TV by the Decade :: October 1•6

The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer – United Paramount Network

The first week of October through the decades saw the launch of several new series. Some were modest hits, a lot were huge failures surviving on the air for anywhere from four to thirteen episodes. 1998 saw the UPN network crash and burn with several comedies, one of them fanning the flames of controversy before it even got on the air, and a sci-fi show that the network botched by pairing with sitcoms. The CW tried to lease out its Sunday night real estate and fared even worse than what the network was programming and quickly took the night back. And eventually turned Sunday over to the local affiliates until this year.

There are many shows on the list, some you may know, most you may not, so let’s take a trip down Memory Lane to see if you remember any of these series …

1958

• October 2 – Behind Closed Doors was an NBC anthology series set during the Cold War. Bruce Gordon hosted and occasionally starred in the show which ran for 26 episodes, ending on April 9, 1959.
• October 2 – The Huckleberry Hound Show was a syndicated series from animation studio Hanna-Barbera, their second series following The Ruff and Reddy Show in 1957. The Huckleberry Hound Show featured three segments that included Yogi Bear & Boo Boo and Pixie & Dixie & Mr. Jinks. Yogi Bear became so popular the character was spun off into his own show in 1961. Hokey Wolf replaced him on Huckleberry Hound. The popularity of the show legitimized the concept of animation made specifically for television and ran for four season, producing 69 episodes. In 1960 the series was the first animated show to be honored with an Emmy Award. The show ended on December 1, 1961.
• October 2 – The Rough Riders was a Western set after the Civil War, and starred Kent Taylor, Jan Merlin and Peter Whitney. Guest stars included Lon Chaney Jr., James Coburn, Mike Connors, William Conrad, DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy and Broderick Crawford. The series ran for 39 episodes on ABC, ending September 24, 1959.
• October 2 – Yancy Derringer was another Western that ran on CBS and starred Jock Mahoney in the title role. The series was filmed by Desilu Productions. The series was based on a short story written by Richard Sale in 1938 about a destitute aristocrat returning to New Orleans three years after the Civil War. In the story, Derringer had no first name. Yancy was added for the television series. The series produced 34 episodes over a single season, ending on June 4, 1959.
• October 5 – Encounter was an anthology series that aired in both Canada (CBC) and the US (ABC), and was known as General Motors Presents in Canada. The one-hour dramas featured stories of romance, adventure or mystery and featured actors such as Patrick Macnee, Barry Morse and William Shatner. ABC intended the first season to run for 39 episodes but the series ended on November 2 after just five had aired.
• October 5 – Lawman was, yes, a Western starring John Russell and Peter Brown set in Laramie, Wyoming during 1879 and the 1880s. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Television which already had several Westerns on the air including Cheyenne. Russell, Brown and producer Jules Schermer made a pact to maintain the quality of the show so it wasn’t ‘just another Western.’ It worked and the series produced 156 episodes over four seasons on ABC, ending June 24, 1962.
• October 6 – The Ann Sothern Show was the second sitcom for star Ann Sothern on CBS. The first, Private Secretary (aka Susie) ended after a contract dispute between Sothern and the show’s producer. The new series featured Sothern as the assistant manager of a hotel — a somewhat advanced idea at the time regarding women in the workplace — and carried over several cast members from the previous series including Ann Tyrrell, Don Porter (who was brought in to boost ratings midway through season one — and it worked) and Jesse White. Ken Berry joined the series at the end of the second season. In 1959 the show won the Golden Globe for Best TV Show. 92 episodes were produced over three seasons with the series ending on September 25, 1961.

1968

• No new series premiered this week in 1968.

1978

• No new series premiered this week in 1978.

1988

• October 1 – Monsters was a syndicated horror anthology series produced by Richard P. Rubenstein, who also produced Tales from the Darkside which ended its run in 1988. Each stand-alone episode featured a different monster, from a puppet to mutated lab rats. The series had a long list of celebrity cameos including Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, Laura Branigan, Linda Blair, Deborah Harry, Kaye Ballard, Pam Grier, Wil Wheaton and Meat Loaf, and guest starred some little known actors who went on to big careers including Lili Taylor, David Spade, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, Gina Gershon, Matt LeBlanc, Tori Spelling and Chris Noth. The series ran for three seasons, producing 72 episodes and ending on April 1, 1991.
• October 4 – The American Experience is a PBS documentary series that is still on the air today with the title American Experience. The series was a pioneer in having an online presence starting in 1995 with more than 100 programs accompanied by their own websites. The series is produced primarily through WGBH in Boston, and some programs produced before the launch of the series, like Vietnam: A Television History in 1985, are now considered part of the series. To date, the series has produced 332 programs and won nine Peabody Awards.
• October 4 – High Risk was a hastily assembled reality series on CBS put together to fill time as a result of the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike. The was hosted by Wayne Rogers and featured high-risk stunts and jobs such as US Border Patrol agents, automobile repossessors, cave explorers and rollercoaster testers. The series lasted just five episodes, ending on November 15.
• October 5 – Unsolved Mysteries is a true crime reality series documenting cold cases and paranormal phenomena hosted by Robert Stack. The show began as a series of seven specials on January 20, 1987 with hosts Stack, Raymond Burr and Karl Malden. The series ran for nine seasons on NBC and moved to CBS for a tenth season, adding Virginia Madsen as a co-host during season eleven. CBS produced just 12 episodes over two season, cancelling the show on June 11, 1999. Lifetime revived the series in 2000 for a twelfth season, airing 103 episodes before ending on September 20, 2002 due to Robert Stack’s ill health. Spike revived the show yet again on October 13, 2008 with host Dennis Farina with mostly repackaged segments from the original series, running for 175 episodes and ending on April 27, 2010. The show still maintains a website and opened a YouTube page in 2017 allowing viewers to submit their own mysteries. Updated versions of the series are now streaming on Amazon Prime in the US and UK. Several seasons are also available on Hulu.
• October 6 – Dear John is an NBC sitcom based on a British series of the same name. The series stars Judd Hirsch as John Lacey, a teacher who comes home one day to find a ‘Dear John’ letter from his wife who has left him for his best friend. John joins a support group populated with sitcom characters played by co-stars Jane Carr, Isabella Hofmann, Jere Burns, Harry Groener, Billie Bird and Susan Walters. The series ran for four season, bouncing around the schedule in various time periods on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. 85 episodes were produced, ending on July 22, 1992.

1998

• October 5 – Catdog is an animated series featuring conjoined brothers, one a cat, the other a dog with very different personalities. The first episode of the series debuted on April 4, 1998 as a special presentation before the official premiere. A Season 2 episode, ‘Fetch’, was shown in theaters with The Rugrats Movie. The series aired on Nickelodeon for four seasons, producing 68 episodes and ending on June 15, 2005.
• October 5 – DiResta was a short-lived comedy premiering on the UPN network, running for just 15 episodes. The series was named for star and stand-up comedian John DiResta who played a transit cop. Leila Kenzie appeared as DiResta’s wife Kate. The week of November 2, 1998, the show was the lowest rated network television show. It ended on March 1, 1999.
• October 5 – Guys Like Us was another UPN sitcom that was paired with DiResta and was even more short-lived, airing just 13 episodes. The series starred Bumper Robinson, Maestro Harrell and Chris Hardwick. Hardwick and Robinson were bachelors Sean and Jared who had to adjust to life with Jared’s six-year-old brother (Harrell) after their father accepted a freelance job overseas. The series ended on January 18, 1999.
• October 5 – Inquizition was a game show produced by Game Show Network featuring four players in an airplane hangar (actually just a TV studio) with four players playing along at home over the telephone. The show was most famous for its mysterious host The Inquizitor, a cranky man who had little patience for wrong answers and was seen only from behind, dismissing losing players with ‘Please leave now,’ ‘Goodbye’ or ‘Get out!’ Because of contractual stipulations, the identity of the host is still unknown to this day. The show ran for three seasons, ending on October 19, 2001.
• October 5 – The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer was a sitcom airing on the UPN network. Before the show even aired, controversy surrounded the series because of a perceived light-hearted take on the issue of slavery. Chi McBride starred as English nobleman Desmond Pfeiffer who became Abraham Lincoln’s valet, serving as the brains of a Civil War-era White House populated by louts and drunkards. Several activist groups including the NAACP protested the show, leading the network to delay the airing of the pilot (it never aired) and replacing it with an alternate episode. The premiere episode ranked 116th out of 125 shows that week. The series was removed from the schedule on October 24, and was officially cancelled on October 28. Nine episodes were produced but only four aired. In 2002, TV Guide listed the show as the eleventh worst TV series ever. The series also starred Dan Florek and Christine Estabrook as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, with Curtis Armstrong and Sherman Hemsley guesting in Episode 2, ‘Up, Up and Away’.
• October 6 – Mercy Point was a science fiction medical drama that aired on the UPN network, focusing on the doctors and nurses in a 23rd century hospital space station in deep space. The series was adapted from a film screenplay, Nightingale One, but was revised as a television project and renamed, with creator Trey Callaway seeing the series as a companion to UPN’s Star Trek: Voyager. The network had other ideas, pairing the series with Moesha and Clueless. The series was pulled from the schedule after three airings, returning in July 1999 in two two-hour blocks on Thursdays. A total of seven episodes were produced with the series ending on July 15, 1999.

2008

• October 3 – Animated series Star Wars-Clone Wars debuted on the Cartoon Network and is set three years between the Star Wars prequel films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. The series launched with a feature film that debuted in theaters on August 15, 2008. Star Wars creator George Lucas announced that the series would run for at least 100 episodes (a ‘magic number’ for syndication reruns), and ended up producing 121 episodes over six seasons. On July 19, 2018 Lucasfilm announced the series would be revived with 12 new episodes being produced for Disney’s upcoming digital streaming service.
• October 3 – The Ex-List was a dramedy featuring a woman who has been told by a psychic that she’s already dated her future husband and explores her past relationships to determine who it might be. The psychic also predicts that she will remain single for the rest of her life if she doesn’t find him within a year (not a great premise for an ongoing series). The show was based on the Israeli series The Mythological X and starred Elizabeth Reaser. Over the 13 produced episodes (with 9 unaired) a new actor was cast as an ex including Eric Balfour, Eric Winter, Michael Landes, Reid Scott, Kevin Sorbo and Kristoffer Polaha. The series debuted first in its timeslot but ratings quickly declined and it was cancelled after its October 24 episode.
• October 4 – The Secret Saturdays was an animated series following the adventures of the Saturdays, a family of cryptozoologists that work to keep the truth about cryptids from getting out, to protect the human race and the creatures themselves. The series style was influenced by the 1960s-era Hanna-Barbera series like Jonny Quest. The series ran on Cartoon Network for two seasons, ending January 30, 2010. The Saturdays made an appearance in the Ben 10: Omniverse episode ‘T.G.I.S.’ confirming the two series shared the same reality.
• October 5 – Easy Money, In Harm’s Way and Valentine were a group of independently produced series that ran on The CW network on Sundays after the net had little ratings success on the night (and they are going to give Sunday another shot this year with Supergirl and the Charmed reboot). The show’s producer, Media Rights Capital, leased the time from The CW for their programs. Production of Easy Money was put on hold in mid-October of 2008 and two weeks later MRC cancelled the show. The cast of the dramedy included Laurie Metcalf and Jay R. Ferguson. In Harm’s Way was a reality series that looked at the lives of people with dangerous jobs. Eight episodes were produced but only five aired, it’s last episode broadcast on November 2. Valentine was a dramedy that focused on the Valentine family, a group of gods living amongst humans, keeping their true identities secret to do whatever it takes to bring soulmates together. 13 episodes were scheduled to be produced, but MRC could not get the financing to complete more than eight and the show was cancelled after three episodes along with the other two programs. The CW announced it was ending its agreement with MRC on November 20 and would return to programming the night itself, but did burn off the remaining episodes of Easy Money and Valentine in June 2009.

 
How many of these show do you remember? Do you have a favorite or memories of the series that didn’t go down in TV history? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!