Today, I want to know what was your favorite sitcom that was canceled after just one season.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
People often talk about TV shows that were great but were canceled after just one season, but for whatever reason, they seem to just dwell on the DRAMAS that were canceled after just one season. You don’t see quite as many sitcoms being mourned, so now I want to know from you all what your pick is for your favorite sitcom that was canceled after just one season.
I’m going with Frank’s Place, a charming, well-written and well-acted series starring Tim Reid as Frank Parrish, a Northeast professor who inherits his estranged father’s restaurant in New Orleans, Chez Louisiane. Circumstances result in Frank having to move to New Orleans to take over a business he knows nothing about in a city he knows nothing about, all while overseeing a restaurant that means a great deal to both the workers (who had planned to buy it from Frank) and the community. It was a richly developed world, including the Emmy Award-winning episode (just four episodes into the series), “The Bridge,” written by series creator, Hugh Wilson (who had also created WKRP in Cincinnati, which also starred Tim Reid), about a local man dying in a car crash after he apparently was overserved by the bartenders at Chez Louisiane. The man’s widow was the childhood nanny of a high-powered lawyer, and she plans to destroy the Chez to get her old friend everything she can get in a settlement, even if it destroys the Chez. Well, the eccentric local Jewish lawyer for the restaurant, Bubba Weisberger (Robert Harper was Emmy-nominated for the role) discovers that the man who died was dying of cancer and after visiting the man’s widow, she graciously concedes that it was all a scam, as he felt that the Chez had plenty of insurance to cover the claim. She was such as gracious woman, she couldn’t let the Chez go under because of her husband’s actions. It’s an outstanding episode. Tim Reid is excellent in everything. The series was great, and despite being nominated for Best Comedy Series, it was canceled after Season 1.
Okay, that’s my pick. How about you?
And feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at my new, much shorter e-mail, brian@poprefs.com!
One of my favorite shows of all time was the short lived “The Second Half” with John Mendoza as a sports writer starting his life over after his divorce, playing it perfectly somewhere between Oscar Madison and Rodney Dangerfield. Co-starring Wayne Knight. Underrated and sadly long forgotten:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Half
And, no doubt, Paul Lynde’s sitcom will be on many peoples list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paul_Lynde_Show
My list for when you inevitably ask “What Is Your Favorite Drama That Was Canceled After Just One Season?” will be much longer! 😉
“Frank’s Place” is a great choice — the gag in the pilot episode where Hanna the mortician (Daphne Maxwell Reid) knows she’s meeting Frank, and knows he’s uneasy about morticians, so she dunks her hand in ice before that first handshake? One of my favorite sitcom gags ever.
I actually can’t pick a single favorite one-and-done sitcom:
Disqualified if you count the movies: “Police Squad!”
Animated: “The Oblongs”
Guilty pleasure: “Hot Properties,” an ABC hybrid of “Designing Women” and “The Bob Newhart Show,” with Gail O’Grady, Sofia Vergara, Nicole Sullivan and Christina Moore as the four real-estate women, and Evan Handler as the dentist who’s also on their floor in the urban high-rise. It was much worse than I’m making it sound!
Honorable mention: “The Robert Guillaume Show,” which I use to remind myself that “show with a black man dating a white woman” was too much for a lot of people even in the 1980s.
That last show ALSO has one of my favorite sitcom gags ever: The pilot has Guillaume’s Edward searching for a secretary, and the montage of applicants includes a disheveled man who’s typing at the typewriter at absolute lightning speed. Edward, impressed: “You know what? When you first came in here, I was judging you by your appearance, but now I see what you can do, and I feel like” (finally sees the paper from the typewriter) “THIS IS GIBBERISH”
It’s straining the definition of sitcom but “Tenspeed and Brownshoe,” a humorous detective series with Jeff Goldblum and Ben Vereen as the PIs. A great show but it was up against some prime time soap named Dallas …
I am going with Quark a 70’s spoof of Star Trek. been long time but remember laughing.
Freaks and Geeks. Close enough to a sitcom.
I loved “The Grifter”
I thought it had lots of laugh out loud funny moments every week.
Rob Lowe, was the lead. His part was as a pompous actor, that had played a lawyer on TV, but decided to start going to actual court to litigate cases.
The bit was that judges were so happy to have a famous actor in their court that they would wave the fact that he hadn’t passed the state bar exam or understood the legal system.
of American sitcoms I would have to pick Police Squad
UK sitcoms – many great sitcoms lasted exactly 2 seasons
of the shows lasting just one season, my favourite was “If you see God, Tell him” a black comedy about a man (played by Richard Briers) who after a head injury has a very short span of attention and becomes obsessed with adverts – believing them, imitating them.
However, I have doubts if it was actually cancelled and believe it was always intended to end after 4 episodes.
Similarly I can’t imagine “Whoops, Apocalypse” ever being considered for a second season after the finality of the last episode.
Then there is “tlc” a hospital sitcom (more black comedy…) – the highlight of which was, in my opinion, Tim Brooke-Taylor as the hospital chaplain – a former surgeon who after a nervous breakdown still tries to work in the hospital anyway he can (despite his lack of interest in religion)
runners-up – “KInvig” – about an electrical repair man who fantasizes that a new customer is from another planet and in love with him (and only pretends to hate him) – the series was written by Nigel Kneale – better known for serious science fiction/horror series.
“I, Lovett” about an eccentric inventor who talks to his dog, etc
“Dead Earnest” about a man erroneously sent to Heaven trying to cope with life there or finding a way back to mortality.
The Marshall Chronicles.