TV by the Decade :: October 7•13

Spelling Television

The second week of October through the decades saw the launch of several popular series, and some not so fondly remembered, plus a beloved series that’s about to get a reboot. The years of 1968 and 1978, however, saw the launch of exactly zero new series.

There are many shows on this week’s list, some you may know, most you may not, some you may want to check out on home video or digital platforms where available (check our linked titles) so let’s take a trip down Memory Lane to see if you remember any of these series …

1958

• October 8 – Bat Masterson was a Western series that presented a fictionalized account of the real life Bartholemew ‘Bat’ Masterson. The half hour series was often tongue-in-cheek with Masterson dressed in fancy Eastern clothing with a cane he used to get himself out of trouble. Smaller versions of the clothing and cane were marketed to children during the show’s run. Guests stars on the series included Stefanie Powers, James Coburn and Lon Chaney Jr. During the first season in 1958, Mason Alan Dinehart played a younger Masterson on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp on another network. Bat Masterson ran for three seasons and 107 episodes, ending on June 1, 1961.
• October 10 – Detective series 77 Sunset Strip with Efram Zimbalist Jr., Roger Smith, Richard Long and Edd Byrnes started its run on ABC. The series centered around Los Angeles private detectives working out of a building at 77 Sunset Boulevard. Series creator Roy Huggins had hoped for a gritty series but the tone was much lighter with an element of self-deprecating humor. The show’s theme song became a Top Ten hit in 1959. Edd Byrnes’ Kookie character also became the focus of a popular novelty song, ‘Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)’ which featured Connie Stevens on vocals. One episode of the series, ‘The Silent Caper’, was presented entirely without dialog. Another, ‘Reserved for Mr. Bailey’, only featured Zimbalist alone in a ghost town for the entire hour. That episode was never included in the syndication package but finally appeared on a MeTV broadcast on June 17, 2017. The show was completely overhauled in its sixth season, retaining only Zimbalist, becoming basically a new show with the same title. Viewers did not approve and the series was cancelled halfway through the season, ending on February 7, 1964.
  
• October 10 – Man with a Camera was a crime drama series that starred Charles Bronson, the only series in which he was the lead. Bronson’s Mike Kovac was a World War II combat photographer who specialized in getting the shot others could not, getting himself into plenty of trouble along the way. Ahead of its time, the show included an array of special cameras hidden in radios, cigarette lighters and a necktie, a car phone, and a portable darkroom in the trunk of Kovac’s car! The series ran for two seasons on ABC, producing 29 episodes, ending on February 8, 1960.

1968

• No new series premiered this week in 1968.

1978

• No new series premiered this week in 1978.

1988

• October 8 – With The Golden Girls at the height of its popularity after three seasons, NBC wanted a spin-off to pair with the show on Saturday nights so the characters of George and Renee Corliss (Paul Dooley and Rita Moreno) and their annoying neighbor Oliver (David Leisure) were introduced in what was meant to be a backdoor pilot for the new series Empty Nest. It didn’t work but the concept was revamped with a new cast that included Richard Mulligan as Dr. Harry Weston, now a widower, whose two daughters, played by Dinah Manoff and Kristy McNichol, moved back home. David Leisure was the only cast member to be retained with his name changed to Charley. Early episodes established the Westons as neighbors of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia, and NBC used the connection for crossover episodes during ‘Sweeps’ periods. The series was still on the air when The Golden Girls ended, and Estelle Getty joined the show for its last two seasons (after the single season of the ill-fated The Golden Palace on CBS) as Sophia, having returned to Miami to reside in the Shady Pines retirement home. Empty Nest produced 170 episodes and ran for seven seasons, ending on April 29, 1995.
• October 10 – Syndicated sci-fi drama War of the Worlds debuted, based loosely on the H.G. Wells novel and incorporating elements from the radio and film adaptations into the story’s mythology. The series picked up from the classic movie, explaining that the aliens did not die from Earthly viruses but went into a state of suspended animation, the bodies stored in toxic waste drums and shipped to various disposal sites around the country, with a government cover-up convincing people the invasion never happened. With more scientific knowledge of Mars at that time, the aliens were changed from Martians to Mor-Taxians. A terrorist group accidentally irradiates the drums in one dump site, killing the bacteria keeping the aliens unconscious, allowing them to take over the bodies of the terrorists with the mission to once again invade and take over Earth. The series starred Jared Martin and Lynda Mason Green with Philip Akin and Richard Chaves exiting after the first season. Adrian Paul, who would gain greater fame as Duncan McLeod in the Highlander TV series (1992-1998), joined the series in season 2. War of the Worlds ran for just two seasons, producing 43 episodes, ending on May 14, 1990.

1998

• October 7 – Fantasy drama Charmed debuted on this day in 1998 on The WB network (now The CW). The series followed a trio of sisters, The Charmed Ones, the most powerful ‘good witches’ of all time who used their powers to protect others from evil beings. The show was an instant hit with 7.7 million viewers tuning in to its premiere, the highest rated premiere ever for the network. Even with several time (and cast) changes, the show remained popular. The pilot starred Shannon Doherty, Holly Marie Combs and Lori Rom but Rom quit the series and a new pilot was filmed with Alyssa Milano. Doherty quit the series after the third season, replaced by Rose McGowan playing a long-lost half-sister. Julian McMahon joined the series in season three as the half-demon Cole Turner, exiting the show midway through season five. In the eighth and final season, Kaley Cuoco joined the show as young witch Billie Jenkins. The series ran for eight seasons and 178 episodes, the second longest running series on The WB. In 2006, it became the longest running hour-long series with all female leads until Desperate Housewives surpassed it in 2012. The series ended on May 21, 2006, and The CW will be launching a reboot of the show on October 14, 2018.
• October 7 – Time travel drama Seven Days (or 7 Days) debuted on UPN and followed a secret branch of the NSA which used alien technology from Roswell to develop time travel, allowing one human to go back in time for seven days to avert disasters. Due to limitations on the device’s fuel source and reactor, events can only be limited to those that concern national security. The series starred Jonathan LaPaglia, Don Franklin, Norman Lloyd, Justina Vail, Nick Searcy, Sam Whipple, Alan Scarfe and Kevin Christy. Whipple was forced to leave the series four episodes into the third season after a cancer diagnosis that proved fatal and was replaced by Christy. Vail quit the series before the end of season three but agreed to film some extra scenes to wrap up her character. Her departure and tensions within the cast led UPN to cancel the show at the end of season three, its final episode airing May 29, 2001.
• October 9 – Western drama Legacy premiere on the UPN network and ran for just 18 episodes before being cancelled. The series starred Brett Cullen (recently cast as Thomas Wayne in the upcoming ‘The Joker’ movie) as a widower living with his family on a Kentucky horse farm shortly after the Civil War. The series featured soapy elements such as the arrival of an orphan and an interracial affair with the daughter of a former slave. The series was filmed near Charles City, Virginia and featured Loreena McKennitt’s ‘The Mummer’s Dance’ as the series theme song. UPN pulled the series from its schedule after episode 14 (February 26, 1999), burning off the last four episodes in July of that year.
• October 10 – Jim Henson’s Brats of the Lost Nebula made its debut on the Kids’ WB Saturday morning block in 1998. The show combined Henson’s puppets and state of the art CGI, and followed five orphans from different planets who must band together to fight an evil force known as The Shock. The series was cancelled after the third episode in the US but the 10 remaining episodes did air on Canada’s YTV.
• October 11 – Teen sitcom Malibu, CA made its debut in 1998 and centered on twin brothers Scott and Jason Collins (Trevor Merszei & Jason Haynes) who move to Malibu from NYC with their father. The series ran in syndication for two seasons, ending on May 20, 2000, producing 52 episodes, and was the last sitcom to air in first run syndication until the 2012 premiere of The First Family.

2008

• October 7 – The Real Housewives of Atlanta, the third installment of The Real Housewives franchise, began its run on Bravo in 2008 and is still running strong after 10 seasons. The cast has undergone many changes over the years but began with NeNe Leakes, DeShawn Snow, Shereé Whitfield, Lisa Wu and Kim Zolciak. As Leakes, Whitfield and Zolciak left and returned to the series at various points in time (Snow and Wu quit outright after the first and second seasons respectively), new ‘Housewives’ joined the cast including Kandi Burruss, Cynthia Bailey, Porsha Williams, Eva Marcille, Shamari DeVoe, Phaedra Parks, Kenya Moore, Claudia Jordan and Kim Fields.
• October 8 – Sketch comedy series The Tony Rock Project debuted on MyNetworkTV, and starred Tony Rock, John Heffron and Whitney Cummings. The series was the lead-in for Flavor Flav’s sitcom Under One Roof but was cancelled after eight episodes (the Flavor Flav series lasted 13).
• October 9 – CBS premiered the science-based drama Eleventh Hour which was based on the 2006 British series of the same name. The plot followed Dr. Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell), a Special Science Advisor for the FBI, who investigates crimes of a scientific nature, hoping to keep scientific advances out of the hands of enemy agents. The series also starred Marley Shelton and Omar Benson Miller, but was cancelled after 18 episodes, ending on April 2, 2009.
• October 9 – US adaptation of the Australian sitcom Kath & Kim premiered on NBC with Molly Shannon and Selma Blair in the title roles, and focused on the misadventures of the mother and daughter. Current SNL cast member Mikey Day and John Michael Higgins also starred. The series was supposed to be set in the fictional town of Fountain Valley, Arizona, but references were made throughout the series that placed the setting in Central Florida (the series was filmed in the West Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles). The premiere received negative reviews from critics and viewers but it debuted with 7.5 million viewers. By the third episode, viewership had dropped almost by half. NBC had ordered a full 22 episode season but in January of 2009, that was cut to 17 and the series was cancelled on May 19, 2009.
• October 9 — Jason O’Mara, Harvey Keitel, Jonathan Murphy, Michael Imperioli and Gretchen Mol starring Life on Mars, a science fiction crime drama based on the BAFTA-winning British series of the same name. The series follows NYC detective Sam Tyler who is struck by a car in 2008 and wakes up in 1973. The series remained ambiguous about the character’s situation. Life on Mars earned critical praise for acting, premise and depiction of the 1970s, but the show’s momentum was interrupted by a two month hiatus after episode 7 in November 2008, followed by a time change that caused a decline in viewership. ABC cancelled the series on March 2, 2009 with its 17th and final episode airing on April 1 of that year.
• October 9 – NBC broadcast three episodes of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday beginning October 9 as a lead up to the 2008 presidential election, hosted by Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Originally intended as a limited run series, NBC ordered a six episode season for Fall 2009, making it the only NBC series from the 2008-2009 season to get a second season renewal. Two more special episodes hosted by Meyers aired in 2012 as en election special, and another three-episode season began August 10, 2017 with Colin Jost and Michael Che as anchors and the title Saturday Night Live Weekend Update: Summer Edition.
• October 10 – USA Network’s romantic comedy The Starter Wife, based on the popular miniseries of the same name, made its debut starring Debra Messing as Molly Kagan, the ex-wife of a former studio executive. Molly has sworn off men after her failed marriage and relationship with a homeless man, but develops as a writer as her relationship with her writing group leader grows. The series was cancelled after just 10 episodes with Messing stating the economic collapse had taken a toll on the production’s $1 million per episode budget, the most expensive series on the network. With the brand being about Molly’s luxurious world, the series could not move forward with a budget cut in half. The final episode aired December 12, 2008.
• October 11 – Dogs 101 premiered on Animal Planet, featuring dog trainers and breeding experts exploring the advantages and disadvantage of various breeds. The series ran for five seasons ending on November 5, 2011, but was revived as Dogs 101: New Tricks in 2016.
• October 11 – Zane’s Sex Chronicles debuted on the Cinemax cable network. The series was based on the urban erotic novels written by Zane and follows the friendships and relationships of five women as they take on their lives in the big city, look for love and empower themselves in and out of the bedroom. The series starred Patrice Fisher, Maya Gilbert, Johanna Quintero, Laila Odom and Christina DeRossa (who left after season 1). Megan McCord Kim, Kiana Mendoza and Steve West joined the series’ second season, which was its last. 25 episodes were produced and the series ended on May 28, 2010.
• October 13 – Christian Slater starred as Henry Spivey/Edward Albright in the NBC drama My Own Worst Enemy. Spivey is a middle-class efficiency expert living a humdrum life in the suburbs with his wife, two kids and dog, while Albright is an operative who speaks 13 languages, runs a four minute mile and is trained to kill. And they share the same body. The first names match those of the title characters in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. The cast included Madchen Amick, Bella Thorne, Taylor Lautner, Alfre Woodard, Mike O’Malley, Saffron Burrows and James Cromwell. Despite the cast and initially good reviews, the series was cancelled after its fourth episode with NBC airing the full nine episode season through December 15, 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!