TV by the Decade :: June 14•20

TV Land

Several new series premiered across three different decades during the week of June 14, with a few having multiple season runs, including an early soap, several reality shows and a Disney Channel series. But there is one significant comedy series with a six season run that premiered this week. Let’s take a look and see which shows you remember.

1950

• June 17 — Soap opera Hawkins Falls, Population 6200 premieres on NBC. The series centered around the Drewer family, headed by Lorna and Knap Drewer. Frank Dane, who portrayed Knap, felt underused after the first year as a lead actor and walked off the set, demanding more money and fewer hours. Producers agreed to give him fewer hours by putting Knap on a flight that was lost over the sea. Lorna then married Floyd Corey, the town doctor, and the couple became the main focus of the show. Other characters included Clate Weathers, editor of the town’s newspaper, upright citizen Belinda Catherwood and the happily married Laif and Millie Flaigle. Hawkins Falls wasn’t the first original soap to appear on television, as most transitioned from radio, but it was the most successful, running for more than five years. The series began as a one-hour, primetime comedy-drama running until October 12, 1950. NBC moved the series on April 2, 1951 to a fifteen-minute daytime slot, developing it into a soap opera format, where it was retitled Hawkins Falls, A Television Novel. Running until July 1, 1955, it was NBC’s longest-running soap until The Doctors surpassed it in 1967. The town was patterned after Woodstock, Illinois, and the series was broadcast live from Chicago. Hugh Downs was one of the show’s announcers. Of the more than 100 episodes produced, only about 15 survive, with five episodes dated between May 1953 to June 1955 surviving in Kinescopes at the Walter J. Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia.

1960

• No new series premiered this week in 1960.

1970

• No new series premiered this week in 1970.

1980

• No new series premiered this week in 1980.

1990

• No new series premiered this week in 1990.

2000

• June 16 — Children’s reality series Totally Circus premieres on Disney Channel. The 30-minute series produced 15 episodes, 14 of which began with the word ‘Totally’ in the title, and ended on September 24, 2000.
• June 17 — Comedy series Even Stevens premieres on Disney Channel. The series centered around the Stevens family of Sacramento, CA, whose two younger children, Ren and Louis, often clash due to their opposing personalities. The series was originally titles Spivey’s Kid Brother before the title was changed, requiring Disney to redub the name Spivey to Stevens. The series starred Shia LaBeouf as Louis and Christy Carlson Romano as Ren, the only two cast member to appear in every episode. Other main cast members were Nick Spano, Tom Virtue, Donna Pescow, A.J. Trauth, Margo Harshman and Lauren Frost. The series ran for three seasons, producing 65 episodes, the limit for all Disney Channel series at that time. The feature-length TV movie The Even Stevens Movie served as the series finale on June 13, 2003.
• June 18 — Sitcom Strip Mall premieres on Comedy Central. A spoof of primetime soaps, the series was set in Van Nuys, CA (star Julie Brown’s hometown) at the fictional Plaza del Toro strip mall. Brown played Tammi Tyler, former child star who stabbed an adult co-star to death after eating a PCP-laced cupcake, who now works as a waitress at the Funky Fox bar. In the series premiere, Tammi married Harvey Krudup (Jim O’Heir), owner of the Starbrite Cleaners whom Tammi thought was worth millions until she found out the only Starbrite location was in the strip mall. For the rest of the series, she unsuccessfully tried to find ways to end the marriage. Other businesses in the strip mall were ‘Wok Don’t Run’ Chinese restaurant, the ‘Good Things’ gift shop, and ‘We Shoot You Video’. Cast members included Amy Hill, Loretta Fox, Maxwell Caulfield, Eliza Coyle, Chris Wylde, Jonathan Mangum, Allison Dunbar, Tim Bagley, Bob Koherr, Juan Vidal and Kim Wimmer. Guest stars included Stella Stevens, one of several actresses to play Harvey’s mother, and Van Nuys native Cindy Williams who appeared as herself in several episodes. Every episode ended with a cliffhanger, and the second season ended with Tammi being tossed from an airplane by insurance agent Dwight who yelled, ‘Goodbye, Tammi Tyler!’ While a third season was about to be planned, Comedy Central cancelled the series after 20 episodes due to the recession at the time and the expense of the series. It was one of two Comedy Central sitcoms cancelled in June 2001 due to costs. The other was That’s My Bush!. The final episode was broadcast on March 11, 2001.

2010

• June 15 — Reality series Double Exposure premieres on Bravo. The series centered around two of the world’s top photographers, Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri and Markus Klinko, and creative director GK Reid, giving viewers an inside look at the process of creating celebrity and fashion images with A-list celebrities, with comedy and drama arising as pressures mount on the passionate artists. Only six episodes were produced and broadcast, with the last airing on July 20, 2010.
• June 15 — Reality series It’s Effin’ Science premieres on G4. A spin-off of Attack of the Show, the series explored the weird, wild and off-beat side of science with the hosts creating and demonstrating experiments that anyone could attempt themselves, like turning a pool party into a massive game of ‘Battleship’. The hosts were Angie Greenup, Marc Horowitz and Chad Zdenek. The hosts and crew met for the first time at a Six Flags park so they would bond before being on camera for the first time. Horowitz said they pretended it was Angie’s birthday without telling her, leading to hilarious confusion as park staff serenaded her with ‘Happy Birthday’. The series ran for just one season of 10 episodes with the last broadcast on September 7, 2010.
• June 14 — Comedy series Warren the Ape premieres on MTV. The reality show parody, a spin-off of the IFC and FOX sitcom Greg the Bunny, follows Warren as he tries to get his life back together after the cancellation of the sitcom. But Warren’s attention to drugs, alcohol and women has derailed his career which has degenerated into seedy exploitation films, industrial shorts and adult movies. With the help of addition specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky, Warren tries to clean up his act and get back into the Hollywood spotlight. Dan Milano voiced Warren, with Pinsky as himself. Other main cast members included Josh Sussman, Mary K. DeVault and Laura Kachergus. Guests included Greg the Bunny, Judy Greer, Seth Green, Perez Hilton, Nancy O’Dell, Billy Crudup, Corey Feldman, Bob Gunton, Mick FOley, David Koechner, Count Blah, Eugene Levy, and Sarah Silverman. The series ran for a single season of 12 episodes, the last broadcast on August 30, 2010.
• June 16 — Reality series Bert the Conqueror premieres on Travel Channel. Stand-up comic Bert Kreischer traveled across the US to amusement parks and other venues to experience and promote various rollercoasters, water rides and unusual sports. The first season’s ten episodes saw Kreischer visit ten different states. The second season included visits in the US, Alberta, Canada and Cancun, Mexico. The series ran for three seasons, producing 40 episodes.



• June 16 — Sitcom Hot in Cleveland premieres on TV Land. The series centered around three aging entertainment industry veterans whose Paris-bound plane makes an emergency landing in Cleveland, Ohio. The women — Melanie (Valerie Bertinelli), Joy (Jane Leeves) and Victoria (Wendie Malick) — find Cleveland to be more welcoming and less shallow and youth-obsessed so they decide to stay and lease a home that comes with a sassy caretaker, Elka (Betty White), who lives in the guest house. Hot in Cleveland was TV Land’s first attempt at producing a first-run scripted comedy series, and its success led to a rebirth of multi-camera comedies filmed in front of a live audience across all the major networks. White was only intended to appear in the pilot but was asked to stay for the entire series. Malick’s character Victoria was a soap star with a long-running feud with Susan Lucci, giving the show the opportunity to cross-over with Lucci’s soap All My Children during the second season. Malick guested on the soap, credited as Victoria Chase, while Lucci appeared on the sitcom as herself. Hot in Cleveland was often compared favorably to White’s previous hit sitcom The Golden Girls with White now being seen as the new Estelle Getty. The series won a single Emmy in 2011 for Outstanding Art Direction for a Multi-Camera Series. White was also Emmy nominated for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011, and won a Gracie Allen Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series (the entire cast was nominated that year for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series). White won the SAG Award again in 2012, the series won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite Cable TV Comedy, and the episode ‘Beards’ won a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Individual Episode (in a series without a regular LGBT character). The show was also nominated in 2013 and 2014 for Favorite Cable TV Comedy by the People’s Choice Awards. Aside from Lucci, who made several appearances in Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 5, other notable recurring actors included Wayne Knight, Carl Reiner, Huey Lewis, Joe Jonas, Juliet Mills, Jennifer Love Hewitt, John Mahoney, Buck Henry, Jon Lovitz, Georgia Engle, Dave Foley, Craig Ferguson, Jay Harrington, Alan Dale, Eddie Cibrian, Tim Daly and Bill Bellamy. Guest stars during the show’s run included Shirley Knight, Hal Linden, John Schneider, Amy Yasbeck, Tim Conway, Mary Tyler Moore (the first time she and White had acted together since MTM’s classic sitcom left the air), Sherri Shepherd, Bonnie Franklin (reuniting with One Day at a Time co-star Bertinelli), Doris Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel, Melanie Griffith, Michael E. Knight, Cedric the Entertainer (in a back door pilot for the spin-off The Soul Man), Peri Gilpin (who with Mahoney shared the screen with Leeves on Frasier), Don Rickles, Sean Hayes (one of the show’s producers), Gilles Marini, Kathie Lee Gifford, Sandra Bernhard, White’s former MTM co-star Ed Asner, Cybill Shepherd, Curtis Armstrong, Doug Savant, Kristin Chenoweth, Barry Bostwick, Dan Cortese, Regis Philbin, Joan Rivers, David Spade and Laura San Giacomo (Malick’s former Just Shoot Me! co-stars), Heather Locklear, Fred Willard, Ed Begley Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, George Hamilton, Shirley Jones and William Shatner (in a special live episode), Carol Burnett, Jean Smart, Ken Jeong, Alex Trebek, Thomas Lennon, Jaime Pressly, Chris Elliott, Jason Priestley, Sarah Hyland, Max Greenfield, Cheri Oteri, Chevy Chase, Rob Schneider, Nora Dunn, Morgan Fairchild, Chris Colfer, Will Sasso, Queen Latifah, Perez Hilton, Ernie Hudson, Robert Wagner, Mario Lopez, Gladys Knight and Ben vereen, Bob Newhart and Stacy Keach. Steven Tyler appeared in a special animated fifth season episode. Season 4 was notable for reuniting White with Moore, Engle, Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman for the first time in 36 years as members of a bowling team reuniting for the first time in 50 years. The series ran for six seasons, producing 128 episodes with the finale broadcast on June 3, 2015.
• June 20 — Reality show The Real L Word premieres on Showtime. Created following the success of scripted drama The L Word, the series followed a group of lesbians through their daily lives in Los Angeles for the first two seasons, and Brooklyn in the third, adding new faces to the cast. 27 episodes were produced with the last airing on September 6, 2012.

 
Did you or do you watch any of these shows? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!