Marvel Television
All but two decades saw new series premieres this week. A 1955 anthology series was referenced in a popular 1980s time travel movie, a 1985 series gave us the first female president, a 1995 series found a home on two networks and in Syndcation, a 2005 reality series featuring a dangerous occupation is still on the air today, and a 2015 series brought a comic book character to the small screen for the first time. Scroll down to see the shows that premiered this week and tell us if any of your favorites are celebrating milestone anniversaries.
1955
- April 9 – Science Fiction Theater (Syndication, Two seasons, 78 episodes)
- April 10 – Mr. Citizen (ABC, One season, 13 episodes)
Science Fiction Theater was a ‘what if” anthology series, more science than fiction. Truman Bradley hosted. The stories were original concepts based on articles from recent issues of Scientific American. The first season was produced on Eastmancolor film, but that particular stock was prone to fading over time. Season 2 was produced in black-and-white to offset the costs of Season 1. Actors who appeared in multiple episodes include Marshall Thompson, Dabbs Greer, Whit Bissell, Basil Rathbone, Kenneth Tobey, Gene Barry, DeForest Kelley, Vincent Price, Edmund Gwenn and Ruth Hussey. Gene Lockhart, Don DeFore and Howard Duff also appeared. Host Bradley filmed his intro segments in batches but in an oversight he wore a different tie while filming scenes for Episodes 3 and 4. After that, he was instructed to wear the same suit and tie for every episode. Produced on a low budget by Ivan Tors and ZIV Television, many of the props were re-used over and over again, and borrowed from previous Tors films including Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The Magnetic Monster, Riders to the Stars and Gog. As the series was Syndicated and played on different stations at different times across the country, Bradley was often hired by local stations to film promos for their broadcasts. The show was retitled Beyond the Limits for later Syndication in the 1960s. PBS aired the series unedited in the 1980s, and Sci-Fi Channel broadcast the show from 1996-1998, but edited from 26 minutes to 21 1/2 to make room for more commercials. George McFly mentions Science Fiction Theater is his favorite show in Back to the Future. The series was released on DVD in 2015, but the video transfers are slightly darker than the original broadcast episodes.
Mr. Citizen was a live anthology drama based on actual acts of heroism performed by average people. The guest cast included Hal Holbrook, Paul Lukas, James Daly and Anne Seymour. The citizen depicted in the program was in the studio audience on the night of the broadcast, and introduced at the end of the episode to receive the Mister Citizen Award.
1965
- No new series premiered this week in 1965.
1975
- No new series premiered this week in 1975.
1985
Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions
- April 7 – National Geographic Explorer (Nickelodeon/TBS/CNBC/MSNBC/National Geographic Channel, 25 seasons, 233 episodes)
- April 9 – Hail to the Chief (ABC, One season, 7 episodes)
- April 10 – Double Dare (CBS, One season, 7 episodes, 1 unaired)
National Geographic Explorer was produced as a less costly and intensive version of National Geographic Specials, which aired on PBS. The original series was three hours long and included five to ten short films. The series relaunched in June 2003, two years after moving to MSNBC, as Ultimate Explorer with Lisa Ling as host. It moved to the National Geographic Channel on July 8, 2004. The series has won over 400 awards including 52 Emmy Awards, and received two Academy Award nominations. The original series ended in 2011 but was relaunched in 2015. The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan became host in 2018. Other hosts have included Robert Urich, Jeff Goldblum, Dan Rather, Ted Danson and Ali Wentworth.
Hail to the Chief starred Patty Duke as the first female President of the United States, and was similar in style to the sitcom Soap, which was from the same production team. The show featured one of the few recurring gay characters in a 1980s television series, played by Joel Brooks. The main cast included Ted Bessell, Herschel Bernardi, Quinn Cummings, Murray Hamilton, Dick Shawn, GLynn Turman, and Ricky Paull Goldin. John Vernon and Richard Paul were recurring guest stars.
Double Dare was a mystery series starring Billy Dee Williams and Ken Wahl.
1995
- April 8 – The Maxx (MTV, One season, 13 episodes)
- April 10 – In the House (NBC/UPN/Syndication, Five seasons, 76 episodes)
The Maxx was based on the comic book series of the same name, and covered Darker Image #1 and The Maxx #1/2. The show’s animation style would often change from scene to scene to show a different perspective.
In the House starred LL Cool J, Debbie Allen, Kim Wayans and Alfonso Ribeiro. The show was cancelled after two seasons at NBC and quickly picked up by UPN, where it ran for another two seasons. The final season was produced for Syndcation. The show received an Emmy nomination in 1997 for Outstanding Lighting for a Comedy Series.
2005
Original Productions
- April 6 – Con (Comedy Central, One season, 6 episodes)
- April 6 – Meet the Barkers (MTV, Two seasons, 16 episodes)
- April 8 – Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama (Disney Channel, TV movie)
- April 8 – Living with Fran (The WB, Two seasons, 26 episodes, 6 unaired)
- April 12 – Deadliest Catch (Discovery Channel, Twenty seasons, 351 episodes to date)
Con featured con artist Skyler Stone revealing the secrets of the con profession, demonstrating tricks, scams and hoaxes of various degrees of complexity. Meet the Barkers was a reality show following the lives of Travis Barker and his wife Shanna Moakler and their two children. Barker filed for divorce after the series ended.
Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama was the second Kim Possible TV movie based on the TV series of the same name. It was the first animated Disney Channel Original Movie. The movie is considered to be the three-part Season 3 finale even though it was broadcast before the last few episodes of Season 3. It was originally intended to be the series finale, but Disney Channel renewed the show for a fourth season.
Living with Fran starred Fran Drescher, Ryan McPartlin and Ben Feldman. Drescher’s The Nanny co-star Charles Shaughnessy had a recurring role as Fran’s ex-husband. Debi Mazar appeared in several episodes as Fran’s cousin. Guest stars included Marilu Henner, Hal Linden, Ryan Devlin, and Lainie Kazan as Fran’s mother (Kazan also guested on The Nanny as Fran’s aunt). The show’s original title was Shacking Up and was intended to launch in the Fall of 2004. Early tapings frustrated Drescher and the original showrunners were replaced before the show ever aired, and it was not retitled until close to the premiere. The show was placed on hiatus in October 2005 with nine episodes left to air for the second season. The show returned in January 2006, and the cliffhanger finale aired on March 24. The show was cancelled as a result of the merger between UPN and The WB, forming The CW. Six of the 13 Season 1 episodes did not air, and no reason was given for their omission from broadcast. According to the production code numbers, the episodes were aired wildly out of order, as were the Season 2 episodes.
With Deadliest Catch still in production, filming for Season 21 commenced in January 2025. A two-person crew lives on the boat with the fishing crew. Audio is recorded with wireless microphones and shotgun mics attached to the cameras, but because of a lack of space there is no audio mixer on board. In post-production the sound team attempts to use the actual sound recorded during filming. All of the equipment is carefully waterproofed, but cameras are routinely damaged by corrosion, ice and accidents. In the early seasons, camera crews had little or no experience on crab boats and faced many dangers not encountered during normal documentary filmmaking. When Captain Phil Harris suffered a stroke, he insisted cameras continue to film as he was being attended to, telling the crew they had to have an end to his story, especially of the bond between the father and his sons. Filming continued as Harris was airlifted to Anchorage, Alaska where emergency surgery was performed to relieve pressure on the brain, but after eleven days in the ICU Harris succumbed to complications from the stroke. The series has won 16 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
2015
FX Productions
- April 6 – Make It Pop (Nickelodeon, Two seasons, 42 episodes)
- April 7 – Your Family or Mine (TBS, One season, 10 episodes)
- April 9 – The Comedians (FX, One season, 13 episodes)
- April 10 – Daredevil (Netflix, Three seasons, 39 episodes)
Your Family or Mine is an American sitcom adapted from the Israeli series Savri Maranan.
The Comedians stars Billy Crystal and Josh Gad as fictional versions of themselves. Dana Delaney also starred. It is an adaptation of the Swedish SVT series Ulveson och Herngren. Guest stars appearing as themselves included Mel Brooks, Rob Reiner, Jimmy Kimmel, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Larry Charles. Steve Weber also guested as a character named Jamie Dobbs.
Daredevil is based on the Marvel Comics character, and went into development the year after the rights to the character and associated characters reverted back to Marvel from 20th Century Fox, which had produced the Daredevil and Elektra movies. Though set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the series intentionally avoided crossovers with the wider MCU. A new film was pitched but Marvel was not interested in doing an R-rated movie at the time, and also did not want to make a smaller film when the MCU was about epic, big-budget blockbusters. Marvel eventually decided the character would be better suited for a television series. Netflix and Amazon were among the parties interested in the project, which would include four series and a miniseries, with Netflix winning the rights to the Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cages series, as well as The Defenders miniseries featuring the four characters. Before Marvel regained the rights to Daredevil, Charlie Cox was already being mentioned to play the character, but producers initially felt he was better suited to play Foggy Nelson. Cox won the role of Matt Murdoch/Daredevil, with Elden Henson cast as Foggy. After the series was cancelled, Cox had stated he was contractually obligated to appear in future Marvel projects, and he did reprise his role for the first time in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. The show’s villain, Kingpin (played by Vincent D’Onofrio), also appeared in the Disney+ series Hawkeye in 2021. The reboot series, Daredevil: Born Again, was announced in 2022 with an 18-episode first season, although that order was split into two 9-episode seasons. Cox and D’Onofrio returned, after appearing on the 2024 Hawkeye spin-off series Echo. The release of Echo retroactively added all of the Netflix series to the Disney+ MCU timeline, placing Daredevil Season 1 within the Phase 2 content between Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Age of Ultron. The second season was placed after Ant-Man, while the third comes before Thor: Ragnarok.