Warner Bros. Television
This was a pretty lackluster week for new TV series that debuted across the decades. 1965 and 1975 produced nothing new, and only eleven new shows premiered in the other seven decades with nine of them barely making it past two seasons. One kids show did go for three, and a science reality show went for nine, but none of the others fared as well. 1955 brought a radio anthology series to the small screen, 1975 had a female-led cop drama driven off the air because of its excessive violence (and possibly sexist critics), 1995 had a Year One UPN show that got canned with most of the others, 2005 had a promising sitcom that faltered in its second season, and 2015 had a comedy that had the misfortune of being on a service that folded a year later. Scroll down to see the shows that premiered this week, and let us know if you remember any of them.
1955
- April 16 – Damon Runyon Theater (CBS, Two seasons, 39 episodes)
Damon Runyon Theater began as a radio broadcast in the late 1940s. Guest stars on the anthology TV series include Jack Albertson, Gene Barry, Frances Bavier, Broderick Crawford, Edward Everett Horton, Barbara Hale, John Ireland, Dorothy Lamour, Hugh O’Brian, Cesar Romero, James Whitmore, Keenan Wynn and Fay Wray.
1965
- No new series premiered this week in 1965.
1975
- No new series premiered this week in 1975.
1985
David Gerber Productions
- April 15 – Lady Blue (ABC, One season, 14 episodes)
- April 19 – The Best Times (NBC, One season, 6 episodes)
Johnny Depp guest starred on Lady Blue in one of his earliest roles. Episodes were filmed on location in Chicago. The show’s emphasis on violence drew comparisons to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, and star Jamie Rose prepped for the role by watching Eastwood films, and received advice from Eastwood on how to handle a gun. After the pilot aired, ABC was flooded with complaints about the violence, and the show was moved from Thursdays to Saturdays before being cancelled early in 1986. Some have attributed the show’s negative reviews to overt sexism due to the female lead character. The pilot episode was broadcast as a TV movie on April 15, with the series premiering in September. MGM owns the rights to the series but has no plans for a DVD or streaming release.
1995
Gekko Film Corporation
- April 14 – Colby’s Clubhouse (TBN, Three seasons, 43 episodes)
- April 18 – Legend (UPN, One season, 12 episodes)
Richard Dean Anderson and John de Lancie starred in sci-fi Western Legend. The project was developed as a TV movie before it was ordered to series. The show was one of the original debut UPN series, almost all of which were cancelled within the first year.
2005
- April 13 – Revelations (NBC, One season, 6 episodes)
- April 13 – Stacked (FOX, Two seasons, 19 episodes, 5 unaired)
Revelations starred Bill Pullman and Natascha McElhone as an astrophysicist and a nun, respectively, in a race against time to prevent the end of the world as foreseen in the Book of Revelation.
Set in a bookstore, all of the books seen in Stacked were provided by HarperCollins which, like the FOX network, is owned by NewsCorp. The show starred Pamela Anderson, Elon Gold, Brian Scolaro, Marissa Jaret Winokur and Christopher Lloyd. A complete series DVD was released in December 2006 which included the unaired episodes.
2015
Thunder Road Television
- April 13 – Impossible Engineering (Science Channel, Nine seasons, 62 episodes)
- April 14 – Other Space (Yahoo! Screen, One season, 8 episodes)
- April 17 – Cedric’s Barber Battle (The CW, One season, 10 episodes, 2 unaired)
- April 17 – The Messengers (The CW, One season, 13 episodes)
Other Space was created by Paul Feig. The series was not renewed for a second season due to Yahoo! Screen shutting down the following year. The cast included MST3K cast members Trace Beaulieu (in a voice role) and Joel Hodgson.
While The CW cancelled supernatural mystery The Messengers the day before the fourth episode aired, the network continued to air all the remaining episodes weekly until the series ended.