Fear the Walking Dead to be presented off-screen. The series received an Emmy nomination in 2014 for Special Visual Effects. A seventh season episode, ‘Anaconda’, served as a backdoor pilot for a prequel series to show the events 97 years before the original series beginning with the nuclear apocalypse that wiped out almost all life on Earth. The prequel was still under consideration as late as May 2021, but by November 2021 the network announced it was not moving forward with the series.
Share this post
