Monday blues? Not around here – it’s time for a look at another Monday night in the 1970s, with the usual mix of hits and misses. And thankfully no new shows to add to my “missed series” list – have you seen all of these as well?
ABC
Barbary Coast
Monday Night Football
In his book Star Trek Movie Memories, William Shatner reflected on the state of his life and career in the years between the cancelation of Star Trek and his return to the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Part of that time was spent living out of a camper and taking whatever jobs were offered, from appearing on the game show Tattletales to promoting a frozen food sale at Loblaws, a Canadian supermarket.
Better times seemed imminent when he was at last offered another top-billed role on a network series. In Barbary Coast he played Jeff Cable, an undercover government agent in San Francisco, circa 1860s. Doug McClure costarred as Cash Conover, a casino owner and card sharp who (reluctantly) helps Cable in his missions.
“I thought the show was absolutely great,” Shatner writes. “In no time, I mused, people would stop typecasting me as a starship captain and start pigeonholing me as a cowboy.”
During a break he visited the Star Trek soundstages on the Paramount lot and ran into Gene Roddenberry, who told him he was now working on a new project – Star Trek – The Movie. Shatner thought the very idea was ridiculous: “Didn’t he know the next big thing was going to be Barbary Coast?”
Well…about that. Barbary Coast was canceled after 13 episodes, while Star Trek remains a cultural phenomenon more than 50 years later.
I think Barbary Coast failed because, consciously or unconsciously, it was unmistakably derivative of other – and better – shows. Cable’s reliance on elaborate disguises and makeup recalled that of Artemus Gordon in The Wild, Wild West. Cash’s card-playing cons were reminiscent of Maverick.
I also didn’t really buy the relationship between Jeff and Cash as friends or frenemies or reluctant allies. There’s a connection between actors and characters that either happens or it doesn’t. It didn’t for me, but there’s a DVD release if you’re interested.
CBS
Rhoda
Phyllis
All in the Family
Maude
Medical Center
CBS easily won the night, even with Gunsmoke no longer anchoring its Monday lineup. All in the Family remained the season’s top rated series, followed by Rhoda at #6, Maude at #7, and Medical Center at #27.
Scheduling Phyllis after Rhoda seemed like an obvious decision. Viewers who watched one Mary Tyler Moor Show spinoff would likely stick around for a second one. But it didn’t work – Phyllis struggled through two underperforming seasons before being canceled. In retrospect it’s easy to see why: Rhoda always had the audience on her side as she struggled with her various insecurities. Phyllis was the pretentious, self-absorbed neighbor who almost ruined Rhoda’s wedding. That’s not a character audiences would be likely to follow into her own show – even the series’ theme song made fun of her.
NBC
The Invisible Man
NBC Monday Night Movie
There have been at least a dozen films and television series inspired by the H.G. Wells story of a man who finds a formula for becoming invisible. In this version, David McCallum plays Dr. Daniel Westin, whose experiments are successful – until he discovers he can’t find a way to become visible again.
The series made the cover of Dynamite Magazine, suggesting that hopes were high that the show would draw a younger audience, and that another generation of teenage girls would take to McCallum the way they did on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ten years earlier. But this invisible man disappeared after 13 episodes.
Shows Missed:
The Don Knotts Show (1970)
San Francisco International Airport (1970)
Nancy (1970)
The Headmaster (1970)
The Man and the City (1971)
Search (1972)
Assignment: Vienna (1972)
The Delphi Bureau (1972)
Jigsaw (1972)
The Little People (1972)
The Sixth Sense (1972)
Tenafly (1973)
Faraday & Company (1973)
Kodiak (1974)
The New Land (1974)
McCoy (1975)
This junior high kid wanted to watch The Invisible Man, my sisters wanted Rhoda and Phyllis. My dad didn't care as long as he could watch Monday Night Football afterwards.
ReplyDeleteSyFy ran Invisible Man reruns over a decade ago. It was pretty bad.