12 TV Flops From the 1970s Almost No One Remembers
An eternal truth about network TV: Failure is an option. It’s also a constant, with the annals of TV history — in this case, TV Guide Magazine‘s iconic Fall Preview issues — littered with flops and duds, too many to count. Scanning the Fall Previews of the 1970s becomes a blur of inconsequential and interchangeable sitcoms and crime or medical dramas.
But a few shows stand out for their “what were they thinking” cluelessness and inept hucksterism. Here’s a dozen flops worthy of a 1970s TV Hall of Shame.
The Young Rebels
(September 1970-January 1971)
Gene Trindl/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection
Cashing in on the counterculture youth craze of the time, ABC hoped to attract modern agitators to their Revolutionary War counterparts in 1777, members of a guerrilla band called the Yankee Doodle Society. This, sadly, was no Hamilton. Fun fact: Future Oscar winner Louis Gossett Jr. (billed as Lou) played Isak, a blacksmith who bought his way out of slavery.
The Good Life
(September 1971-January 1972)
Don Ornitz/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection
By decade’s end, Larry Hagman was living it up as Texas tycoon J.R. Ewing on Dallas. But in this tone-deaf sitcom, he’s a going-nowhere stockbroker who quits his job to become a butler to a clueless millionaire. His wife joins him as an equally hapless cook, played by fellow future primetime soap icon Donna Mills of Knots Landing.
Anna and the King
(September-December 1972)
Everett Collection
Hey, let’s watch The King and I with Yul Brynner but without the marvelous Rodgers & Hammerstein score…or not. The subject matter of the Siamese king and the English schoolteacher had been dramatized in a 1956 film (and remade in 1999), but no one bothered “getting to know” this version. Samantha Eggar, who also starred in 1967’s Doctor Dolittle, played Anna.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
(September-November 1973)
Sherman Weisburd/TV Guide/Courtesy Everett Collection
What was mildly shocking at the movies in 1969 was (in TV Guide Magazine parlance) “laundered for the home screen,” so basically useless, as a TV series remake. Robert Urich (then called “Bob”) was one-half of the “with-it” swinger couple opposite Anne Archer‘s Carol (long before Fatal Attraction). David Spielberg and Anita Gillette were the square Ted and Alice, with a then-unknown Jodie Foster as their daughter.
On the Rocks
(September 1975-May 1976)
Everett Collection
What could be funnier than a sitcom about life in prison? Basically, anything. Based on a British series, this buddy comedy starring Rick Hurst, José Pérez, and Hal Williams was about inmates whose keepers were dummies, hoping to do for jail what Hogan’s Heroes did for POW camps. After one season, ABC threw away the key.
Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell
(September 1975-January 1976)
Everett Collection
Talk about bad timing. And bad casting. The polarizing sports announcer was out of his element as host of a music-variety show, which premiered just weeks before NBC’s Saturday Night (later Live) became an instant sensation. Cosell’s turkey, which included future SNL superstar Bill Murray in the repertory cast of “Prime Time Players,” only lasted 18 episodes.
Holmes and Yoyo
(September-December 1976)
Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
City cop Alexander Holmes (Richard B. Shull) was no Sherlock, and his partner, Gregory “Yoyo” Yoyonovich (John Schuck), was a lifelike robot. This sad-sack odd couple turned in their badges after just three months.
Snip
(September 1976)
Everett Collection
There’s a reason you don’t remember this would-be Shampoo knockoff starring comedian David Brenner as a hairdresser and Lesley Ann Warren. NBC never aired it, despite a full-page Fall Preview entry. The last-minute case of cold feet has been attributed to the network fearing backlash over an openly gay coworker in the Cape Cod salon.
The Man From Atlantis
(September 1977-July 1978)
Everett Collection
Before he was Dallas hunk Bobby Ewing, Patrick Duffy was web-footed underwater superhero Mark Harris, possibly the last survivor of the lost continent. He didn’t survive long in an action series that was all wet. As TV Guide Magazine put it: “Pass the kelp.”
Sword of Justice
(September 1978-July 1979)
NBC/courtesy Everett Collection
We present this otherwise forgettable melodrama because of TV Guide Magazine‘s delicious description of Jack Cole (Dack Rambo), a modern-day Zorro who leaves a playing card wherever he strikes. “Jack is (of course) a wealthy playboy who was (naturally) imprisoned for a crime he (obviously) didn’t commit and emerges from the penitentiary determined (needless to say) to seek revenge on the crooks who framed him.” Who wouldn’t watch something based on that description?
Apple Pie
(September 1978)
TAT Communications / Courtesy: Everett Collection
One of Norman Lear‘s strangest flops had a truly surreal premise: A woman in 1933 Kansas City picks her own relatives from classified ads, including a doddering grandpa and a con-man husband. They were played by comic geniuses Rue McClanahan, Jack Gilford, and Dabney Coleman, to little avail. Apple Pie was toast in two weeks.
Struck by Lightning
(September-October 1979)
Everett Collection
Five years after Young Frankenstein, CBS struck out with this gimmicky comedy about young Ted Stein (Jeffrey Kramer), who inherits a Victorian lodge and a caretaker, Frank (Jack Elam), who’s the actual Frankenstein monster, 200-plus years old. Ratings were terrifying, and Lightning died after three episodes.
Do you have any you would add to this list? Let us know in the comments.
This feature originally ran in the 1970s Fall TV Issue of ReMIND Magazine. You can purchase the full issue at the link below.
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September 2023
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