AI’ve always meant to catch up on that. One of my favourite comic book writers, Howard Chaykin, has cited it as a major influence.
I haven’t seen much of that, but I have watched:
- Fernwood 2-Night
This Mary Hartman spin-off was a talk-show parody hosted by comedy gods Martin Mull and Fred Willard, who had perfect chemistry. Fred Willard saying inappropriate things will never, ever get old:
- Homicide: Life On The Street
Ahead of it’s time by a good decade & largely ignored in it’s run, this brilliant & brilliantly humanistic show would’ve fit right in with the current TV drama renaissance. I revisit the series every year or so & am moved in new ways every time.
Can’t say that about The Wire.
43. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I would call Buffy a cult show since it was never a big ratings. The reason it ran for seven seasons was that it did well with younger viewers, which made it attractive to adversities. The show was an excellent mix of characters, action, witty writing and using the supernatural as metaphors for high school and growing up. Even though I’m a raging cynic, BTVS made me believe that a person could redeem themselves, no matter what they had done in their past.
A[quote name=“Art Decade” url=“/community/t/148757/the-100-greatest-cult-tv-shows-of-all-time/60#post_3562857”]42. Homicide: Life On The Street
Ahead of it’s time by a good decade & largely ignored in it’s run, this brilliant & brilliantly humanistic show would’ve fit right in with the current TV drama renaissance. I revisit the series every year or so & am moved in new ways every time.
Can’t say that about The Wire.
[/quote]
It continually got whacked by Nash Bridges in the ratings. Fucking Nash Bridges…
I also loved HLOTs, but it was no longer appointment viewing for me after the initial cast bailed.
I still have that 2-parter with Buscemi as the gun nut on video.
Very true. Homicide kept shooting itself in the foot by losing great actors & replacing them with charisma vacuum noobs. The show more or less dies for me with Pembleton’s stroke. That said, there were some real gems in the later years. The first to come to mind is the amazing Lily Tomlin episode.
A44. MILLENNIUM
[VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPLQ4qUdrC4[/VIDEO]
Everyone’s favorite bastard brother of The X-Files, Millennium is maybe the most unjustly ignored non-female oriented show I can think of. It takes a while to get going, there are only a handful of worthwhile episodes in the entire first season, but once it does it finds its groove quick and the entire second season is a bit of a mad marvel. Whereas The X-Files was content to chug along, dropping little conspiracy bits here and there and wearing out its welcome in that regard, Millennium just sardonically chuckled to itself before walking into the dark where the end of the world was always just one day away.
Initially it was little more than serial killer/misery porn with any apocalyptic notions being more flavor than substance, and seemed to be more about Chris Carter’s lack of faith in humanity than actual plot, but the second season got retooled a bit thanks the new show runners in Glen Morgan and James Wong(producers on The X-Files and writers of such eps as “Ice”, “Tooms”, “Home”, “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” and others). The X-Files dealt with that feeling of paranoia and conspiracy, of clandestine men in clandestine places plotting clandestine things, little knowledge gained because of all that there clandestine stuff. Millennium was aiming for the end of the world fever, where everything big or small was the stuff of portent, Armageddon was coming all right but it is also right here and now, with the souls of men and women as the first field of battle.
The second season is just gonzo greatness, like all the best things it isn’t perfect but those imperfections somehow add to the texture. A couple of the early episodes in season 2 are too “Whaa?” for their own good but that just adds to the whole, when something gets too ridiculous, that ridiculousness ends up fitting in just fine. I mean is a secret group of Native Americans trying to bring about the white man’s apocalypse so they can reclaim their homeland or the…you know it is impossible to accurately describe the aptly titled “Sense and Antisense”, regardless are they any less fitting than secret societies, demons, and Gnostic style Christianity? Probably, but the apocalypse comes in many different flavors.
Of course, none of this was popular with any of the people at FOX and ratings were still on the decline, so our glorious show got retooled again for the third season. But we just ignore that as season 2 ends on a perfect note, an ending Morgan and Wong almost certainly used as a big middle finger to the people kicking them to the curb.
Here is a 6 minute scene from one of Darin Morgan’s episodes, “Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me”, one of my absolute favorite episodes of TV ever.
- Misfits of Science
Considering the hot streak NBC was on in the 1980s, I wish the same success they had with their dramas and sitcoms extended to Misfits of Science. This combination of comedy and sci-fi unfortunately never got past its first season, but you can still find the pilot and the other fifteen episodes all on Youtube. Plus, it deserves a place on this list due to its awesome theme song featuring Bobby Short and Karen Lawrence. (I like to think that if the show got picked up for more episodes, the TV set gag would have been changed for every season. Sort of like what The Simpsons would perfect with their couch gags.)
- BIZARRE
This was an adult oriented comedy/variety show that ran on Showtime in the early 80s. It was very R rated (nudity and language) and was funny as hell, thanks to John Byner. This is the show that introduced the world to Super Dave Osbourne, and he typcically killed in the short segments that he was in (efforts to market Super Dave in a regular TV show didn’t work, in my opinion).
Very funny stuff.
Fans of Byner should also check out THE ANT AND THE AARDVARK, a very funny cartoon from the early 70s.
AIf you listen to the pilot episode of Norm MacDonald’s short-lived podcast, with Super Dave, you can hear some very funny stories including some about the filming of Bizarre.
AJudas Booth, Bizarre was…hilarious.
AI love how Dave and Fuji couldn’t understand each other any better off camera. That’s why he was hired.
Short-lived? I thought Norm’s podcast was just on hiatus for the summer.
AI hope so, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it…
Norm would though
(ba-dum…)
AHave you read his gambling blog on Grantland? He quit after two posts, of course, but great, great stuff.
Oh yes, very Hunter S. Thompson. Norm’s two posts are some of the best stuff Grantland has put out, and it’s a shame he didn’t keep it up.
ASpeaking of Norm, was “The Norm Show” any good?
Yes, the Norm Show was pretty good.
Quote:
The skit with Billy Barty as Liberace is burned onto my brain.
- Michael Mann’s Crime Story (NBC 1986-88). Began as a stylish, period “grim n gritty” Chicago cop show, then upped sticks to Vegas and created a violent, surreal, batshit crazy alternate universe set somewhere between the Checkers speech and the Zapruder film.
Farina, 'nuff said, but my god the supporting cast, from the Diceman to Dr. No to Jackie Brown to Miles Quaritch to the Rocketeer, to Jame Gumm… or, as we came to know him, Frank Holman, rockabilly hitman. And that doesn’t even touch the mad antics of Tony Denison and John Fantucci: Bugsy Siegel and Sonny Corleone reincarnated as the murderous Abbott and Costello.
Only one great season, but it featured not only the greatest all-out running gun battle network TV had ever seen up to that point (and I’m not sure it’s been topped since, actually), but the most satisfyingly apocalyptic ending any Big Bad could hope for.
Sadly, season 2 never quite hit the same heights, but how the hell do you top The Big One?