TV by the Decade :: October 21•27

Warner Bros. Television

The fourth week of October through the decades did not offer a lot of memorable programming. There were a few minor hits at the time, but not really anything that’s remembered with any real fondness today. But that’s why we’re here, to shine a little spotlight on those long forgotten shows.

Let’s take a look at the debuts between 1988 and 2008 and see how many you remember.

1958

• October 22 – Pursuit premiered on CBS and ran for 1 seasons and 12 episodes, ending in January 1959. The show was a 30-minute anthology series presented live and featured among its stars Jeffrey Hunter, Margaret O’Brien, Michael Rennie, Rip Torn, Robert Alda, Martin Balsam, Lew Ayres, John Cassavetes, Jackie Cooper and Whitney Blake. One episode, ‘The Last Night of August’ was written by Rod Serline, a year before The Twilight Zone premiered, and starred Franchot Tone and Dennis Hopper.

1968

• No new series premiered this week in 1968.

1978

• No new series premiered this week in 1978.

1988

• October 21 – In May of 1988, NBC aired the two-night mini-series Something Is Out There to some success. As they had done after the success of the V mini-series, NBC moved forward with a weekly series which debuted on this date. The plot revolves around murders in which the victims’ organs are removed, and police officer Jack Breslin discovers the culprit is a monstrous alien insectoid prisoner with shape-shifting abilities that has escaped from an alien prison starship passing by the solar system. Joe Cortese, Maryam d’Abo, George Dzundza and Kim Delaney starred. The series debuted to poor ratings against the still popular Dallas and was moved opposite the very popular Beauty and the Beast where things got even worse. 13 episodes had been ordered but only 9 were completed before NBC pulled the plug on December 9, 1988.
• October 23 – The Fall 1988 season was hampered by a writers’ strike which prevented any new scripts to be ordered or written. Needed new content for the Fall premiere, ABC decided to raid the vaults for already written scripts and produced a remake of the classic Mission: Impossible with a new cast, except for Peter Graves who returned to his Jim Phelps role, using the scripts from the original series with minor updates. To cut costs, ABC filmed the series in Australia, one of the first American series to do so. The original plan was to have the new cast play the original characters but they were reworked into new characters patterned after the originals. The Collier character was changed to be the son of the original Barney Collier, played by Greg Morris, with Phil Morris (Greg’s son) cast in the role which afforded a guest appearance by the elder Morris. When the strike ended, new stories were written. When the show began its second season, ABC moved it from Saturday to Thursday against The Cosby Show and A Different World, which was disastrous. ABC quickly moved it back to Saturday to replace the failing comedies Mr. Belvedere and Living Dolls but the damage had been done. The series ended on February 24, 1990 with 35 episodes.
• October 25 – Midnight Caller debuted on NBC, one of the first series to address the dramatic possibilities of the growing phenomenon of talk radio. The series starred Gary Cole as Jack Killian, a former detective who accidentally shot and killed his partner. After a battle with alcoholism, Killian is offered a job hosting a radio call-in show as ‘The Nighthawk’ helping callers with their problems, often taking him back into the realm of his police work. The series tackled topical issues including AIDS, capital punishment and child abuse, but audience interest waned after three seasons. The series produced 61 episodes, ending on May 17, 1991.
• October 26 – After failing with her variety series comeback at the tail-end of the 1970s, Mary Tyler Moore gave TV another shot with 1988 sitcom Annie McGuire. Moore starred with Denis Arndt as newlywed Annie and Nick McGuire. Thw two try to balance their blended families with their jobs, she in politics, he in engineering, as well as cope with their parents who are on opposite political sides. The series featured Eileen Heckart, John Randolph and a 15-year-old Adrien Brody in his first professional acting role. Unfortunately, the series was not a hit, airing only 8 of the 11 produced episodes, ending on December 28, 1988.
• October 26 – NBC debuted the hour-long dramedy Tattingers as part of its Fall 1988 lineup. The story focused on divorced couple Nick and Hillary Tattinger who had remained partners in a Manhattan restaurant. Nick left New York for Paris after being shot by a drug dealer, but returned when the new owners of the restaurant could not keep the eatery afloat. The series starred Stephen Collins and Blythe Danner, and was a ratings failure from the start. NBC cancelled the show in January 1989 but liked the characters so much they revamped the show into a half-hour sitcom that played to even worse ratings after premiering on April 20, 1989. The revamp was cancelled after two episodes. In addition to Collins and Danner, the cast included Jerry Stiller, Mary Beth Hurt, Zach Grenier, Rob Morrow, Simon Jones and Chris Elliott.
• October 26 – Along with Mary Tyler Moore, CBS brought back another former sitcom star in The Van Dyke Show which starred Dick Van Dyke and his son Barry. The series centers on Matt Burgess (Barry) who runs a small regional theatre in Pennsylvania. His father Dick is a Broadway musical star who decides to give up the footlights and move to PA to work with his son. The series was critically panned and CBS announced the cancellation on December 14, 1988, a week after the sixth episode aired, leaving four of the ten produced unaired. This was the second time the father-son duo had worked together after Dick guest starred in a fourth season episode of Airwolf with Barry as the star. It also pre-dates Diagnosis Murder, in which the pair starred, by five years.
• October 27 – Western family drama Paradise, co-created by Dallas creator David Jacobs, premieres. The series, which beings in 1890, centered around fictional gunfighter Ethan Allen Cord, who gained custody of his sister’s four children when she died. Realizing his vocation was not conducive to raising children, Cord purchased a ranch in Paradise, CA to raise the kids and lead a peaceful life, but he was constantly haunted by his past and called upon by the townspeople to defend them. In one episode, Gene Barry and Hugh O’Brien reprised their 1950s TV roles as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. At the end of the second season, the series was retooled a bit and renamed Guns of Paradise to remind viewers it was a Western, but a loyal fan base and critical acclaim (not to mention a couple of Emmy nominations) could save the series and it ended on May 10, 1991 after 56 episodes. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman eventually took over the show’s time slot.

1998

• October 23 – Supernatural drama Brimstone premiered on the Fox network starring Peter Horton as NYC police detective Zeke Stone who was killed in 1983 and went to Hell for murdering the man who raped his wife (it wasn’t the murder that condemned him however, it was the pleasure it gave him). Fifteen years later, a 4000-year-old priestess named Ashur Badaktu led an escape from Hell with 113 souls returning to Earth. Being powerless on Earth, the Devil makes a deal with Stone — return all the souls to Hell before one of them kills him, again, and he will get a second chance at life. Of course being the Devil, he seems to hinder Zeke’s work as much as he helps him, giving him information but leaving out critical facts. Despite a cast that included John Glover as the Devil, Teri Polo and Lori Petty, with guest appearances from Stacy Haiduk and Curtis Armstrong, the series lasted just 13 episodes, ending on February 12, 1999. Since then the series, thanks to rerun on the SciFi/Syfy Channel, has developed a cult following but so far the series’ producer, Warner Bros. TV, has no plans to release the series on home video. (A recent announcement that WB plans to start its own subscription streaming service could see the series show up there.)
• October 25 – The Disney Channel premieres the Canadian/American co-production The Famous Jett Jackson, about a boy who plays a teenage secret agent on a fictional TV show-within-a-show called ‘Silverstone’. The series starred Lee Thompson Young who, like Jett, was raised in a single parent home and had decided on acting at an early age. The character of Jett was created before Young was cast, and Young even wrote one of the episodes. Guest stars on the series included Hayden Christensen, Britney Spears, Destiny’s Child and Eartha Kitt. Despite the show’s success, Disney’s unstated policy of producing only 65 episodes of a series forced the show to end on June 22, 2001. The series was followed by a Disney Channel movie. Sadly, Lee Thompson Young was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in August 2013.

2008

• October 21 – A+E’s reality series Rookies premieres, following the rookie training periods of police officers in Jefferson Parish, LA and Tampa, FL for their first 12 weeks. Episodes included rookie mistakes, training sessions with veteran officers and final evaluations, with the series ending after one season and 16 episodes in May 2009.
• October 22 – The CW network debuted its own reality series Stylista which was a fashion-themed competition series. The series came from executive producer Tyra Banks who had already scored a hit on the network with America’s Next Top Model which started in 2003 and was still going strong. The competition featured contestants looking to become assistant editors at a fashion magazine and included Anne Slowey and Joe Zee as judges. Johanna Cox was named the winner on the ninth and final episode, receiving a paid editorial position witl Elle magazine, a paid lease on an apartment in New York City, and a clothing allowance from H&M, all for the period of one year and valued at $100,000. The series ended on December 17, 2008

 
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!