Where's Rodney?

[Gus Mears]

Too important for the Twitter thread, it's Where's Rodney? 

Up there with At Home With the Hitler's in terms of the worst sitcom ideas I've seen. Does anyone, (probably @Astro Hollywood ) know of anything similarly awful?

[Retro Red]

Holy shit, Punky Brewster, Breckin Myer and Shelton's Mama are in this mess. If someone can find a copy of the pilot I'd be awful grateful. 

[PunkStep]

I think there's a 99% chance I would've watched this as a 7 year old.

[Astro Hollywood]

Bad sitcoms have been a bit of a specialist subject this past year, as I've written about them a ton, covering some awful ideas, like Mollie Sugden as a housewife shot into space, an aging Cannon and Ball working as security guards, a blacked-up Spike Milligan working in a wildly racist practical joke factory, and Bruce Forsyth running a supermarket, which spends so much time on him jokelessly dealing with customers, they might as well have made him work in one for real.

In terms of terrible ideas that never got past the pilot stage, Poochinski takes some beating, with Peter Boyle as a cop who's killed on duty, and whose spirit goes into a talking bulldog which farts a lot.

Norman Lear, who produced proper classics like The Jeffersons also did a dog-based pilot, with the main characters playing dogs and wearing really cheap costumes, like that prick from Gigglish Allsorts.

Heil Honey, I'm Home always gets brought up in these topics, but from what I've seen, it wasn't particularly bad or shocking, it just picked an obviously shit-stirring premise.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Astro Hollywood

[bobby dazzler]

Anyone remember "Marblehead Manor"? I remember watching it but actually nothing about it. 

[PowerButchi]

3 hours ago, Astro Hollywood said:

Bad sitcoms have been a bit of a specialist subject this past year, as I've written about them a ton, covering some awful ideas, like Mollie Sugden as a housewife shot into space, an aging Cannon and Ball working as security guards, a blacked-up Spike Milligan working in a wildly racist practical joke factory, and Bruce Forsyth running a supermarket, which spends so much time on him jokelessly dealing with customers, they might as well have made him work in one for real.

In terms of terrible ideas that never got past the pilot stage, Poochinski takes some beating, with Peter Boyle as a cop who's killed on duty, and whose spirit goes into a talking bulldog which farts a lot.

Norman Lear, who produced proper classics like The Jeffersons also did a dog-based pilot, with the main characters playing dogs and wearing really cheap costumes, like that prick from Gigglish Allsorts.

Heil Honey, I'm Home always gets brought up in these topics, but from what I've seen, it wasn't particularly bad or shocking, it just picked an obviously shit-stirring premise.

Corect Woy. Heil Honey was a perfectly serviceable 50s parody. Premise was a bit dodgy though. 

Edited August 25, 2019 by PowerButchi

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Been watching Thunder In Paradise, and marking down all the appearances of pro wrestlers. This is by far my favourite.

 

[Hannibal Scorch]

14 minutes ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

Been watching Thunder In Paradise, and marking down all the appearances of pro wrestlers. This is by far my favourite.

 

I hope you follow this up with the WCW episode of love boat

[Hannibal Scorch]

4 hours ago, Bicurious Dad said:

Holy shit, Punky Brewster, Breckin Myer and Shelton's Mama are in this mess. If someone can find a copy of the pilot I'd be awful grateful. 

As you wish. Bonus, includes 90’s adverts as well

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Gus Mears said:

Too important for the Twitter thread, it's Where's Rodney? 

Up there with At Home With the Hitler's in terms of the worst sitcom ideas I've seen. Does anyone, (probably @Astro Hollywood ) know of anything similarly awful?

A great write up here

https://www.vulture.com/amp/2013/07/wheres-rodney-was-one-of-many-questions-raised-by-wheres-rodney.html

all this reminded me he had an animated thing as well. Thought it was a series, but turns out it was a film. Behold

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Hannibal Scorch

[Astro Hollywood]

28 minutes ago, scratchdj said:

BBC’s Big Top. Much like Celebrity Wrestling, I don’t think it even finished it’s planned run.

 

It did, but it was pretty much scrubbed from existence afterwards. Because I'm a filthy whore, I've covered Big Top in some detail too. It's a definite Top 10 Worst Ever, with the look and feel of Chucklevision, and going out at tea time on BBC1, yet with loads of (unbelievably awful) jokes about Hitler, suicide and dicks getting bitten off.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Astro Hollywood

[PowerButchi]

Chucklevision is massively underrated. The epsiode where Paul and Barry do a 10k and Paul fucks Barry off then something happens to Paul (can't remember what) and Barry runs doing a poem in his inner monologue including "like a budgie needs its bell" to save Paul is fucking ace. 

 

Chucklevison is something ive Chucklevisited recently when I've my nephew and its really, really bloody funny. 

[Jazzy G]

21 hours ago, Astro Hollywood said:

It did, but it was pretty much scrubbed from existence afterwards. Because I'm a filthy whore, I've covered Big Top in some detail too. It's a definite Top 10 Worst Ever, with the look and feel of Chucklevision, and going out at tea time on BBC1, yet with loads of (unbelievably awful) jokes about Hitler, suicide and dicks getting bitten off.

I've pretty much spent the last day trawling through your stuff. It's such good writing. 

[Astro Hollywood]

8 hours ago, PowerButchi said:

Chucklevision is massively underrated. The epsiode where Paul and Barry do a 10k and Paul fucks Barry off then something happens to Paul (can't remember what) and Barry runs doing a poem in his inner monologue including "like a budgie needs its bell" to save Paul is fucking ace. 

 

Chucklevison is something ive Chucklevisited recently when I've my nephew and its really, really bloody funny. 

292 episodes, and all. 292!

I've got this weird fascination with shows (particularly sitcoms) that had loads of episodes, but made zero cultural impact. Most of people's comic vocabulary is taken from quotes of your Partridges, Father Teds, Seinfelds, Simpsons, etc, so it's amazing to me when something has 100s of episodes, and nobody can remember a fucking thing that happened. The two that always come to mind with this are:

The Upper Hand (94 episodes)

Birds of a Feather (128 episodes, with 26 of those from a revival that happened from 2014-2017)

Can anyone remember a got-damn thing about either of those shows? Quote a line? From Birds of a Feather, Dorian singing Like a Virgin at karaoke, when her character was 'comedy slag', is probably the only scene anyone could recall, even at gunpoint. And The Upper Hand? It absolutely boggles my mind that there's almost 50 hours of that. The amount of people involved in making a TV show which ran for 6 years; writers, actors, producers, prop people and set-builders, technical crew; audiences who took evenings out of their lives 95 times to sit and watch it; and it's a cultural black hole. When I wrote about Plaza Patrol, the most amazing thing to me was how it'd basically fallen into a void. Cannon and Ball were getting 10s of millions of viewers in the 80s, but by the 90s, they did a sitcom that left so little impact, there's about a dozen legitimate Google hits for it in 2019.

[Chest Rockwell]

1 hour ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I've pretty much spent the last day trawling through your stuff. It's such good writing. 

Something that's really a testament to the quality of the writing is how much I've enjoyed reading about topics I have absolutely no interest in. Great stuff. 

Edited August 27, 2019 by Chest Rockwell

[Gus Mears]

I'd been under the misapprehension for years that Jim Davidson and not Robin Askwith was the lead in Bottle Boys until reading Astro's shitcoms bit on it this weekend. An important piece of new knowledge to impress my friends and work colleagues.